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Reader question: Please explain “fast and loose” in this sentence: Our Tweeter in Chief Donald Trump is known for playing fast and loose with facts. My comments: This is another way of saying Donald Trump lies a lot. Trump, the American President, tweets a lot. That’s actually an understatement. Trump tweets so much and so often that it sometimes appears that he treats Twitter, the online social media service as a better propaganda tool than the mainstream media, including the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN. In fact, Trump has often called the latter fake news. Anyways, let’s get back to “fast and loose”. Literally, “fast and loose” means now you FASTen it, then you LOOSEn it. Originally, it is the name of a trick game involving knotting a rope or string up and then loosening it. This explanation, from Phrases.org.uk: This derives from an old deception or cheating game in which something that appears stuck (fast) easily becomes loose. It is nicely defined in James Halliwell’s A dictionary of archaic and provincial words, obsolete phrases, proverbs and ancient customs, from the fourteenth century, 1847: “Fast-and-loose, a cheating game played with a stick and a belt or string, so arranged that a spectator would think he could make the latter fast by placing a stick through its intricate folds, whereas the operator could detach it at once.” | 
