Donald Trump, The Lyin’ King

“Donald Trump is a proven liar. He lies often and effortlessly. He lies about the profound and the trivial. He lies to avoid guilt and invite glory. He lies when his pride is injured and when his pomposity is challenged.”

~The New York Times

There is a personality disorder in which a person would prefer to tell a lie than the truth. It is a narcissistic personality type called “pathological liar.”

When Donald Trump began questioning President Obama’s birthplace five years ago, campaigning to delegitimize America’s first African American President, he was already running for president.

It was a publicity stunt for Donald J. Trump to be president, and it was a lie.

Trump knew President Obama was born in Hawaii. His birth certificate was available, and the notice of his birth published in newspaper’s archives at the time of his birth, but Trump carried on with his badgering insistence for five years.

Because as soon as he admitted otherwise, nobody would pay any attention to him; he’d look like the childish, narcissistic racist he was, green with envy this wise, scholarly and articulate black man was doing the job he coveted himself.

As a racist with a bigoted track record, it burned him up, so he contrived a lie and aggressively and shamelessly made the rounds with it. When the President presented his original long form birth certificate with official seal, Trump still insisted it was fake.

He didn’t give a damn what effect this was having on the American psyche or the African American population finally vindicated in having a black man represent them. He relished doing it. The actual degree of his bigotry was suddenly exposed and glaring.

He wasn’t concerned that this constant, nagging berating of the President would divide the country more, or hamper the President’s ability to do his job. He only hoped it would, so that when he actually announced his candidacy, he could rave about the terrible job President Obama had done. And then he lied, of course, about President Obama’s competency as well.

He cared only about Donald Trump. And as so often been the case when Donald Trump lies, there was a poisonous racist angle to it. Mexicans coming across the border were “rapists.” A judge with Mexican heritage ruling on his case could not rule fairly.

The Birther Movement was a lie, and Donald Trump rode it proudly like a golden stallion.

It should be no surprise then, that virtually everything he said and did to get elected president after that, was a lie. Couched in conspiracy language and racist overtones, a steaming pile of shameless lies resting on the foundation of his Great Birther Lie.

After blatantly mocking a disabled reporter, he insisted he hadn’t mocked him, though it was on tape for everyone to see.

John McCain wasn’t a hero. Well, I like heroes “who weren’t captured.”

Hillary Clinton and President Obama are “the founders of Isis.”

“I know more about Isis than the generals do.”

Hillary Clinton is a “bigot.”

The unemployment numbers around 4.9, weren’t true, unemployment was actually 30 or 40 per cent.

America loses at everything, trade, immigration, militarily.

Our economy is weak. America’s military is weak.

We’re losing the war with Isis.

When the planes hit the twin towers on 911, Muslims were cheering from New Jersey.

The primaries were fixed against him (although he was winning).

The dozen women who accused him of molesting them were making it up, and he would sue them all.

The election was fixed against him (although he won).

Nothing he said or claimed was true or substantiated. In fact, in the case of the election being fixed against him, the opposite was true.

Seventeen American intelligence agencies, including the CIA, FBI and NSA, agreed Russia intervened in the election to undermine Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, and Trump even openly encouraged them to in his campaign rallies, then lied that he didn’t, while speaking glowingly of Vladimir Putin.

On tape Trump said he had a very good relationship with Putin, but in a debate said he didn’t know Putin. Which was it? One of those statements was a lie.

Do we see a pattern here? The question is, how does anyone not see Donald Trump’s constant deceit? The current leader of the free world, the nation the rest of the world looks to for stability, leadership, credibility, is a cheap car salesman, a snake oil salesman, a pathological liar.

The most grandiose liar in presidential history.

This is not conjecture or exaggeration; it’s verifiable fact. Though the sheer volume of lies are so overwhelming it’s hard to keep up with them. It’s as if he’s living in an alternate universe, some wishful fantasy land, where anything he dreams up, he says, because he can’t tell the difference between lies and reality. Because his lies, which are quickly discoverable, are more interesting to him, and he thinks the public is stupid enough to believe them.

Following the election, when the popular vote count showed Hillary Clinton with close to three million more votes than Trump, he tweeted “he would’ve won the popular vote if not for all of those illegals voting against him.” Certainly one of the craziest claims ever made by a presidential candidate.

There was no evidence of voter fraud, or of any “illegals” voting period, but now Mexican “illegals” were not only “rapists,” they were conspiring to make him look bad in the popular vote.

The element of lunacy can never be escaped with Donald Trump. When Jill Stein began to do her recount in Michigan, Trump and his son began to tweet how wasteful this was, because the election was legit and it was over. What a waste of time and money, they raved. One of his sons, an habitual liar by proxy, even claimed thousands of children would “die” as a result of wasting money on a recount. But at the same time Trump insisted there were all those “illegals” voting against him.

A few days after the inauguration, having fits over photos showing crowds for President Obama’s inauguration were much larger than his, Trump sends out his press secretary to scold and blame the press, to lie for him about the size of the crowds. About white mats put down on the grass of the mall, and magnetometers, though none of this was relevant to the aerial photos that showed his crowds were far smaller than President Obama’s. Desperately Trump tries to explain why so few showed up for his inauguration, making his press secretary blame the press for the photos.

The next day Trump heads to the CIA, and standing in front of the sacred wall with 138 stars on it representing agents who’d died in the line of duty, calls the press “dishonest,” then lies again, blaming the press for the pictures of his inauguration crowd, and also for his relationship with the intelligence community.

He had tweeted out attacks at the intelligence community, in a recent one accusing them of being like Nazi Germany. Now he blames the press for this too, as if his personal attacks in tweets didn’t exist. It’s the press that misrepresented his relationship with the intelligence community, not those nasty, denial tweets he’d put out himself.

Another glaring lie, and one that was easily discovered. Bizarrely, Trump had taken the Russians’ and Julian Assange’s side against the 17 intelligence agencies who said definitively Russia had hacked into the DNC, and using fake news worked on Trump’s behalf to get him elected. And then Trump goes to the CIA and blames it on the press, saying he’s a thousand per cent behind the CIA.

Brennan, the former head of the CIA, put out this statement after Trump’s visit: “Former CIA Director Brennan is deeply saddened and angered at Donald Trump’s despicable display of self-aggrandizement in front of CIA’s Memorial Wall of Agency heroes.”

A few days later, Trump insists again in a meeting with congressional leaders that those five million “illegal votes” cost him the popular vote. You can see from the bewildered looks on the congressional leader’s faces they’re dealing with a delusional lunatic now. He’s like Humphrey Bogart in The Caine Mutiny, obsessing over the stolen strawberries. An afflicted baby ego so delusional he can’t drop one of the craziest claims ever made by a presidential candidate, maybe the craziest, that no one’s buying.

Although there’s no evidence of his claim, in an interview with David Muir he assures him, “None of those votes would’ve come to me,” telepathically claiming all of those phantom illegal votes that never existed in the first place, had gone to Hillary Clinton.

The breadth and depth of childish lies, conspiracy claims and bizarre accusations, made to cover Donald Trump’s own shortcomings, perceived failures, boost his ego and stroke his narcissistic madness, knows no limit.

Every American President has made misstatements, or been unable to fulfill promises made, and been accused of lying because of it. Reagan flat out lied about Iran Contra. Bush Sr. said read my lips, no new taxes, then raised taxes. Bill Clinton said, I did not have sex with that woman, though he had.

But Donald Trump lies for the fun of it, for sport, and continuously, without regard to how easily it is to catch him in his lies. He doesn’t seem to care that credibility and integrity matter in the leader of the free world.

He lies when he perceives any slight against him, and about petty matters. When confronted with things he’s said in the past, he lies that he never said them, while they’re in black and white, in tweets or on tape. He lies by making up things about people who criticize him, and calls them names like weak, stupid, fat, goofy, crooked, low energy, rather than addressing their criticisms. A diversionary tactic to prevent talking about the criticism itself, switching the attention to the critic instead.

He puts out conspiracy lies, not because he believes them, but to damage people’s characters and reputations. He inflates himself with lies, and tears down others with lies, like a childhood bully on the playground.

In the last few days, Donald Trump has accused the press of not reporting terrorist attacks in America. As if the press, never shy about seeking ratings, would pass up reporting a terrorist incident. This to justify his Muslim travel ban from seven countries, which a federal judge in Washington State had halted. Perhaps he can scare the country into doing what he wants by getting them to believe in unreported cities on fire with phantom terrorist attacks.

The day after making this delusional claim, he addresses the Sheriff’s Association claiming the murder rate in America is the highest it’s been in forty-seven years, another verifiable lie. The murder rate in the 80’s and 90’s was statistically over twice as high as it is today, which anyone with a computer could find out in a few minutes.

Donald Trump enjoys lying, and actually believes he’s entitled to his lies. Because he is so narcissistically afflicted he has no conscience about deceiving anyone he’s speaking to, which is now the American people. And America is made of much better stuff.

Deceptive governments and their leaders are the antithesis of America. We have had to fight these state controlled dictatorships and their bully leaders in world wars and cold wars, and now America is being tested by one in our midst.

Trustworthy men of character and principle, know that honesty is their strength; they do not have to lie to get what they want and control others. Rather than using truth, candor, wisdom, and the gospel of authenticity and facts, Donald Trump feeds from the bottom with treachery and deception, because his character is weak, deceptive, and cowardly. His lies keep coming back on him, and in time will catch up with him and overtake him.

But in the meantime he believes he has no power or influence without lies. Which means we cannot trust anything he says or does, which we’ve seen.

Which makes him easily the most dangerous president in American history.

Ron Clinton Smith is a film actor, seen on “True Detective” and in “Hidden Figures,” a writer of stories, songs, poetry, screenplays, and the novel Creature Storms.