Dishonesty is the defining characteristics of Trump and his administration, and lies are a daily occurrence. While there are far too many lies to track, I thought a thread dedicated to the worst and most notable lies would be useful. There’s a lot of material to choose from.
(I could have tapped into a rich vein of lies simply by linking to Trump’s Truth Social account — hence the OP title.)
But to Congress, all these attributes aren’t particularly important. What is important is, he has the power to primary them.
Trump:
Totally believable. I don’t know what’s up with all these “projecting patricians” who think Trump is dishonest.
ETA: Which reminds me — I need to add “patrician” to Bill’s homework list.
‘I did that’: Trump takes credit for a prisoner release that happened before he even ran for president
The FBI interviewed Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter in 2019, and here’s what the report says about Trump, who called the Palm Beach Police Department in July of 2006 when he heard that Epstein was being investigated:
Yet Trump has repeatedly claimed that he had no idea of what Epstein was up to. From Time magazine:
He also lied about kicking Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago. Newsweek has reported what Jamie Raskin said after viewing the unredacted files:
Then there’s the following Trump interview with Jonathan Swan. As you watch it, keep in mind what Trump told the police chief about Maxwell:
Yet in the interview, he pretends that he doesn’t already know that she’s guilty and wishes her well. Notice how agitated he gets:
Jonathan Swan presses Trump about Ghislaine Maxwell
Three lies:
— He lied about not knowing of Epstein’s crimes.
— He lied about kicking Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago.
— He lied about Ghislaine Maxwell.
Wake up, Bill. Your Dear Leader is a dishonest creep.
Trump, today:
He’s lying. According to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, there are 34 countries which allow mail-in voting.
He’s lying about that, too. I asked Claude to gather some statistics for me:
Of course, Trump isn’t actually worried about mail-in voting fraud. He’s lying about it now because he wants to set the stage for lying about it later, after the Republicans lose the midterms.
keiths,
Yeah, we can vote by post, it’s easy. We don’t use machines to count though.
keiths,
Not too long ago Trump also said that USA is the only country in the world to have birthright citizenship. In reality, about half of the countries on the American coontinent(s) have it.
That Trump is wrong and clueless is the baseline fact. It’s not (or no longer) a question worth exploring or being puzzled over. There are other questions more worth exploring. For example, Why make an obvious vicious liar with no redeeming qualities the President *for a second time*? The psychology of a nation is more interesting than the psychology of a silly-ass clown individual criminal.
By the way, House voted to stop tariffs with Canada. This is (some) Republicans finally starting to “disagree” with Trump on one of his signature policies. I put it in scare quotes because there was nothing to agree with about this policy in the first place. As usual when it comes to Trump, it was well known to be all wrong to begin with.
ETA: Another topic – voting machines. Dems complained about them first, but they did not try to overturn the election results the way the Trump gang is lyingly and anti-constitutionally doing.
Trump in 2024:
The Black population begs to differ. The latest Economist/YouGov poll has Trump at a paltry 14% approval rating, with 77% disapproving.
And of course no one who knows anything about American history would agree with Trump’s statement.
From last week’s Economist/YouGov poll:
Imagine how delusional you would have to be to respond “rarely” or “never”. (Hi, Bill!)
Imagine how delusional you would have to be to respond “rarely” or “never”. (Hi, Bill!)
How often do you think Trump tells the truth? I suspect this only happens when Trump is too ignorant to know what’s true, and the truth just coincidentally matches his delusions.
Flint:
The most interesting cases are the ones where the truth is actually on his side, but Trump can’t resist lying anyway because the truth isn’t dramatic enough for him. The neediness of a narcissist.
His niece also tells us that Trump lies for fun, even if it hurts his case. If he’s not lying, he’s not putting one over on someone, which is what winners do.
Perhaps a more accurate description of what Trump is doing is ‘bullshitting’ in the sense of Harry Frankfurt’s book On Bullshit.
Now, since I haven’t actually read that book, I’ll post this from the linked article:
Frankfurt’s book focuses heavily on defining and discussing the difference between lying and bullshit. The main difference between the two is intent and deception. Both people who are lying and people who are telling the truth are focused on the truth. The liar wants to steer people away from discovering the truth, and the person telling the truth wants to present the truth. Bullshitters differ from both liars and people presenting the truth with their disregard of the truth. Frankfurt explains how bullshitters or people who are bullshitting are distinct from liars, as they are not focused on the truth. Persons who communicate bullshit are not interested in whether what they say is true or false, only in its suitability for their purpose.
I think this describes Trump to a tee.
ETA: I found this link where Frankfurt’s original published article can be downloaded as a pdf.
An excerpt from Frankfurt’s article:
The bullshitter may not deceive us, or even intend to do so, either about the facts or about what he takes the facts to be. What he does necessarily attempt to deceive us about is his enterprise. His only indispensably distinctive characteristic is that in a certain way he misrepresents what he is up to.
This is the crux, of the distinction between him and the liar. Both he and the liar represent themselves falsely as endeavoring to communicate the truth. The success of each depends upon deceiving us about that. But the fact about himself that the liar hides is that he is attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality; we are not to know that he wants us to believe something he supposes to be false. The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him; what we are not to understand is that his intention is neither to report the truth nor to conceal it. This does not mean that his speech is anarchically impulsive, but that the motive guiding and controlling it is unconcerned with how the things about which he speaks truly are.
Sure, but there’s more. Trump has a malignant narcissistic personality disorder, in addition to a complete set of characteristics of sociopathic syndrome. And there’s even more – despite (or perhaps because of) these traits, Trump has been elected the president – for a second time. It’s not just the disease of an individual, but of at least half of the people of the nation.
And with Trump’s deepening dementia, things do not seem to be improving, but worsening. The cult is becoming stronger.
C-Span deny that the “John Barron” who called in sounding very like Trump, using a pseudonym he has used in the past, was in fact Trump. But… in the weird world we live in, it seems more plausible it was Trump. As an impression, it avoids the caricature that most go for (they are doing it for laughs), while including several distinctive tics. It’s quite subtle. Why would someone call in in the hope people think it’s really him, would recognise the pseudonym, yet try not to over-telegraph it? Why go to the trouble when it could just as likely cause no ripples as blow up? An odd world where there’s any grounds for belief that a President would do this…
Allan:
Yeah. With an intelligent president, the automatic conclusion would be “having already been caught, he’s not stupid enough to use the same pseudonym again.” With Trump, it’s quite plausible that he’s stupid enough to do that.
For the record, I don’t actually think it was him. It was a damn good impression, but it didn’t sound quite right to me. I’m going to listen again.
I listened again, and I still don’t think it was him. Here’s the clip so readers can judge for themselves.
faded_Glory:
I mentioned Frankfurt earlier in the thread:
Anyone for State of the Union bingo?
Crooked Joe Biden
Stolen election
Nobody’s ever seen anything like this
Terrible
Horrible
Nasty
Crooked Joe Biden
Barack Hussein Obama
Loser
Ripping us off
Crooked Joe Biden
Repetition
Don’t make it a drinking game…
Allan Miller,
I’m interested if he is able to not mention Epstein. In his first term, when he was meeting the heads of the Baltic countries, he received a note not to mention Putin and he immediately mentioned Putin.
Erik:
Yeah, especially since he’s been lying lately about having been exonerated by the release of the files.
Secy. Noem ‘completely made up’ story about cannibal immigrant: Report
This administration is saturated with dishonesty. Trump is a pathological liar who likes to surround himself with other pathological liars.
Allan:
A lot of people are saying [something that not a lot of people are saying]
Everyone knows [something that everyone doesn’t know]
Democrat hoax
Russia, Russia, Russia
landslide
I inherited the worst [something that wasn’t the worst]
a disgrace to our country
the worst of the worst
America is respected again
the hottest country
Also
Left-wing extremist
fraud
rigged
greatest ever (referring to himself)
stopped wars
least racist president ever
And from the commentary afterwards:
none of that was true
Gavin Newsom’s bingo card
Just had a brief segment on our morning news. I missed “Donald J. Trump” on the old bingo card.
The jack-in-the-box leaping to feet by Republicans was just embarrassing.
Allan:
I kept saying “sit down, idiots” to my TV.
One thing I liked about his speech was his tone deafness. This bit especially:
Imagine how well that played with people who are struggling right now.
Meanwhile, Trump’s approval is at 36% overall and 26% among independents, according to a CNN/SSRS poll released two days ago.
You gotta ask yourself, is it Adderall, or cocaine?
That Overton window is long gone.
Worth a repost:
Donald Trump Pledges To Halve Energy & Electricity Prices In First 12 Months Of Office
He’s a month overdue, and household energy costs are up 5.4%.
Why is nobody talking about the Iran war? When Trump stops this one, he will have stopped maybe seventeen wars, and this would be the first real war he stopped, so he deserves a real peace prize, not a fake FIFA one or one officially awarded to someone else. Right?
As with all Trump’s policies, there is nothing positive to say about the causes, reasons, and aims. Trump has no proper reasons of his own for this war. As with the 12-day war last year, he got played by Netanyahu again. And he needs media talking about something else than Epstein files – this is the closest Trump has to a reason for war with Iran. Otherwise it’s Netanyahu’s war with Iran.
Given this, the mainstream media response is horrible. Nobody questions the war. Even official response in Europe is that Iran should restrain itself and not bomb Persian Gulf countries (actually American bases in those countries). Nobody is calling USA/Israel out for having started the bombing and nobody is suggesting USA/Israel restrain themselves.
Erik,
I’d agree, it’s peculiar how a potentially serious escalation passes without comment – or it’s Iran’s fault. I’m in Turkey at the moment, just a border away…
A Facebook acquaintance had a peculiar take. A left-leaning British Muslim, of Iranian or Iraqi descent (not sure) he argues that Harris, or any Dem. would have done exactly what Trump has done, under pressure from Istael and AIPAC. I don’t think she’d be looking for a diversion from Epstein, or bending to Netanyahu’s whims without regard to consequences, myself.
Allan Miller,
I think that’s a popular, cynical view in Europe: whoever is in power, the US will cater to its own short term interests, without regard to the body count. I think it’s wrong because I think that Bibi has the best kompromat on Trump, thanks to his useful idiot Epstein.
New CNN SSRS poll. Two of the questions:
Q: What is your view of the US decision to take military action in Iran?
59% disapprove.
Q: How much do you trust Donald Trump to make the right decisions about US use of force in Iran?
59% say not much or not at all.
I’m certainly a cynical European who thinks that USA always caters to its own short term interests regardless who the president is. However, the body count in foreign wars is always larger when Repubs are in power. And now Trump has outperformed all previous presidents (except WWII presidents, I guess) in terms of the number of countries he bombed during his two terms. (Not threatened, like Greenland, but bombed, as in Venezuela, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, severely underreported Somalia, etc.)
keiths,
USA is sharply polarised, including the pollsters. Trump can always find a poll that he likes – or make one up and there’d be an electorally significant number of Americans who cannot tell the difference.
Dems indeed do the same, but not exactly. Biden wholeheartedly supported Netanyahu’s genocide of Gaza, but only because Netanyahu did not stop it. I’m sure that behind the scenes Biden made feeble attempts to pause it at least but, failing that, went along with it all the way.
Similarly, under a Dem president in USA it would be somewhat clearer that the idea of the Iran war started in Israel and USA just went along because USA always goes along with whatever Israel does. Whereas right now when Trump finally started giving interviews about the Iran war, he managed to say that it was him, the Peace President, who forced Netanyahu to go into war https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2o8duCF-FXQ
He’s obviously lying and not in line with what the rest of his administration says. In fact clearly the question by the journalist forces Trump to answer the way he does, because he neither thinks ahead or considers the context or propriety of anything ever. Trump is just there always outdoing everybody, including his own past self.
Even worse, after the “very successful” 12-day war last year that “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities, 85% of Americans were against a war with Iran. I repeat: This was after the war which by most measures was short and almost without casualties for USA/Israel.
Right now, just one in four Americans say they back US strikes on Iran (the war that began last weekend).
Maybe even 90% would be against a ground invasion in Iran.
So, in the face of this overwhelming popular opposition to war, why is the war happening? Because this is America: Popular opinion does not matter.
What matters is the personal bribes that Trump got. At least $2 billion from the Saudis. Airplane from Qatar. And Netanyahu near-literally has Trump by his dick. When Israel wants war, Trump must do it, regardless of any polls.
And Trump has more to gain from this war. When the war is put on vote in the Congress, the Congress will approve it. Then it becomes an actual war with the Congress’s approval, which means that Trump will have war emergency powers which in turn means that the judiciary must stop meddling when Trump ignores the Congress and sidesteps laws. And then Trump will postpone or cancel or steal mid-term elections and ensure himself his third term. The popular opinion will not matter at any point.
CNN montage exposes Republican disagreement on whether the U.S. is at war
Erik:
60% according to that CNN/SSRS poll. Here are all the questions along with the top responses:
Jamie Raskin ripping Kristi Noem at a Congressional hearing yesterday
Uh, *Special Military Operation…
keiths,
Knowing the American system by now, this is a full-on endorsement of the war by the public, because we are talking about the sitting president and an ongoing war. Under the American system, the sitting president cannot be moved, much less removed, and an ongoing war cannot be stopped.
In July 1932, Hitler’s party got 37% of the vote. Trump’s approval rating has *sunk* to this level, i.e. Trump’s approval is now as high as the approval of Nazis in Germany. It is a very high approval rating, way too high.
According to the constitution, the Congress should be declaring war. But that’s the constitution, not the system. The system is that Trump does what he wants and Congress does nothing to stop him. Usually in the past, all wars were legitimised by the Congress retroactively. If this one does not get legitimised retroactively, it will change nothing about the reality of the war or about the situation of the president. This is the system. The president does whatever he wants.
It could be worse. The Congress could actually approve the war. Then Trump would get war powers and the judiciary no longer has any right to meddle with Trump’s lawlessness. Under war powers, Trump would be able to steal or cancel mid-term elections as he pleases and declare himself a third term by executive order, if things don’t play out his way by any other means. ETA: Under war powers, executive orders can no longer be slowed down by the judiciary. A peace president with war powers, now this is quite something. From then on, it probably takes five Nobel Peace Prizes to satisfy him.