Donald Trump is probably the most casually dishonest serious candidate for president that this country has ever seen. He lies so easily, so shamelessly, and so regularly that media outlets have largely given up trying to factcheck his more, er, problematic assertions.
Politifact, a site that exposes politicians’ lies, awarded their Lie of the Year prize last year to “the campaign misstatements of Donald Trump.” There were so many they couldn’t pick just one.
Trump is worse than a mere fibber; as more than a few observers have noted of late, he’s also a master gaslighter, as are the political operatives closest to him. Gaslighting is a favorite tactic of abusers who’ve mastered the art of lying so baldly that their victims are led to doubt what they’ve seen and experienced, and begin to think they’re literally going mad.
Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski responded to reporter Michelle Fields’ claim that he had assaulted her at a Trump event by declaring her “delusional” — a favorite ploy of gaslighters everywhere — even though, as footage of the event now conclusively shows, he did in fact grab her and pull her away from Trump, just as she said he had. Lewandowski’s employer, whose own story on the assault has undergone a number of mutations, is now accusing her of changing her story, which has been consistent from the start. Add to this a heaping helping of old-fashioned misogynistic victim-blaming, and you’ve got a nasty smear campaign going.
But Trump’s latest claim about the Lewandowski incident is so over-the-top ludicrous that it transcends mere gaslighting. During a CNN town hall last night, Trump tried to convince the world that Lewandowski’s assault was perfectly justified because the pen she was holding could just maybe have been, you know, some sort of James Bond style pen-bomb.
“She had a pen in her hand,” he declared, “which Secret Service is not liking because they don’t know what it is, whether it’s a little bomb.”
Never mind that there was a Secret Service agent right there, and he didn’t deem Fields to be enough of a threat to intervene.
Oh, and never mind that A PEN BOMB!!? YOU CAN’T BE FREAKING SERIOUS.
And that’s a bit of a clue as to what is going on here. Trump can’t possibly be serious. The pen-bomb claim is almost certainly a bad-faith attempt to derail the discussion and to draw public attention away from the surveillance video showing Lewandowski grabbing Fields.
This is what trolls do. Trump is pulling the same sort of bad-faith nonsense that anti-Semitic trolls do when they declare that they can’t possibly be anti-Semitic because Arabs are Semites too; when a certain far-right fantasy author declares that he can’t possibly be a white supremacist because he has a bit of American Indian blood in his genes, a fact that he discovered only recently and which he gleefully trots out every time he’s accused of racism.
The trouble is that these tactics, however transparent they are to most observers, work. As David Marcus notes in The Federalist, Trump’s energetic gaslighting has managed to distract the media from the real issues and shroud the Lewandowski incident in doubt.
Now that Lewandowski has been arrested and video shows that his account is patently false, Trump is lowering the lights. Well, he says, she touched me too, can I get her charged? He says, well, how do we know she didn’t already have those bruises (which she photographed the next day). As the lights dim, those most tragic figures, cable news anchors, fall into his frothing sea of who knows what the hell happened?
And when those claims began to wear thin, Trump started talking about pen-bombs.
Donald Trump is a troll. He’s been trolling us all from day one of his campaign.
So it’s no wonder that the Anime Nazis have embraced Trump so enthusiastically. It isn’t just his racism that’s appealing to them, or his not-so-subtle encouragement of physical violence against protesters, more than a little bit reminiscent of Nazi electoral thuggery.
It’s because he’s one of them, a born troll.
I half expect Trump himself to take up the joke slogan of his trolly followers and promise voters that he will make anime real. After all, that’s a claim no more absurd than Trump’s contention that he will build a wall on our southern border and make Mexico pay for it.
Like most successful trolls — paging Milo Yiannopoulos — Trump has attracted a rabid following of trolls happy to troll and smear on his behalf. However ridiculous their memes get, their support for Trump is sincere, and their attacks still sting.
And that’s the problem with trolls. Their ironic stances have a tendency to calcify into sincerely held beliefs. Cartoon fascism becomes real hatred. Donald Trump the media-trolling buffoon becomes Donald Trump the dangerous demagogue. Some of his more over-the-top pronouncements may be mostly hot air, but his racism and misogyny are real. And to those who bear the brunt of Trump’s (and his followers’) attacks, a smear is a smear, even if the smearer knows he’s spouting bullshit.
But trolls can’t bend reality completely to their liking. Lewandowski’s attempts to smear Fields as an attention-hungry confabulator came up against the hard reality of the surveillance tapes. We need to keep calling out the endless lies. Trump’s fans may believe the lies — or they may find it convenient to pretend that they do — but I don’t think most Americans are quite as gullible as Trump and his troll buddies think they are.
The Republicans have been eagerly embracing gaping assholism as a platform policy for years. Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Louis Gohmert, Ann Coulter. Every once in a while, one of them finally shits on the powers that be and gets punted, but never far and never for long.
Hell, in the question of which is worse, Trump or Cruz, Cruz announced Frank Gaffney as his foreign policy advisor. This is the guy who essentially started the “kick out the muslims” policy that Trump adopted.
We have always been at war with Eastasia.
This election cycle is really tanking my opinion of the average American. I mean, I already *despised* Republicans, but between the whole Trump thing and the racist/sexist assholes who for some reason support Bernie Sanders, it’s really opening my eyes to just how many truly loathesome people there are down south. And I’ve tried to be open-minded about things, but I cannot for the life of my figure out why anyone who isn’t either an idiot or a proud bigot would support Donald fucking Trump.
In fact, with all the nationalist movements gaining steam in Europe, the last year’s been tanking my opinion of humanity in general. I’m not sure if it’s getting worse or I’m just getting more aware of it.
@ColeYote
I’m pretty confident it’s happening because of the economic crisis. Pretty generally extremist movements of whatever kind gather strength when people are upset with the status quo; if they’re happy with the status quo then they look on any attempt to change it with suspicion. This cuts both ways, fortunately, and empowers banking reform proponents and such. They haven’t won as much as we’d like, but in 2006 it was a dead issue and now there’s actual fighting over it even though the systemic issues were around back then.
It’s looking hopeful that we’ll ride this out and not have a series of military coups or facist uprisings and instead secure long-term improvements, but the next few years will probably be pretty bad.
Trump is king of the trolls. No doubt about it.
And no amount of evidence or reality will shake his followers faith in his ability to sell snake oil. Even though his, Trump Original Guaranteed Snake Oil, venture actually collapsed sometime in the mid 1990s.
Buttercup Q. Skullpants wins the gold star for narrowly-avoiding-spraying-my-coffee-all-over-my-screen-die-laughing type comment. Again.
You have a gift, my friend 🙂
@Miss Andry
That target in particular really bothers me. Why single her out? It’s not like she makes any of the decisions they blame on her.
I’m this weird mixture of surprised and not surprised that she was fired. On the one hand, you’d think they would expect a lot of backlash. On the other hand, they probably hoped since most people hadn’t heard of her they wouldn’t hear she was terminated, and they probably don’t enjoy having this attention aimed at one of their employees.
Now, their excuse may actually be valid. They say she had a second job and everyone in the games industry has to sign non-compete agreements, so depending on what that other job was, it might actually be the reason for letting her go and not just a convenient excuse.
@leftwingfox: I really wish you were kidding about that news. Now it feels like the GOP race is a contest to see who can be the most gleefully Islamophobic.
@Miss Andry: Jesus H. Christ.
Short fingered vulgarian describes D-Trump perfectly. Donald Trump doesn’t care about the presidency, he just wants to show up to auditoriums of cheering people who applaud when he talks.
Any man who wants to outlaw abortion and punish women who have one should change his name (back) to Drumpf.
And if he’d rather not do that, then he should STFU about abortion rights. He IS a serial adulterer, after all.
Not a good day. Not a good week, honestly. Today tho… the internet’s just knocking me around. First: ‘Why was he hanging around with his abuser, huh?’ Then: ‘She’s a pedophile, cos I said so and can’t read.’ And now, both: ‘I didn’t attack her, but if I did, it’s cos she had a magical fantasy bomb’ and ‘you have to punish people who get abortions’. Ughhhhhhhh!!1!!
I’m sure y’all do, but… ever just get real tired? Not physically sleepy, but tired? Like I just wanna play some obscure songlets on YouTube full blast and pretend that the internet (or people in general?) used to be better a few years ago. Maybe then, they can be better again (Trump. Irony)
Anyway, 1st post. Won’t post often. Fucking comments policy is gonna destroy me. SJWs yadda yadda, censorship yadda yadda, I’m not that good a person yadda yadda
If you’re going to outlaw abortion, then there need to be legal consequences to getting an abortion – in other words, yes, women seeking abortions would be facing punishment.
That’s a REALLY FUCKING GOOD REASON NOT TO BAN ABORTION.
I mean, apart from all the others.
In related news, a 15-year-old protestor at a Trump rally was groped, then pepper-sprayed when she called the offender out.
Unsurprisingly, the attending Drumpfians cheered at her getting maced, and called her names.
David, I think you have a significant typo in this. at one point you mention “Lewandowski’s employer” and I THINK you mean “Fields’s employer.”
Update from the New York Times on Mr. Drumpf’s principled stand:
I don’t want to see women punished for getting abortions.
And it seems that even most male supremacists agree with me. Why? In my opinion, it’s because they know that many women who get abortions already have kids. Who’s going to take care of the kids if Mom’s in prison? Not the male supremacist dad!
Like a lot of guys, even those on the left, Mr. Drumpf doesn’t bother thinking through his ideas about women because women don’t count at all. These guys–and I’m including guys on the left–are often remarkably, stunningly ignorant about issues that (in their minds) pertain only to women. I think that Mr. Drumpf blurted out the first thing that came to his mind. Oops!
Ok, that’s kind of funny that I’m seeing a Hobby Lobby ad on this article.
Kat: Honestly, I don’t want women to be punished either, but at the same time, if you truly believe abortion is murder, why wouldn’t you prosecute the person who hired the hitman?
It’s part of the whole hypocrisy of the anti-abortion movement. It’s part patriarchal, since they deny women have any agency, so punish the doctors and play up the idea of evil for-profit abortionists preying on vulnerable women. It’s part practical, because those in power and privilege have always been able to get an abortion elsewhere; they can take the trip across the border to get one, or bribe the doctor to get them the right pill. Plenty of anti-abortion women get abortions for the “right” reasons, unlike all those “other” women.
But yeah, Drumpf scares the party because he doesn’t bother with the thin layer of justification over the bottomless well of horror beneath the Republican platform.
Biot: I wish I were joking… things are fucking grim right now.
My comments about lots of men not paying attention to so-called women’s issues need clarification.
Many men don’t bother thinking much about abortion. When called upon to give an opinion, they might, like Mr. Drumpf, blurt out something stupid.
And if they’ve bothered to think about abortion–or have had to think about abortion, even male supremacists (knowing which side their bread is buttered on) often oppose having the woman punished. After all, who would look after the kids while Mom’s in prison!
Maybe, but it’s pretty much 100% likely that she was doing something that wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow under other circumstances, and either a) GG found out about it and hounded Nintendo about it until they capitulated or b) GG hounded Nintendo until they capitulated and themselves went looking for an excuse to fire her.
“Rule of law” types (you know, the sort of people who think if black people don’t want to be in prison they just shouldn’t commit crimes, that sort of stuff) ignore the basic truth that there are a lot of rules out there and none of us follow every one to the letter at all times. Meaning that, when someone goes out looking for a legal reason to punish a woman or minority, it’s almost always possible to find one.
Sacha Baron Cohen, Stephen Colbert, Alan sokal, the Czech dude who did Entropa…. I knew there are terrible trolls, but they’re nowhere near as memorable as the great ones. It’s a tactic, not a character flaw. Trump is no worse than Cruz, and that dude is earnest.
Gah, localization fights are one of the things that makes anime and Japanese game fandom really annoying.
The short version is that just literally translating a story as close to accurately as possible can go incredibly horribly awry. Lots of implications and double meanings are lost. Most basically, localization replaces wordplay in the original with roughly analogous wordplay in English and that’s pretty much uncontroversial. The more generally controversial aspect is actively changing things in an attempt to make the story carry the same general impression; it was set in Japan to seem familiar to a Japanese audience and fit comfortably within Japanese cultural norms, so the translators opt to rewrite it to be set in America and fit comfortably within American cultural norms. Which can mean erasing cultural references or censoring suggestive content involving underage characters.
Even the censored Fire Emblem Awakening is to the point where I can see why people are uncomfortable. And Fates, well, I have completed my first playthrough on the Conquest path and discovered that Azura can marry her long-lost half-brothers. And it does not occasion comment. So I kind of don’t really want to find out what they cut. And trying to get someone fired because they’re mad about too much censorship by accusing her of supporting pedophilia is the most hypocritical thing I have ever seen in my entire life.
Overall, the trend is actually having less extreme alterations compared to the infamous incident where Atlus USA made Trauma Center set in the US and then had to scramble to retcon things when a sequel actually set in the US to begin with came out. Though Fire Emblem hasn’t changed as much as a casual inspection might make it seem; the games were traditionally set in NotEurope and Hoshido being modeled off Japan is new for the series.
Well, since Trump decided to do a 180 in a couple of hours of posturing, he decided that the perfect thing to say is this: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/trump-tells-a-bewildered-matthews-he-cant-rule-out-using-nukes-in-europe/
2016, I am disappoint.
@Policy of Madness – I hope you’re right, but I think it’s important to feel the fear of a Trump or a Cruz presidency. I’m putting some serious thought into taking a long vacation around election time and campaigning in a key state (alas, not my own – that would have been good). I’m drafting a letter to see if I can take my son out of school for this extra time to go on campaign.
Didn’t Mythbusters try that pen bomb and, using an explosive so powerful, they needed approval from the government and weren’t allowed to say what exactly it was on TV, found that the only way it could do anything more than blow a hole in one person was if they used an oversized novelty pen about three feet long? I mean, I know that Mythbusters isn’t as rigorous as scientific journals, but still. The media should be telling him that the pen bomb is IMPOSSIBLE.
I’d be more inclined to believe the pen bomb story if it had been a secret service agent; if anyone is going to overreact to something that might possibly be an assassination threat it will be the bodyguards. They’re the people who are actually supposed to be looking for assassins and I could understand them mistaking a reporter they’re unfamiliar with for an assassin disguised as a reporter because “disguise self as a reporter to have an excuse to get within arms reach” does sound like something an assassin might do, though I’d be extremely displeased if they didn’t immediately admit they were in the wrong and cover any necessary medical bills the very second they realized she was a genuine reporter.
But if the secret service doesn’t see anything suspicious, it’s highly unlikely a campaign manager would see any reason to be suspicious. And furthermore he clearly didn’t; if he had thought she was a threat he’d have yelled for the secret service agents to restrain her.
As for the physical plausibility, dunno about a bomb but a pen could fit a fatal dose of poison. Probably enough explosive to be fatal if slammed against your chest before detonation. There have been plenty of assassinations with weird weapons like umbrellas that launched poison capsules. So it’s technically possible but their actions indicate no one actually thought it was the case. Which is what really matters anyway; the story wouldn’t be more plausible if they claimed they thought she had a hidden knife.