Watching a pathological liar give a speech is like having reality ripped up and casually tossed aside. You wonder for a moment if you are crazy. So, let me assure anyone who watched Donald last night… yes, he lied many, many times. A firehose of lies. Below are a few.
Those were the things I told myself as I nagged and wheedled and tried to convince him to take the idea of running for the White House seriously. I knew he was a liar and a master manipulator, along with the myriad less-than-sterling characteristics I had witnessed over the years, but I believed his positive qualities outweighed the downsides and perfection shouldn’t be the enemy of good. But here’s the ugly truth—a motive I share with deep and abiding regret and shame, and one only unearthed after much soul searching and reflection as I painted the walls in prison and stared at the ceiling from my bunk.
President Trump strode to the lectern wearing a dark-blue suit, a blue silk tie, and a flag lapel pin. Standing in front of a wall of American flags, he was flanked by Vice President Mike Pence and First Lady Melania Trump. It was still Election Night, though the clocks had long ago raced past midnight and it was now nearly 2:30 a.m. on November 4.
Election 2020 and the Truth
Then came the nine-year old argument: why-are-you-picking-on-me: “…taking boxes of documents and mostly clothing and other things to my home is something which President Obama has done. The Bushes have done. Jimmy Carter’s done. Ronald Reagan is done. Everybody’s done.” Nope. There is no evidence that previous presidents deliberately held on to any Presidential papers.
Biden won Georgia by 11,779 votes. Recorded on a phone call, Donald expressed a desire to “find 11,780 votes.” Last night Donald said, “Nobody found anything wrong with that perfect call until a book promotion tour many months later.” First, it was obviously not a “perfect” call. It is now being investigated in Georgia as possible obstruction of justice and an illegal attempt at altering election results. Second, there was no delay. The Washington Post broke the story of the call THE DAY AFTER IT HAPPENED. Every clear-thinking, patriotic American was aghast at the slimy way Donald tried to have the Georgia Secretary of State alter election results. Kamala Harris, then vice president-elect, called Trump’s comments a “bald-faced, bold abuse of power”.
Of course, Donald continued the Big Lie as he claimed that there were “millions of votes illegally stuffed into ballot boxes, and all caught on government cameras.” There is no evidence of “millions of votes illegally stuffed”. None. Hundreds? No. Dozens? Unlikely, but admittedly possible. For the ENTIRE country there was a tiny smattering of voter fraud JUST LIKE THERE IS EVERY ELECTION. For this election and all past elections, it’s about 0.027%. Some of this insignificant amounts were actually committed by Trump supporters! Indeed, William Barr (Attorney General at the time of the election), acknowledged there was definitely not sufficient fraud to have changed the outcome.
Desperate Donald is distorting reality to justify unethical and criminal behavior. MAGA will believe him, but not clear-thinking Americans making up most of the electorate.
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The real real truth about why I wanted Trump to be president was because I wanted the power that he would bring to me. I wanted to be able to crush my enemies and rule the world. I know it sounds crazy, but look at what Trump is doing now: running the world, into the ground, but still, he literally rules. Underneath all the layers of delusion and wishful thinking and willful ignorance and stupidity, I was like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, lusting after the power that would come from possessing the White House—“my precious”—and I was more than willing to lie, cheat, and bully to win. Trump was the only person I had ever encountered who I believed could actually pull off that feat, and I recognized early the raw talent and charisma and pure ruthless ambition to succeed he possessed.
I saw what others didn’t, what others thought was a joke, at their own peril, and that was my true motive. I knew Trump would do whatever was necessary to win. I just lacked the imagination and moral purpose to actually think about what that would mean for America, the world, for me, and for my family. Because here’s the thing: When you sell your soul, you do exactly that: sell your soul.
Cohen, Michael. Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump (pp. 90-91).
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The world was watching as the Big Lie was born.
“This is a fraud on the American public,” Trump said. “This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. “Frankly, we did win this election.”
What followed from Election Night was a two-month assault on the vote, in which Trump and his allies exhausted every avenue to overturn the will of the people—a sustained effort in which he was aided by Republicans and that led to an unthinkable attack on the nation’s very capital. But Trump, of course, had taken the first steps to this moment more than four years before, with accusations against his own party during the 2016 Iowa caucus and then the full-throated conspiracy theories about election fraud that he first unveiled in an otherwise routine Ohio rally that summer. He spent his entire term moving further down that path, brazenly lying without consequence, knowing that his supporters would follow him and his fellow Republicans would back him. He had steadfastly assaulted the pillars of government and its institutions, attacking their credibility, so when the moment came—when it was time for a lie bigger than an altered hurricane map, time for one about the central tenet of the nation’s democracy—enough of the public would believe him. Lemire, Jonathan. The Big Lie (pp. 119-120).
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The Big Truth: democracy is made up of millions of little truths, intimate and interlocking truths. Truths found in the votes cast by Americans in person or by mail. Truths found in the citizenry that voluntarily counts those votes and dutifully reports the results. Truths found in election officials who scrape together the means by which elections are held, public servants who create the voting precincts, buy the equipment to tally the votes, and manage the process of moving the votes along the line to be tallied and certified . . . so that they may be transparently confirmed and trusted. Truths found in this collaborative exercise of civic virtue are more obvious and verifiable than they have ever been in our history. The Big Truth is a variation of E Pluribus Unum—from many one. From millions of little truths we form a Big Truth, one we should celebrate, and almost always have before, but somehow now can’t, or that troubles us or feels less settled than it should. This book is about those little truths and The Big Truth. It is devoted to the people who make each little truth meaningful so that The Big Truth may flourish. Garrett, Major; Becker, David. The Big Truth: Upholding Democracy in the Age of “The Big Lie” (p. 66).
Robert Sells, Political Commentator, Writer, Author, is an ongoing contributor to Book Readers Heaven
Thank you Robert Sells!
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