By John Torgrimson
Lanesboro, Minn.
As of April 3, 2020, President Donald Trump reached the unenviable milestone of telling 18,000 lies during his presidency. That’s according to the Washington Post, who has been counting presidential lies since 2007. It took Trump 1,170 days to reach this milestone, an average of 15 false utterances per day. It was reported that 20% of the lies came via Twitter.
I think it is safe to say that Trump is a mythomaniac. Merriam Webster dictionary defines mythomania as an excessive or abnormal propensity for lying and exaggerating. From the Greek mythos meaning myth and from the Latin mania meaning insanity marked by uncontrolled emotion or excitement.
I imagine the count started when Trump lied about the size of the audience at his inauguration. One of his latest lies, which happened after April 3, was when he repeated a falsehood that the 75 year old peace activist pushed by cops and injured during Buffalo’s recent protest was possibly an Antifa provocateur.
According to the Post, Trump has lied 197 times about his tax cut being the biggest ever; 291 times that the economy is the best in history; and 350 times about the COVID pandemic.
We have all lied at one time or another, but the president makes telling untruths a part of his persona as a leader, often asking cabinet members and other sycophants to back up his ridiculous claims. Many of Trump’s lies reflect insecurity as a person, as if an adolescent is trapped inside a 74 year old body.
Psychologists say that if a lie is said often enough it represents the “illusion of truth.” They refer to it as the Big Lie.
“Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes a truth,” was reportedly said by Joseph Goebbels, propaganda minister for the Third Reich.
I am willing to bet that Trump will make 20,000 lies by the time he leaves office in January. Perhaps by then, we will have a president who will be honest with the American people.
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