Why does Trump lie? And why do hitherto honorable people pretend that he's telling the truth?
Oh. And before anyone resorts to the corollary lie about Mexico paying for the wall through the recently-concluded trade deal, that wasn't what Mr. Trump was talking about.
Read it and weep. Listen, too. Of course, it's nothing you yourself haven't heard him say over and over in venue after venue. But now, he denies ever having said it at all- and gets away with it, at least among his supporters and in the "conservative" press. Even during his campaign, making a false or outrageous statement in public and often on television and then denying that he ever had said such a thing was a standard operating procedure for the man. It was one of the most obvious and compelling elements of his strategy during the Republican debates, other than interrupting and talking over the other candidates, telling fresh lies, and in general acting like an ill-behaved eighth grader.
His base never noticed. Most conservatives did- but promptly forgot it when he clinched the nomination, became the Republican alternative to Hillary Clinton, and became the only practical means to stop her at any moral cost.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. The worst thing this president has done is not blurting out national secrets to unfriendly diplomats. It's not making America the laughingstock of the world on a daily basis. It's not building his brand on hatred and division at a time when we need to heal our divisions perhaps as much as at any time since the Civil War. It's not just transforming the party of Lincoln and Reagan into a modern version of the Know-Nothings. It's not pandering to the sickest and most vile elements of the American body politic, making them the cornerstone of his base, turning them into the new face of "conservativism" in America, and destroying the Republican party as a credible alternative to the Democrats.
It's not lying about our own allies and their support of NATO while siding with the interests of our nation's enemies over and against those of our own. It's not the sickening role model he provides for our children. It's not even lying to the American people. Other presidents have done that, too- though none with his frequency, shamelessness, and to most of the American right, impunity.
It's the degree to which he's corrupted so many good and reasonable people into becoming apologists for things which three years ago would have made them vomit, turning principled advocates of free trade into protectionists and conscientious defenders of America's unique and vital role in leading the world in at least making a gesture toward a civilized world order, much as the British Empire did before us, into craven isolationists.
It's the way in which so many people I once admired have turned into defenders of all the lies and hate and ugliness while pretending, to themselves and to everyone else, that they aren't compromising themselves by doing so.
Meanwhile, here's an interesting op-ed piece by Neil Steinberg of one of my hometown papers, the Chicago Sun-Times. It addresses the issue of why it is that Donald Trump lies so much- and why so many good people are so eager to pretend that he's telling the truth.
He lies time after time, day after day, even when he doesn't have to. One study during the primaries claimed that, on average, he told one lie every five minutes. And yet, his supporters not only believe- or pretend to believe- every fresh-told falsehood, but have the chutzpah (or blindness) to claim that it's a sign of anti-Trump bias on the part of the media that his statements are constantly being fact-checked!
During his 2018 State of the Union address, he beat that pace, making one misleading or downright false statement every 4.5 minutes.
These lies are invariably exposed and exposed quickly. He's constantly fact-checked, not because the media are looking to twist his words (though they often do- unnecessarily, only providing his supporters with grounds for implausibly claiming that therefore the far greater percentage of the time when his lies are exposed, the media must also be lying), but rather because, when Donald John Trump opens his mouth, it's just about a coin toss as to whether what comes out is the truth or some often absurd, self-justifying fiction.
It's not as if any objective person doubts that. He himself famously remarked during the campaign for the Republican nomination in 2016 that if he committed cold-blooded murder on Fifth Avenue in New York in broad daylight, he wouldn't lose any votes.
It's a measure of how true that was that so few of his supporters were offended by it. I certainly would have objected to being called, in effect, a mindless sheep for supporting a candidate- by the candidate himself.
The fact of the matter is that Donald Trump isn't concerned with truth or falsity. It's all about his ego, and whatever serves his needs at the moment. He will say one thing, and ten minutes later say another, with no sense of inconsistency because in both cases it will be what will serve the greater glory and benefit of Donald Trump. That is his only deeply- held value or loyalty. And that being the case, why let an irrelevancy like the truth get in his way?
And the same is true of many of his supporters. The conspiracy theorists (of whom the president, of course, has always been one), the espouser of crackpot theories (ditto), those just informed enough to reach illogical and ridiculous conclusions, and those for whom prejudice in any case always trumps the facts recognized Donald Trump early on as one of their own, and he recognized the same thing in them. They have formed a symbiotic relationship: he says the things which support and validate their prejudices and oddball beliefs, no matter how absurd, and they, in turn, believe (or pretend to believe, or convince themselves that they believe) whatever he says, no matter how absurd.
Trump lies, first, because he can- his supporters will believe anything he says, and few of those who won't would ever consider voting for him anyway- and because by endorsing the delusions and prejudices of his supporters, he can ensure their loyalty. It's them and him against the world.
His supporters accept his lies because it enables him to continue to validate the lies they hold most dear.
But as I said earlier, the really tragic thing about Trump is that so many of his current supporters are not conspiracy theorists, are not extremists, and have always in the past been thoughtful, reasonable, principled folk who are profoundly concerned with the truth. But they, in lockstep, seem also to be marching to the offbeat beat of the Trump tattoo.
Fill in the name of a reputable conservative journalist or politician here.
There are exceptions, of course. I've always been a fan of George Will, whose intelligence, wit and good judgment and character (he is not only a Cubs fan but one who grew up in a part of downstate Illinois where people are often misguided enough to give their allegiance to a team named after a certain kind of ruddy pigeon) are impeccable. And his intellectual integrity- about which there has never been much doubt- has passed the acid test in his continuing determination to point out that no matter how desperately his fellow conservatives may deny it, not only is the emperor not wearing any clothes but that his nudity is not a pretty sight,
Bill Buckley hung the label "narcissist" on Trump long before all those (mostly liberal) psychologists and psychiatrists in the media did. "Oh?," your average conservative will reply, "I didn't realize that you had a degree in psychology and were a licensed therapist who had personally interviewed Mr. Trump." Of course, that rejoinder is rhetorical. At least the smartest of them know very well that Trump is a narcissist- it's kind of hard to miss, if you're paying any attention at all- and that he is also dangerously immature, that he has no filters, that he is an ignoramus, by nature a bully- and a pathological liar to boot. These things are blatantly obvious if you're paying attention at all. But he's their narcissistic, juvenile, indiscrete, constantly lying bully, and so they're going to protect him.
He is, as they see it, their ticket to getting good legislation passed and bad legislation stopped. He is an instrument in accomplishing the admittedly worthy objective of thwarting the increasingly radical Left.
But they fail to realize that the price isn't just their own ethical and intellectual integrity. It goes beyond that.
Before I even draw this analogy, I want to make it plain that I understand completely that Donald Trump is not Hitler, as frequently and suggested by my fellow Trump critics. As I've said before, there is not a doubt in my mind that, if he could get away with it, he would be a Mussolini (fascinating how the allegedly liberty-loving critics of Leftist statism completely fail to see not only that Donald Trump is at heart an authoritarian, but that it's his authoritarianism that is his biggest appeal to his core). Thank God for our system of checks and balances. But I have never suspected Mr. Trump of having any ambition to set up death camps for anybody, or in singling out groups for abusive rhetoric let alone more serious mistreatment for any reason other than momentary personal advantage. But even if this analogy is extreme, there is an important point to be made by examining it.
The Weimar Republic, which followed the fall of the Kaiser at the end of World War I, was a mess in about every way a country could be a mess. Both inflation and unemployment were rampant. So were sexual promiscuity, about every kind of ethical breakdown and general social decay. Germany was in big trouble, and there were plenty of intelligent folks who realized it. The point was hard to miss.
Paul Althaus was a German Lutheran theologian of some stature. He was a brilliant man. Perhaps, had things turned out otherwise, he would be much better known than he is today, spoken of in the same breath as Karl Barth of Paul Tillich. But despite his distaste for a crude, boorish, bigoted, fanatical Austrian immigrant named Hitler, whom he privately regarded as a clown, Althaus realized that the man with the funny little mustache had a following among disaffected working-class Germans who otherwise might have voted Socialist. In coalition with the more conservative elements of German society who shared his aversion to the Communists and his nationalism, he just might be a weapon that reasonable, sensible, conservative folk like Paul Althaus could use to save Germany. Reluctantly and with a bit of eye-ball rolling, Althaus became a supporter of Hitler, believing with every neuron in his brain that Hitler could be controlled and would never actually act on his anti-Semitism or the other more extreme elements of his program- especially if he was surrounded by people like Paul Althaus who could control him. And Althaus was not alone by any means in making that mistake.
And a mistake, of course, it was. I did a paper on Althaus during my last year in seminary. There is something profoundly tragic, even pathetic, about his writings during the Hitler era, the more so as time went on. One senses a desperate effort to somehow say something in belated protest against the monster he and others like him had helped to create,, to object, to condemn what was going on all around him and which he knew that he himself had helped enable. If you read between the lines, it's hard to miss. But he couldn't come out and say what it seems clear that he so badly wanted and needed to say. He would be sticking his head into the noose- and too late, he realized his mistake. He had decided to ride the tiger, and the problem was that while it might be easy to get on, getting off again was apt to get one eaten.
The war ended. Hermann Sasse identified Althaus to the Allies as a Hitler collaborator in need of de-Nazification. While he wrote books on Luther and both his theology and ethics which are still widely read, his career was in tatters and his life ruined. He would never achieve the reputation and fame he might have if he hadn't tried to ride that tiger with the funny little mustache.
When I read my paper, we had an unexpected visitor to the class. Eva Leo was Wartburg Seminary's artist-in-residence, a world-famous worker in bronze whose murals adorned the wall of the seminary refectory and several of the doors of the buildings in which classes were held.
Her husband had been a professor of New Testament and theological German at WTS, During the war, he had been active in the Confessing Church, the anti-Nazi wing of German Protestantism. He had been arrested and briefly sent to a concentration camp. And then- unbelievably, almost miraculously (though I have an intuitive hunch as to how it might have come about)- he was released, and he and his wife were allowed to leave the country!
They settled first in Pittsburgh, and then in Dubuque, where he joined the Wartburg Seminary faculty. He taught there until his death, at which point Eva took over his German classes for a while.
Mrs. Leo had a particular interest in Paul Althaus. She and her husband had been his friends. And she was vehement in insisting that no matter what influence he might have had in the Nazi government and whatever things he might have been intimidated into saying, Paul Althaus was never a Nazi.
The Leos knew that. Doubtless so did many others who knew Althaus well. But it did him little good. He had done and said things which spoke too loudly against him for character references even from people of impeccable credentials to do him much good before the bar of history.
Conservative politicians and journalists seem to think that once Donald Trump leaves office, things will go back to the way they were before. But they won't. They fail to see that having invited the Trump base into the party, it isn't going to leave. It is not they, but Trump's base, who now define the Republican party, and will continue to do so for decades.
The stink of nativism, authoritarianism, and government by the corrupt, the malicious, and the ill-informed will not go away just because Donald Trump does. It will linger for a generation; whether conservatives want to admit it to themselves or not, the Republican party is now the Know-Nothing party. And when Mr. Trump is gone, it will be too late for all those honorable conservative journalists and politicians to reclaim their integrity. Nobody will take them seriously anymore- not the Trumpified Republicans to whom they will try to talk sense, nor the American people generally, who will be unable to forget what they had said and written during the Trump years.
At this point, there is only one hope for the salvation of the Republican party and the conservative movement: for Mr. Trump to be denied re-nomination. It needn't be by a centrist who runs against him; in fact, it would be far better if it were not. If, say, Ted Cruz had the stomach for it, he would be the perfect candidate. He's a genuine conservative; Mr. Trump plays one on TV, mostly using the movement for his own greater personal glory and willing to abandon it in a heartbeat if it would suit his personal agenda. Sen. Cruz is an honorable man, an intelligent man, and a man of conviction. Donald Trump is none of those things.
A Cruz insurgency would pose no risk of the right yielding its dominance in the GOP. Real conservatives ought to be clamoring for it, and Sen. Cruz should be making the first moves right now. But even Ted Cruz, it seems, has become a sycophant, just like the others. A challenge to Trump from the right simply isn't going to happen, and while there's a strong chance that candidates will challenge him in the primaries from the center and perhaps even from the left (or from the ranks of the libertarians, who for most purposes might as well be the left), whoever it is will be annihilated.
The Republican party is Donald Trump's now. His stamp is on it, and both the party and the hitherto honorable people who have set aside their good judgment to support things which would have turned their stomachs three years ago carry his brand on their foreheads. They simply will never be able to claim to be what they were before Donald Trump.
It's not quite too late. A rebellion from the right and the recapture of their own souls by America's conservative columnists and politicians could still turn it all around. But the clock is running, and barring a palace coup in 2020 it soon will be too late. Even if he's defeated at the polls in 2020, only by ruthlessly purging the very faction now in charge of the Republican party itself will that party ever be able to stop being the Know-Nothings and become the Republicans again. Only thus will it be able to reclaim its heritage. And it's not going to happen.
Not all Germans were Dietrich Bonhoeffer or Klaus von Stauffenberg- or Paul Leo. Not all conservatives are George Will or Jeff Flake or Ben Sasse. There is a lesson here, but I don't think most conservatives will learn it in time. And so, for the foreseeable future, the two great American political parties will be the Democrats and the Know-Nothings.
Why does Trump lie? Because doing so supports his own, secretly fragile ego, because he can, and because he knows that he won't be held accountable by people whose often irrational prejudices he validates or whose short-term political objectives he enables.
Why does his core believe his lies? Because the lies he tells are the lies they want to believe, and the facts don't matter to them.
Why do the nation's conservative journalists and politicians pretend to believe his lies, and even repeat them? Because he's momentarily useful to them in thwarting the left, because they lack the courage to do what their hearts must surely tell them to do- and because they have not yet learned, as Althaus did, that while getting onto the back of the tiger may be easy, getting off again is another matter entirely.
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