Donald Trump says many things which are not true.
Do you think he knows this? Does he know he’s lying but figures his audience will believe his lies? Or does he believe the things he says are true?
Do you think this has changed over the years? Did Trump know he was lying back in 2016 but he’s since lost it?
I guess the question is whether Trump is as dumb as the average Trump supporter.
I think he believes some things and not others. I also think that he flat out doesn’t care if he’s telling the truth or not. Truth has no value to him.
Facts are whatever he claims them to be. Acording to him. That’s what he believes.
He has no inquisitive mind and no curiosity. He believes what the liars around him say and is too lazy to fact-check it. Then he regurgitates it as truth and gets angry when he’s contradicted, which is typical for a narcissist. He’s not the brightest bulb, but he’s sly and crafty and knows what gets his (diminishing) base riled up. Repeating the lies to the public and the press really is a stupid thing to do, though.
And there are zero consequences for his lying. A majority of his base will believe whatever he says, and that’s good enough for him.
I would maybe agree with that. But most people that are ‘sly and crafty’ are intelligent. Trump is dumb as a rock.
I do agree with this. However, I think his slyness comes from years of learning from his lawyers and handlers how to avoid litigation and how to get a crowd in a lather, not through any innate intelligence.
“Low cunning” is the term I’d use.
What I would use is not suitible for polite company.
And it would take me hours to type it out.
I think it’s a consequence of having always lived a life of privilege. Trump never had to learn to lie well because the people around him always pretended to believe him.
It’s like when a parent asks a four year old “Who broke the lamp?” A four year old will make up a story about a monkey coming into the room and breaking the lamp. And the parent will see this is an obvious lie and punish the four year old for both breaking the lamp and for telling a lie. And the four year old will learn two lessons; be careful around lamps and don’t tell lies that involve monkeys.
But when some servant in the Trump household asked four year old Donald “Who broke the lamp?” and little Donald said a monkey did it, the servant just said “Very well, sir, I will just clean up this mess and keep an eye out for monkeys in the future.” And Donald never felt the need to learn to lie better.
But this only explains why Trump lies so poorly. It doesn’t answer the question of whether he’s aware that what he’s saying is a lie.
This has long been my take on him. He simply says whatever he thinks will best serve his purpose at the moment.
It may contradict something he said a year ago. It may contradict something he said in the previous sentence. It may be wholly true. It may be wholly false. It may have some blend of objective truth in some respects and total fabrication in others. It may have a germ of truth that’s distorted or exaggerated so that it’s misleading. Whatever. It’s all the same to him, and he’s not the least big concerned about it.
Truth — as in, something which reflects reality — may or may not have value to him, depending on whether it helps him attain his goals of the moment (wealth, power, adulation, sex, &c&c&c).
Truthiness*, on the other hand, is usually of value since it’s crafted specifically to attain those goals.
* It was a minor gobsmack to learn that the concept has been around since 1824.
He does not know what truth is. Never had any idea his entire life. He is truely that broken.
The dozens of books that will try to analze this… man would be a pointless read. We know what he is.
I think it’s pretty simple: he just asks himself “does it serve my interests?” If yes, then it must be true.
I agree with and emphatically second the posts above that assert Trump has no identifiable relationship with what normally functional people regard as truth and objective reality. The words that come out of his mouth are chosen strictly for their estimated effectiveness in achieving whatever objective is in front of Trump at that very moment, and are evaluated on no other basis.
Nixon, to use another presidential example, told a lot of lies because it served his interests to do so. But with Nixon, I always figured he was aware that what he was saying were lies.
Reagan, on the other hand, said a lot of things that weren’t true. But with Reagan, I feel he believed the things he was saying were true.
I think he believes that the truth is what he wants it to be, that he can bully the universe into being what he prefers. Not in all things—there are corners of his mind where he knows certain truths can’t be ignored, and when he occasionally considers such things, he can panic.
I heard a pundit (I forget who) describe Trump as not terribly bright, but with a “feral cunning.” That seems like a bullseye to me.
The word has been around since 1824. But it used to just be another word for something being true.
Truthiness in the modern sense, as in something that sounds true even if it’s not true, was invented in 2005.
I tend to disagree. Feral cunning, to me, implies a wild animal that needs to outsmart other animals in order to survive. As I wrote above, I don’t feel Trump has ever felt that kind of pressure. He’s always had other people around him to ensure his needs are taken care of. Trump’s about as feral as a poodle.
