Truth About Lies

Tomorrow's newspaper column, today:

This week we learned Donald Trump is capable of telling the truth. Well, sure, it was about why he lies. Still, it could come in handy: unlikely as it is, were his supporters ever to prefer truth from him, familiarity with the concept would be advantageous. 

Lesley Stahl, who’s married to a college classmate of mine but that’s not important right now, just revealed her conversation with Trump in which he admitted his constant attacks on the honest (i.e., non-Fox) press are intended to delegitimize them in the eyes of his supporters. It’s almost as if he knew his malfeasance and criminality would eventually come out. And he figured, rightly as it turns out, it’d be easy preemptively to pull the sheep over the wool. While he has no idea what it is that makes America great, he does understand the minds of his disciples.   

“Winning,” gloated America’s second most oleaginous politician, whose name rhymes with “dense.” This he said on the news of the NFL caving to Trump’s cynical and dishonest efforts against their players’ peaceful demonstrations of hope for lost American ideals. Winning, he called it, in what one must assume refers to another example of successfully using people’s basest prejudices and pre-programmed misunderstandings to the benefit of his and his boss’s selfish, destructive agenda. Winning, he announced, because the list has one entry. To those theretofore too blind to see, Jerry Jones’ feline out-bagging gave away the game and, along the way, exposed illegal abuse of presidential power. Ban the kneeling, Trump demanded: it gets me votes.  

How effective are Trump’s efforts at confusing his abettors? Well, almost half of Republicans believe millions voted illegally in the last election. A little more than half consider journalists enemies of the American people. With predictable regularity, bending themselves backwards more skillfully than the most limber gymnast, they reject actual news as fake while accepting Trump’s lies as if they were the word of God (which, claim many white Evangelicals, they are). Provided with proof of his lies, they dismiss the sources out of hand. I see it daily in communications I attempt with detractors. Equal parts amazing and frightening, it’s enantiodromia taken to otherworldly dimensions.  

On this planet, meanwhile, Trump continues to supercharge his mendacity. Having called a news conference on the status of talks with North Korea, insisting the speaker remain anonymous, he then denounced a report about it as made up by the “failing” New York Times, claiming the official with whom the White House had arranged the briefing “doesn’t exist.” “This is not normal,” say people with more than two brain cells to rub together. “Not normal” isn’t even close: it’s either insane or a level of lying inexplicable other than that he’s certain his listeners are stupid. Either way, there’s no unbamming the boozled. 

At his latest Applaud Ye The Greatness of Me rally in Tennessee, the audience, as if implanted with chips that lock brains in a mindless loop, shouted “lock her up” and “build the wall,” while Trump grinned like the pussy who grabbed the canary. And, yet again, he promised the cheering zombified eaters of Hannity’s brain, Mexico will pay for the wall. And “enjoy it.” Really, how can anyone find the words to describe this level of free-flowing, self-replicating delusion? President Nieto had a few, but they don’t begin to cover it.   

And now there’s “Spygate,” a word Bostonians know was misappropriated. Trump admitted preferring “branding” an FBI informant a “spy” because the term would “resonate” better than the truth with his tribe. As that latest rally demonstrated, he is, of course, right again. Over and over he repeated it, while the cultists whooped and hollered their unquestioning acceptance. Rudy loves it, too. 

But when a lie is so blatant even Fox “news” talking heads, including Trey “Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi” Gowdy, and Judge “Obama Wiretapped Trump” Napolitano shoot it down, surely Trumpists will come to recognize how they’re being seen and played as pliable, distractible fools, treated by Trump with a level of disrespect and condescension always obvious to everyone but them. Finally, they’ll shrug the bonds of deceit and recognize the amoral, authoritarian liar they’ve enabled.  

Right. Now who sounds crazy? 

For people who call for acknowledging the good Trump’s done, okay, here: He finally met with Kim.  

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