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.
I’m going to disagree on this one. I find Sacha Baron Cohen repulsive and Stephen Colbert is a satirist, not a troll (meaning there’s an actual point to what he does). I think trolling by definition has no goal except to get attention, be disruptive, and/or harm people. I don’t think it can be used as a tactic to accomplish anything useful.
Perhaps someone told Trump that the pen is mightier than the sword, and he assumed explosives must be involved?
Maybe Trump thought this would happen.
https://youtu.be/2tGDSAs_uU4?t=5m5s
@katz
Yes on both counts!
I saw Borat and, in addition to mocking a country that is obscure to Westerners (Kazakhstan), Sacha Baron Cohen is sexist. And he’s unfunny. Blecch.
I live in South Africa under a pretty much entirely incompetent president who is almost universally despised and even he makes a better president that Trump ever could.
> Guy
You mean spies should try the old umbrella strike but with a polonium tipped pen, cold war style ?
Markov was assassinated with ricin from an umbrella mounted airgun, Litvinenko was poisoned by somebody slipping polonium into his tea, but I follow the line of thinking.
@Claire:
Thinking about it, Trump reminds me of Julius Malema in far too many ways for comfort.
Even though I’m confident that Trump will not be the next president, the fact remains that he’s far too close to the White House for comfort. A black swan event like a terrorist attack on the Democratic National Convention which killed the front runners and put the country into a state of emergency could be enough to result in the 45th President of the USA being The Donald.
And to all US voters – even if you live in somewhere deep blue like Massachusetts, even if Trump is behind in the polls by 40% in October, even if you despise Hilary, please vote all the same because (1) having Trump in charge of the world’s most powerful military is terrifying beyond words (2) November elections are not only about the White House, the downticket races offer the chance for the Democrats to take back the senate and weaken the House majority etc. The tea party and other right wingers are so, so good at this bottom-up approach. Get less political friends registered, remind them to vote on the day etc.
Oh my word! It’s hard to keep up with the news as it’s all bad.
Seems to me the Republicans and the right-wing media have been enabling and empowering Trump for an awful long time for him to reach this point.
Wasn’t he behind or deeply involved with the whole birther nonsense? I seem to remember he did a big “I’m going to announce something amazing about Obama’s birth certificate” trolling job… it turned out of course to be something nothing. It’s a bit tough for the Republicans to now say it was nothing to do with them.
He’s also empowering and enabling some truly awful people to be perhaps a lot more awful (or more publicly awful) than they might have been otherwise. The kind of people who’ve always wanted to pepperspray a 15 year old right in the face but never had the chance to before, or a crowd of people willing to applaud them for it.
Can anyone recommend a pleasanter planet?
@bluecat
Yeah, I remember Trump saying he had sent private investigators to Hawaii and they were “finding some amazing things over there”. Then he never mentioned it again, I think?
Hi Katz and Kat. I think I know what you are saying about ol’ SBC. But I still really did laugh a lot at his now ancient Red Nose charity special with Victoria Beckham and her husband.
I’m going to watch it right now in fact. Wish me laughs.
Remember when people said a Trump presidency could never happen because Americans were too smart and not bigoted filth enough to vote for him?
I hope no one ever overestimates the US again.
If, against the odds, Trump did win the presidency, what’s the chance that he’d serve a full term? It’s not hard to imagine him doing something impeachable, and being forced to resign… or just plain resigning after he gets fed up because (a) it’s hard work, and (b) he couldn’t rule like a dictator. So, his VP pick could be more than usually important.
A pen bomb? Something that was in a James Bond movie one time? Ok Donnie sure.
People here may know I think hypocrite Sanders is a complete shithead so I’ll just point out that not only did he have these protestors ejected he seems quite content that they’ve now been arrested.
http://youtu.be/PusXav_SAec
@ EJ (The Other One)
Comrade Julius is like that one thing you did once that you’re kind of embarrassed by so you don’t talk about it because if you don’t think about it then maybe it never existed. You guys could try that with Trump, maybe?
(In other news, Julius got his B.A. degree yesterday. He’s very proud.)
Oh what a world. -_-
I do worry for the state of things far too much sometimes. Closer to home, I fear that enough people will mistakenly vote for Britain to exit the EU. The reasons to leave seem to have been based on exaggerations or melodrama from the start. Usually trumpeted by the BNP or UKIP, which says enough as it is.
Alan, in your video I see hecklers stand up, scream their point across, and burly men going over to politely ask them to leave (which they do).
It seems to me like the usual protest thing: disturb the peace, get a slap on the wrist, but at least you got your issue out to a lot of people. They probably think you’re an idiot and your issue is stupid, but that’s a step up from not even knowing about the issue. If you’re lucky, your issue might get discussed, and more “respectable” people might pick up parts of it and things might happen.
The thing I don’t see in that video is a “complete shithead” moment from anyone.
@leftwingfox –
I actually vote that Cruz is worse.
Trump’s for Trump. You can count on him to act according to his own megalomaniacial interests.
Cruz…Cruz is a Domininist and a True Believer through and through.
Trump would at least try to ensure his own self preservation. Cruz might actively work to have the world shit the bed in order to make way for Revelation. What’s this world matter when you’re striving to bring the next to fruition?
I’ve always refused to watch Borat. People constantly try to tell me how great it is, so I point out that he’s mocking Eastern Europeans and that’s really not cool, and they always tell me that the film is actually about people’s reactions to the Borat character. I just find the whole concept very gross.
sunnysombrera:
Sometimes the reasons aren’t even tangentially related to the EU.
There was a comment on a recent Guardian article which made my jaw drop. I wish I’d saved it before it was deleted. The story was about Iain Lee being sacked from BBC radio after calling out a guest on their homophobic bigotry. The comment said (I’m paraphrasing here): “I’m glad he was sacked. We’ll sack many more people like that after we leave the EU in June; also, hopefully this will be the last ever International Women’s Day!”
For that commenter, it sounds like the referendum is not simply about issues which a serious and well-informed voter would recognise as being affected by EU membership. Rather, it’s their opportunity to strike a blow against everything they hate, and turn the tide against the horrors of equality and modernity.
Basically, we’re fucked.
I agree with mockingbird. Trump is predictable and like it’s been said, he’ll do whatever it takes just to maintain his popularity. Cruz is the type to do whatever he believes to be right according to his crappy doctrine, regardless of how the public feels. As long as Ted believes he’s Doing Right By God (even if he isn’t in reality) he’s fucking dangerous. Someone who uses religion to justify bullshit is capable of anything, no matter how irrational or even evil it is. Cruz has already shown that he doesn’t actually care for mankind or the common people at all, yet his supporters still think he’s a suitable presidential candidate.
Religion needs to stay the fuck out of politics and I’m a religious person saying that. I fully endorse separation of church and state – it’s just too likely to go horribly wrong and already has done, in the past.
@Moggie
Holy shit. Mind you Britain does have a problem with bigots/racists etc, they’re just much better at keeping a low profile than their American cousins.
There was a documentary over here the other night about whether Trump really could get elected.
One commentator made what I thought was a very valid point. That was that Trump’s only agenda was getting Trump elected; and therefore he’d do anything, including major policy u-turns, if he thought that would do it. It was predicted that he’d have to shift to the centre to stand a chance. Of course there was then the issue of whether that would do him any good. The chances are he’d only alienate his more rabid fan base whereas those people he’d offended (women, Mexicans, gay people, those with disabilities, etc, etc) were hardly likely to go “oh, I like him now”, so he’s painted himself into a losing corner.
We can but hope; although gawd only knows what might actually happen.