President Donald Trump tells two kinds of lies. One kind is big and grandiose – for instance, that 3 to 5 million “illegals” voted against him in last year’s election, or that his inauguration was the most heavily attended in history.
This sort of untruth is, on the one hand, laugh-out-loud absurd. But it’s also profoundly dangerous. As Adolf Hitler’s observed:
“…In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.”
Then there are the small lies, the sort that furrow the brow because the potential gains are either nonexistent or vanishingly minute.
In a New York Times interview Wednesday, Trump delivered a lie of this latter sort:
“[Maryland Democratic Representative] Elijah Cummings was in my office and he said, ‘You will go down as one of the great presidents in the history of our country.’
“And then he went out and I watched him on television yesterday and I said, ‘Was that the same man?'”
Trump seemed to like the anecdote so much that he repeated it almost verbatim immediately after the first telling.
Rep. Cummings remembered things a bit differently:
“During my meeting with the president and on several occasions since then, I have said repeatedly that he could be a great president if … if … he takes steps to truly represent all Americans rather than continuing on the divisive and harmful path he is currently on.”
This isn’t the first time Trump has misrepresented Cummings’ words. Back in February, Trump claimed:
“I actually thought I had a meeting with Congressman Cummings, and he was all excited. And then he said, ‘Well, I can’t move, it might be bad for me politically. I can’t have that meeting.'”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztf9duDfXu8
Cummings later explained that Trump had completely invented this exchange.
“I have no idea why President Trump would make up a story about me like he did today. Of course, Senator Schumer never told me to skip a meeting with the President.”
These small lies are no less dangerous than the big, obvious lies. Like big lies, they create doubt among the voting public and put the Left in a reactive position. We’re forced to trundle along behind Trump, trying to separate the true from the false. And small lies are harder to catch than big ones, since they are both less important (they rarely threaten lives or livelihoods) and more numerous.
Even for the most energetic lovers of truth, the high volume of small lies coming out of the Trump White House can be both exhausting and distracting.
Where does this end? Trump is hardly the first president to lie. But most lie to protect themselves or the nation from real or imagined enemies.
What makes Trump unique is the frequency and the purpose of his lies. He lies constantly, and does so with the aplomb of an autocrat. And his primary goal is not national security or even self-preservation, but – as this week’s episode with Cummings illustrates – personal aggrandizement.
Some generous soul might suggest that Trump wasn’t lying, that in fact he really believed Cummings said he’d go down as one of America’s greatest presidents. But if that’s the case, it means Trump is not only wrong but also so enthralled by his own myth that he believes his own nonsense.
Featured image via YouTube video.
