Daniel Dale on Trump’s many many lies:
His relentless dishonesty has become a central feature of US and world politics. Voters and members of Congress, allies and adversaries, CEOs and investors alike have had to try to figure out how to read a man whose words are so frequently not true.
How frequently? Two months before Election Day in 2020, I had to abandon my four-year-old project of fact-checking each and every Trump statement. He was telling so many campaign lies that I’d become physically unable to look into all of them while living something loosely resembling a healthy life. By then, I’d recorded more than 8,500 false claims since September 2016.
I doubt that Trump has any kind of filter that sorts lies from the other thing. He may not even really know he’s lying. Why do I think that? I suppose it’s because of the way he talks. He just goes, like a windup toy. He doesn’t think, he just makes noise come out of his face. He babbles. There isn’t time to remember what is true and what he’s just making up. Plus there’s the fact that he clearly thinks his saying a thing makes it true.
Joe Biden sometimes lied, JD Vance sometimes lies, Republicans and Democrats in Congress sometimes lie, Cabinet secretaries notably including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sometimes lie; Washington is not the nation’s capital of straight shooting. But it’s abundantly clear that there is no public official in Washington who lies like Trump – not as constantly, not as obviously, not about as many topics. I’ve heard people dismiss Trump’s mendacity with a shrugging “they all lie,” but we are witnessing a rare, very possibly once-in-a-lifetime political liar.
And that could be because he just doesn’t even know the difference. He may think there is no difference…except when it comes to other people, of course.
He is intent on making loud continuous noise, so that nobody else can make noise and all attention is focused on him. Naturally some of that torrent of sound will be inaccurate.
A lot of people expect politicians to try to lie their way out of a career-threatening jam or lie to make their signature policies look better. The subjects Trump has lied about include a nonexistent phone call he claimed to have received from the Boy Scouts, a nonexistent Michigan “Man of the Year” award he claimed to have received years ago, and whether there were any empty seats in venues in which seats were visibly empty. None of these things are important in the slightest, but Trump’s brain has seen fit to make up a story about them. It’s a special trait.
But on the upside, he’s drowning out what anyone else has to say. Works for him!
People sometimes ask how I can debunk Trump lies immediately after he utters them. I don’t have any magic tricks. My (non-)secret is that he says the same untrue things again and again. The first time, it might take a while to research; by the 10th or 100th time, I can recite the debunking half-asleep – and there actually is a 100th time for some of the lies.
Ya. This is one of his things. He repeats himself. A million times a day he repeats himself.
Trump has repeatedly noted that people have pointed out his claim that Biden presided over the very highest inflation in US history as incorrect. But then Trump has immediately gone on to repeat the very-highest-ever claim once more, insisting he still believes it. “Some people will correct me because they always love to correct me, even though I’m right about everything,” he said, piling another lie on top of the initial one, during a December rendition of the routine.
Meta meta meta lying.
One of my most eye-opening journalistic experiences was a 2017 reporting trip to two Trump-friendly communities in Ohio. Over and over, I heard the president’s supporters say not merely that they didn’t mind his lying but that they actively liked it – because it agitated the establishment they had come to despise. (“We’ve had so much crap in Washington for years, and now we have someone shaking ’em up really good,” one man told me with delight.) I know that many Trump supporters often don’t know he’s lying or believe his policy stances outweigh the dishonesty. But I’ve also come to understand that there is a pro-dishonesty constituency within his base, at least when that dishonesty is perceived to target the “right” people.
You see, on the one hand you have the ayleets, who tend to have some degree of respect for the truth, and then you have the People, who love a good lie when it comes from their very own corrupt billionaire.
Speaking without a filter helps political liars be viewed as honest
I observed this phenomenon with the first frequent political liar I covered, the bellicose former Toronto mayor Rob Ford. A politician who gives the impression that they authentically speak their mind is likely to be seen by many as honest even if a high proportion of their actual words are not true. Trump has always done badly in honesty polling, but his insult-heavy, damn-the-teleprompters style has also helped convince a segment of the populace that he is not only reasonably truthful but especially truthful.
He’s rude, therefore he’s honest.
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