The Transactional Nature of Donald Trump's Lies
It Will Take More Than Just Fact-Checking
How Many Lies Will It Take?
You and I cannot imagine a world where our constant lying is transparent to the whole world, yet that is the world in which Donald Trump lives. We would feel ashamed and disgraced to tell such bold-faced lies constantly. Donald Trump feels no such shame or disgrace.
But it may depend on one’s definition of “truth.” For human beings, truth is aligning ourselves to the basic facts that exist in reality as closely as possible. Truth is recognizing the underlying laws of science and the basic framework of reality and evidence. It helps to make sense of the world around us.
For Trump, “truth” is whatever works to win the moment.1 Therefore, a lie isn’t a moral issue but a means to an end—winning!
In his insightful book, The Strange Case of Donald Trump, Dan McAdams gives us a clue as to why Trump lies so easily, fluently, and transactionally all the time. McAdams, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University, explains Trump’s penchant for lying not just as a moral failing. McAdams explains Trump’s failure to reckon with the truth this way,
….he is the episodic man. Because he does not experience his life as a story, but rather as a series of combative moments.
In other words, Trump does not view his life as a human story with a past and future. There is only the present, the now. In Donald’s present, every event is a transaction that must be won. There are only winners and losers, and in his demented, narcissistic mind, he must be the winner every time at all costs. This allows Trump to jettison any tether to truth or reality as he uses these tools to craft a narrative that will give him a win. That is all that matters.
As the “episodic man,” Trump has no use for introspection, reflection, or reconciling with truth and reality. And, therefore, he has no conscience. Life is only a series of one-off events that he, by any means necessary, must win. Lying is simply a means to that end, and he uses it as consistently as a construction worker uses a hammer and a nail.
A larger question might be, why does Trump’s devoted base tolerate the constant gas-lighting and lying that he subjects them to? Kent G. Bailey, a professor emeritus of clinical psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University, offers this explanation that is congruent with McAdams. He has characterized Trump as an archetype2:
“Donald Trump is the prototypical, archetypal and testosterone-driven alpha male who rules by the sheer force of his personality, imposing physique, quick wit, mastery of repartee and almost hypnotic control over his gathering masses of adoring followers….our fearless leader against the pagan forces of progressiveness and political correctness…a quintessential warrior male of yore capable of vanquishing any and all opposition in his way.”
Archetypes enjoy extraordinary personal powers, and privileges. However, they are not quite persons or humans in the traditional sense of the word. Instead, they are idealized types like gods or superheroes. Standard rules of thinking and being do not bind gods and superheroes, nor do human rules of morality get in their way.
Trump’s devoted followers do not see him as a human, like all the millions around them. They see him as beyond human, not quite human, or just above human, and, therefore, not bound to human rules for truth-telling.
When you add to this archetype the evangelical view of Trump as “God’s chosen” vessel to vanquish the evil enemy within, the result is a potent and dangerous combination of devotion and cult-like behavior.
Therefore, lying for Trump and the Trumpublicans is a lifestyle and transactional tool, not just an aberrant mistake and certainly not a moral failing. They are functioning in a completely different world of archetypes, gods, and superheroes where the traditional morality of truth-telling doesn’t apply.
That is why Kamala Harris was so successful against Trump in their one and only debate. She attacked his perceived image of being “beyond human” and insulted him, disparaged his fake image as a superhero, and whittled him down to the size of a…regular human. The one thing Trump cannot tolerate is being unmasked as a regular human being. His responses were lame and timid as he stood before millions of views as the “emperor with no clothes.” That is the real reason he doesn’t want to debate Harris again. It would be his worst humiliation and humanization.
Based on the psychological analysis of how Trump’s base excuses his continual dishonest bloviating, we can understand why they tolerate it. But the bigger question is why the media and others (the judicial branch perhaps) responsible for safeguarding our democracy from this type of nefarious blabber allow it to go by with little or no thorough deconstruction of his lies. That is even more amazing than the blind acquiescence of Trump’s followers.
Unfortunately, the Trump world believes Donald’s lies. Whatever word he utters, they soak up as if it were gospel truth. So, in Trump’s world, here is a partial list of the foolish, untrue, ridiculous, and insane things they believe despite all evidence to the contrary. And every one of these statements can be easily disproven through simple fact-checking, but remember; these are not lies to Trumpublicans because they are coming from someone a bit more than just human…he is an archetype.
Haitians are stealing and eating dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio
It is unconstitutional to replace Biden with Harris
Schools are sending children for gender-affirming surgeries without their parent’s knowledge
Trump says he “won” the debate against Harris, so there was no need for a second one
Kamala Harris “all of a sudden” made a “turn” and “became a Black person.”
“The Congo” has deliberately emptied prisons to somehow get its criminals to come to the United States as migrants
Harris is planning on reinstating the military draft
The economy is the worst it has been ever
Voting by non-citizens is a wide-spread occurrence
Cities are being taken over by migrants
There is no identity verification for overseas and military voters
Unemployment is at an all-time high
California’s vote count is dishonest
Hydrogen cars explode like the Hindenburg
Harris will raise social security taxes to give money to illegal immigrants
FEMA doesn’t have enough money to cover disaster costs because Harris gave money to help immigrants
Trump won Minnesota in 2020
Trump’s Jan. 6 speech on the Ellipse was as big as Martin Luther King’s March on Washington
Democrats support “abortion after birth”
Harris wants to force doctors to give castration drugs to young children
Biden and Harris have orchestrated Trump’s legal indictments
FEMA is only giving aid to counties in North Carolina that are Democratic
Only Donald Trump can prevent World War III
Harris wants to legalize fentanyl
Trump claims he had the “best economy” and Biden had the “worst inflation” ever
The United States is a “garbage-can”
Lower insulin costs were the result of Trump’s, not Biden’s administration
If Trump loses the 2024 election it is because it was rigged and stolen
Women will be happy, confident and no longer needing abortions
illegal immigrants had taken “110%” of all the jobs created during the Biden presidency
Sadly, this list only scratches the surface.
Journalists have been trained to avoid calling a particular candidate a “liar.” They hesitate to use the L word. They might say a politician was misstating facts or making inaccurate claims but would never make the leap of imputing motive.
Historically, the media was considered balanced when different sides in a campaign were presented with equal weight and respect. Deciding which side was right, more accurate, or more worthy was left to the news consumer or voter. Trump has changed that journalistic norm, as he has just about every other norm in the public sphere.
Many media outlets do, in fact, engage in fact-checking and have been for many years. True to form, Trump’s sycophants push back that such fact-checking is polarizing. Trump-world excoriated the ABC debate moderators for daring to fact-check Trump timidly during the debate. For them, the lies are never to be questioned or fact-checked because they are uttered by the archetypical alpha male, Donald Trump.
The media and the public, in general, will need to up their game of fact-checking against the egregious lies being told by the Trump campaign and Trump himself in these closing days.
But more than fact-checking is required.
Trump needs to be exposed not just for his lies but also for the transactional nature of lying. That means he needs to be humanized, especially to those still trying to decide between Harris and Trump. Only by being brought down to the level of a human being can the normal standard of truth and lies be applied.
That is why the media must and should report on Trump’s mental descent, disorientation, and deterioration, just as they did for Biden. Remember that? It was all we heard about for weeks while Trump went on his merry, lying-laden, yellow-brick road fiction toward nonsense and mental decline.
Finally, here is the biggest irony: the people who want the Ten Commandments, including the admonition not to lie, posted in public spaces have propagated the biggest whoppers in modern political history. Oh, the hypocrisy of it all!
Heed your “sacred” admonition, my Trumpublican friends. But, the Ten Commandments are only meant for humans, right?
McAdams, Dan P.. The Strange Case of Donald J. Trump: A Psychological Reckoning (p. 97). Oxford University Press.
https://www.wnd.com/2016/11/donald-trump-the-new-warrior-king/#TbY0PxU9gT6ThlfY.99