WASHINGTON — The newest occupant of the White House is a psychiatrist’s dream — a serial prevaricator who shuns the truth for his own version in an ego-driven desire for popular approval.
How else can one explain Donald Trump’s refusal to accept that he got the stuffing kicked out of him in the general election and won despite of it on the electoral vote? He appears to actually believe that widespread fraud was responsible for Hillary Clinton’s nearly 3 million vote supremacy in the popular balloting despite not a shred of evidence to back up his allegations. His last take on the “fraud” was as high as 5 million votes, which he contended were all against him.
The only way to explain that he doesn’t have the mandate his ego requires to sustain itself is to contend that he was the victim of a conspiracy so massive it would have taken almost a super-human effort to pull it off. Never mind. He is going to investigate it anyway at both a large cost to the taxpayers and, many critics think, voting rights.
All those who saw him as a salvation are going to get what they chose to ignore during his primary campaigning, a liar who has convinced himself that he alone knows the truth. He seems unabashedly capable of ignoring irrefutable evidence with impunity. It took him no time to claim the crowds at his inaugural events were larger than his predecessors despite photographic evidence clearly showing otherwise. But so what? The diehards apparently could care less. They would believe him if he was urinating on their legs and claimed it was raining.
Who in the world orders his official spokesman and others on the first Monday of the first week in office to back him up on the alleged inauguration numbers at the risk of turning the guy into a eunuch in front of a red meat press? And the answer is … someone who believes in “alternative facts.” What complete and utter nonsense.
A large winner in all this is apparently the estate of the late George Orwell and his “1984” publishers, who have seen a huge run on the book in the relatively few days since the old order changed giving way to the self-proclaimed most popular regime in history. Here’s a guy who on his first TV interview couldn’t stop talking about the cheering crowd during his CIA speech a week ago. One of the best ever, he called the speech. If you watched that performance, it was an embarrassment.
Penguin books reported it is readying a 75,000 reprinting of the classic novel written nearly 70 years ago about totalitarianism and whose leading character said that soon the party would be saying two and two equal five and everyone would believe it. Apparently, the sales of the book have increased by over 9,500 percent since Trump’s swearing in.
Disingenuousness in the White House is not an unusual occurrence. Every president for whatever reason — political, personal or otherwise — has not been afraid to mislead now and then. But the current example goes way beyond a white lie or two for national security reasons or in manipulating the legislative agenda.
Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina took Trump to task, urging him to back away from such tortured claims about voter fraud with no proof except to the contrary. What seems clear is that the new president considers himself highly charismatic and any challenge of this self-image is a conspiracy by the media and other enemies to delegitimize his election. It is rich in fodder for his tweeting. How does one spell narcissism?
Trumps authenticity has never been solid, and his lack of sensitivity to the truth beyond what he wants it to be and believes it to be, even when the facts prove him undeniably wrong, portend problems ahead, particularly added to his penchant for saying something outrageous and then denying he said it. Both characteristics make him untrustworthy at home and abroad. What is wrong beyond the usual craziness in this city is a clear indication that the man elected to run the country the next four years may be in need of some serious help.
Some critics suggest he might take a course at one of those CIA “black ops” sites he seems to want to resurrect where they do bad things to gain the truth.
Dan Thomasson is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service and a former vice president of Scripps Howard Newspapers. Readers may send him email at: thomassondan@aol.com.
