"Telling It Like It Is" About Donald Trump

I remain stunned that friends of mine who are normally reasonable, intelligent, thinking people---men and women whose cognitive abilities are in no way impaired---would actually admit in public (or, for that matter, in private) that they intend to vote for The Great American Grifter, Donald J. Trump, to become not just president of the United States but also Leader of the Free World.

When asked the obvious---"Why?"---most avert their eyes and mumble something about The Trumpster "telling it like it is." Or, "I can trust what he says." Or, worst of all (because it tells me that they haven't done their homework, which is always disappointing), "He's not a liar like Hillary."

They really don't like talking to me about it because, when they articulate their reasoning---such as it is---they know I am going to look at them as if they have lost their minds and say, "Whaaaa???"

Actually, national polling indicates that a majority of Americans disagree with me and agree with my unprepared for class, aforementioned friends. In other words, more Americans than not actually think that The Grifter is more "trustworthy" and "less likely to lie" than Hillary Clinton.

Whaaaa???

When did cognitive dissonance become epidemic in the U.S.? Have they doubled the amount of fluoride in the water supply? Did the sugar cubes we thought contained the polio vaccine actually contain a virus that would begin destroying our cerebral cortexes 60 or so years after we sucked them down in the mid-1950's? Are people drinking more and thinking less?

I ask that because any serious person---i.e., anyone who has taken even the most cursory look at Donald Trump, past and present---knows that The Grifter is an unrepentant, serial, pathological liar.

An example of how well-known this is among people who know The Donald well---the media---is seen in the fact that the Huffington Post now appends every story about Trump with the following editor's note: "Note to our readers: Donald Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, mysoginist, birther and bully who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims---1.6 billion members of an entire religion---from entering the U.S."

PolitiFact, the non-partisan, Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking service of the Tampa Times, examined 77 major statements made by Trump during 2015. Amazingly, it rated 76% of those statements as being either "mostly false," "false," or "pants on fire."

PolitiFact fact-checkers then took a deep dive into all of those lies, falsehoods and misstatements that were part of The Trumpster's 2015 record, searching for one that so stood out from the others that it might qualify for "Lie of the Year."

But, unable to find one of Trump's lies that blazed higher than the others, the editors finally just bundled all of his 2015 prevarications together and termed them the "2015 Lie of the Year." Or, as one staffer put it, "It was hard to single one out from the others. So we have rolled them into one big trophy."

As Angie Holan writes, "It's the trope on Trump: He's authentic, a straight-talker, less scripted than traditional politicians. That's because Donald Trump doesn't let facts slow him down. Bending the truth...is a strategy he has followed for years."

The Grifter tries to get around his penchant for lying by calling it, in his 1987 best-seller The Art of the Deal, "truthful hyperbole...an innocent form of exaggeration."

Uh-huh.

It's not "truthful hyperbole." It's not "an innocent form of exaggeration." It's lying. And, in his book he cynically suggests that such lying is intrinsic to good deal-making.

I'm guessing that they offer courses in Business Ethics at Wharton. I'm also guessing that, if Trump enrolled in one, he slept through the classes.

I'm also guessing that drawing a relationship between lying and good deal-making is one of the reasons why the current student body at Wharton issued a collective statement disassociating themselves and the school from its most publicized---and, notorious---alumnus.

By the way, whereas no politician came close to matching The Grifter's record of lying during the 2016 election cycle, it bears mention that PolitiFact determined Hillary Clinton to be the most honest presidential candidate---of either party!--- during the primary season, with 72% of her statements falling on the "half-true," "mostly true," "true" spectrum of rulings and 28% falling on the "mostly false," "false," "pants on fire" spectrum. Indeed, its fact-checkers consider her to be one of the most honest presidential candidates of the last decade.

It also bears mention that, in TrumpWorld, the lying doesn't stop at the top. It extends up and down the campaign staffing ladder.

Beyond the amateur hour antics of Corey Lewandowski and the dark, conspiratorial tones of Paul Manafort (friend of dictators and totalitarians everywhere), there is the pathetic Sam Clovis, who just can't seem to hide the facial expressions that say, "I know that you know..."

Mr. Clovis had the unenviable task of trying to convince us, during a live interview this Friday past with Kate Snow of MSNBC, that The Donald wasn't lying when he claimed to have "never called for a ban on Muslim immigration to the U.S."

Ms. Snow, unable to wipe the look of astonishment from her countenance, asked the obvious: "You're saying that Mr. Trump has never called for a ban on Muslims immigrating to the United States?"

"That's right," answered Mr. Clovis, who must have, following the interview, pulled a bottle out of the bottom drawer in his desk and thrown back at least five fingers of Dewar's, "You people in the media got that wrong."

Unfortunately for Mr. Clovis, it is, as Ms. Snow pointed out, documented fact that, on December 7, 2015, Trump issued a personal statement that began "Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States..."

Ms. Snow, empathizing a bit with Mr. Clovis' obvious discomfort, was merciful. She did not continue the discussion by noting that The Grifter actually followed up his "Muslim ban statement" by saying that he was even giving consideration to enlarging the ban such that American citizens who were Muslim could not, if they were out of the country when the ban went into effect, get back in until terrorists no longer roamed the range.

Amazingly, neither the Methodists nor the Lutherans nor the Baptists nor the Episcopalians made a big stink of The Grifter's poisonous thinking, ministers and pastors and vicars and village priests apparently afraid that their predominantly white congregations might have hung the noose in the churchyard as a warning per the consequences of disagreeing with the, uh, devout Presbyterian running for the Republican nomination.

Pope Francis, as expected, made clear his disappointment and disagreement. As did the black minister of the Good Samaritan Pentecostal Holiness Fire Baptized Church of the Holy Spirit---an old, frame dwelling that sits on Huger Street right across from my gym and puts out some of the sweetest sounds to be heard on the outskirts of downtown Columbia. One of his members told me in the gym that the preacher had "been hit by the Spirit" when he started talking about "banning Muslim immigrants" from the shores of America. I asked if his minister was "fer' it or agin' it." My buddy looked at me like I was crazy and said, "He was agin' it. Unlike y'all, we'uns know what it's like to be told we 'can't come in' to someplace."

I think I've found a prospective church to attend on a regular basis.

But, I, per usual, digress.

None of us is naive enough to think that the politician end of the pool isn't filled with a bunch of sharks. But some of the sharks have a little more blood on their pearly whites than the others. And they are watched a little more carefully by the others, as well.

"Telling it like it is" about Donald Trump means admitting that he's one of those that has to be watched very, very closely---more closely, in fact, than any of the others. And that the chlorine in the water is never strong enough to get rid of the reddish tint that follows him around.

That's not guesswork. That's documented fact.

That's not a politician running his mouth. That's "telling it like it is."