The list of reasons to despise - perhaps even hate describes the emotion - Donald Trump. Yet, to me many of them trace back to Trump's most predominant trait other than perhaps his self-absorption and lack of empathy for anyone else: he is a pathological lair who holds the truth on just about any issue one can imagine in contempt. All of engage in a little white lie from time to time or perhaps embellish a story line from time to time, but with Trump, no matter the issue, rather than honest and truthful, Trump prefers to lie - even when the truth is easily verified. A column in the New York Times looks at this irreversible character flaw - one of many with Trump - in the context of the Justice Department's confirmation that no wiretapping of Trump ever occurred despite Trump's lie to the contrary. Here are column excerpts:
Once again: Donald Trump is a liar.
The Department of Justice confirmed in a Friday court filing what we all knew to be true: that Trump’s slanderous assertion on Twitter in March that President Barack Obama had Trump’s “ ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower” just before the election was in fact a total fabrication.
According to the filing, both the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice’s National Security Division “confirm that they have no records related to wiretaps as described by the March 4, 2017 tweets.”
To some this lying may seem small, just another defect among many, but to me it is so much more. Honesty is the foundation of character. The truth is the common base from which all else is built.
And yet, this man feels completely unbound by it. He has no respect or reverence for it. For him, honesty is an option, one that he feels no compunction to choose.
Before Trump’s bigotry, race-baiting, misogyny, corruption, bullying and vindictiveness, there is the lying. One could even argue that the lying is a core component of all the rest.
Of the statements by Trump that the fact-checking site PolitiFact has checked, just 5 percent were deemed absolutely true. Another 26 percent were just “mostly true” or “half true.” But a whopping 69 percent were found to be “mostly false,” “false” or “pants on fire,” the site’s worst rating.
The Washington Post calculated that Trump made 492 false or misleading statements in his first 100 days — “That’s an average of 4.9 claims a day” — and that there were only 10 days without a single false claim. There were five days with 20 or more false claims.But Politico may have been the most insightful. In an article there, Maria Konnikova pointed out . . . . “The sheer frequency, spontaneity and seeming irrelevance of his lies have no precedent. Nixon, Reagan and Clinton were protecting their reputations; Trump seems to lie for the pure joy of it.”
Trump, we know, lies constantly, about matters as serious as the election results and as trivial as the tiles at Mar-a-Lago.”
Trump is quite literally overwhelming our human capacities with his mendacity. It is not only hard to imagine that any person could lie this much — let alone the leader of the free world — it is also impossible for us to keep pace.
We begin to build into our processing of politics the caveat: Yes, the “president” lies. That’s not new. That’s just what he does.
But we must resist that impulse. It makes normal, or at least rational, something that is neither normal nor rational.
Trump’s incessant lying is obscene. It is a collapse in morality; it is an ethical assault.
This notion that Trump is damaging the sanctity and purity of truth, that truth in the Trump era operates on a floating scale, that for the Trump apologists truth has become a minor inconvenience, should have us all objecting in earnest.
This is not simply about a flawed man, this is about the function of our democracy and American positioning in the world. How is one supposed to debate policy with someone who almost never tells the truth? How can a liar negotiate treaties or navigate international disputes? Without truth, everything falls apart, or more precisely, nothing can be established. . . . America made a colossal mistake, and it cannot be easily undone. . . . the first step is that we must never stop saying: Donald Trump is a liar.
That evangelical Christians continue to support Trump speaks volumes about the moral bankruptcy of this falsely pious, modern day Pharisees.
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