Trump keeps saying, in his usual random way, that the virus wuz maed in a labb by the Chyneez. Fauci says there’s no reason to think so.

Now, before we play the game of “he said, he said” remember this: Only one of these two people is a world-renowned infectious disease expert. And it’s not Donald Trump.

Well, yes, but that’s only the barely visible tip of the iceberg of the difference between the two. Fauci is a world-renowned infectious disease expert, and a trained scientist, and a grownup. Trump is a world-renowned liar and hustler.

Fauci and people like Fauci have a habit of not just making shit up without even pausing to ask if there’s any reason to think it’s true or not. Trump and people like Trump have the opposite habit – the habit of just making shit up whenever they feel like it without pausing to ask if there’s any reason to think it’s true or not. This contrasting pair of habits is the core of the difference between them.

Trump is before anything else a marketer. Trump sells shit. Trump wants you to buy his shit. That is basically the sum total of what Trump wants. He doesn’t care if what he’s selling is good shit or bad shit; all he wants is for you to give him a lot of money for it.

Trump wants everybody to buy what he’s selling, and that want determines pretty much everything else about him. He has obviously never in his life formed the habit of thinking about what he’s saying, and of considering whether it’s true or not, and whether he can offer any actual reason to think it’s true or not. He’s no more formed that habit than he’s formed a habit of walking on ceilings. He’s never even conceived of such a thing. He doesn’t know what it is to check his own claims for evidence or justification; he thinks his mere assertion is all that’s required.

He manages to think this while also thinking everything anyone else says is wide open to challenge from him, often of the most assertive kind. He can form the thought that what other people say is false, but he can’t form the thought about what he says. Why? Because he’s a marketer, and because he’s very stupid, and probably also because he’s a psychopath.