The question I’ve tried to resolve is why he does it. Why is
it necessary for the man who occupies arguably the most powerful position on the
planet to tell 16,000 or more lies about things that—in many cases—are easily
proven to be false?
I’ll offer my opinion on that in a minute, but first, here is
just one recent example, courtesy of the online tech magazine wired.com:
“President Donald Trump announced Friday that the US
government’s coronavirus testing apparatus, which has lagged badly behind other
developed nations, would soon get an assist from Google. The search and
advertising giant will create a website, Trump said, that would help Americans
figure out if they need a test for the virus, and if so where they can find
one.
“The only problem: There is no nationwide site like the one
Trump described. And Google had no idea the president was going to mention one. A source at Google tells WIRED that company leadership was
surprised that Trump announced anything about the initiative at the press
conference. What he did say was also almost entirely wrong.”
A coronavirus testing site is being developed, Google said, by a sister company called Verily,
but the site “is in the early stages of development” and is nowhere near
implementation. Not only that, but the site was originally intended only for
health care workers, but because of Trump’s announcement at the press
conference, the company is now scrambling to make it available more broadly.
Even so, it will only be available in the San Francisco Bay Area.
So why would Trump say what he said? Why, in the middle of a
potentially catastrophic health crisis, would he intentionally give out false information
that would make people believe they could receive services that are not actually
available? In other words, why does he find it so necessary to lie at such a
critical time in our lives?
Now I’m not a psychologist and I never played one on TV, but
I do have an opinion about why Trump lies so easily. I believe he does it for
one of three reasons, listed here in ascending order of magnitude:
(1) First, we know he is a chronic bad listener who doesn’t
read, easily loses interest in briefings and other discussions and has a very
short attention span. I believe he sometimes tunes out what people are telling
him to the point that he only picks up on key words, then tries to repeat them
in speeches and rallies. So after listening to a detailed explanation of the cause,
nature, risks and dangers of the coronavirus, Trump probably picked up on the
words “google,” “web site” and “testing,” and melded that into “Google has a
web site where you can go get tested,” which isn’t true.
(2) Second, and worse than that, I believe Trump lies because
the truth is damaging to him or because it creates a world he doesn’t like, so
he invents a fantasy world where things are the way he wants them to be. He
does that by telling lies.
Example: The coronavirus is happening on his watch because
of something his administration did—disbanding the nation’s pandemic response
team—and is negatively affecting the economy, which is the one issue he thinks
will get him re-elected. So he lies about the number of reported cases, the
number of deaths and the likelihood of the virus spreading, and sends out the
likes of Kellyanne Conway and Larry Kudlow to tell the media the virus “has
been contained.” Eventually, he has to admit that the threat from the virus is
real, but still he plays it down because that's to his benefit politically.
(3) Finally, and most frightening, I believe Trump lies because
he likes it. I believe he takes great pleasure from manufacturing a lie, then
watching as Fox News and other right-wing outlets repeat it over and over again
and it trickles down to the 38% of the U.S. population who believe every word
the president says. I can almost hear the back room conversations between Trump
and Steven Miller: “Do you believe they bought that B.S. about Obama? What a
bunch of ignorant morons. But hey, they love me, so what do I care if they’re
stupid?”
There’s a term for this kind of lying. The term is “pathological.” Here’s how Healthline
describes pathological lying:
“Pathological lying, also known as mythomania and
pseudologia fantastica, is the chronic behavior of compulsive or habitual
lying. Unlike telling the occasional white lie to avoid hurting someone's
feelings or getting in trouble, a pathological liar seems to lie for no
apparent reason. Some lies seem to be told in order to make the pathological
liar appear the hero, or to gain acceptance or sympathy, while there’s
seemingly nothing to be gained from other lies.
“Compulsive lying is also a known trait of some personality
disorders, such as antisocial personality disorder. A 2016 study of what
happens in the brain when you lie found that the more untruths a person tells,
the easier and more frequent lying becomes. The results also indicated that
self-interest seems to fuel dishonesty.”
Healthline added that pathological liars “sometimes seem to believe the lies they
tell.” That puts me in mind of Joseph Goebbels, the notorious Nazi Propaganda Minister, who was famous for his promotion of "the big lie." Goebbels believed that "if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it," and he was proven right. I think this applies to Trump and his gang of sycophants as clearly as it did in Goebbels's Germany in the 1940s.
So to summarize, why does Donald Trump lie? I believe that he looks around at the world as it is and sees people who are smarter, wiser, better looking, more successful and more beloved than he is, but as a malignant narcissist he refuses to accept this reality, so he invents an alternative world in which he is the smartest, prettiest, richest and most admired person who was ever born....
And then he proceeds to say and do whatever is necessary so
he can live inside that world.
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