to belie = to betray?
I suspect that the verb to belie here is used to mean to betray. Is that true?
You don’t get a pat on the back for ratcheting down from rabid after exploiting that very radicalism to your advantage. Unrepentant opportunism belies a staggering lack of character and caring that can’t simply be vanquished from memory. You did real harm to this country and many of its citizens, and I will never — never — forget that.
No, Trump, We Can’t Just Get Along
However, doesn't belie mean, at its core, to contradict. Here's what COBUILD Advanced English Dictionary has to say about belie.
If one thing belies another, it hides the true situation and so creates a false idea or image of someone or something. [V n] ⇒ Her looks belie her 50 years.
If one thing belies another, it proves that the other thing is not true or genuine. [V n] ⇒ The facts of the situation belie his testimony.
I am struggling to align the definitions in the dictionary with the way the verb is used by the NY Times article.
Solution 1:
Etymologically speaking, it's the same thing. Curiously enough, belie comes from the Old English word beleogan, which meant "to deceive by lies". This, through a bunch of Germanic languages, can be followed back to the Proto-Indo-European root leugh, "to tell a lie". Betray has the same prefix root as belie, but its root can be traced to the Latin word trans (and further back, the PIE word tere), both meaning "across", implying that a betrayer switches sides. If one who switches sides can be equated with one who tells lies (and in both marriage and espionage, it is applicable), then in diachronic linguistics it is the same thing. The Cambridge English Dictionary defines belie as "to represent falsely or hide something", and in many cases this is the same as betrayal. I vote yes. (My heart goes out to etymonline for this explanation)