Journalism prof writes about Trump and facts in NYT op-ed

UO journalism assistant professor Héctor Tobar, in an opinion piece for the New York Times, elaborates on the way critics say President Donald Trump treats facts.

Those include whether or not voter fraud is really an issue, the actual number of people illegally entering the country from Mexico, and a physical border between America and Mexico that, for the most part, already exists.

“Alas,” Tobar writes, “no fact will persuade Mr. Trump to surrender his obsessions. He’ll give up on a lie only when he feels his enemy has been vanquished. ‘Barack Obama is Kenyan’ was his trial balloon; so then Mrs. Clinton deserved to be locked up — until Mr. Trump became president. The fly was swatted, so to speak.”

Read the full piece, “Latino Americans Pity You, President Trump” in the New York Times.

In addition to his teaching duties, Tobar is a best-selling author and a New York Times contributing op-ed writer. His book about the Chilean mining accident in 2010, “Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free,” was recently made into a major motion picture starring Antonio Banderas.

Tobar also is an Oregon Expert as a storyteller and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist whose work examines the lives of Latin American immigrants, the working class and inequality.