Trump has raised the bar on at least one thing during his campaign - lying. Since his untruths constantly peg the needle, go beyond 11 even, we’re in uncharted territory and need to come up with some new names for the world-class levels of untruthiness that he has attained.
On the new scale of truthiness, “10” - where no truth exists and is in fact a blanket denial of facts in public evidence, will now be known as “liar liar Pence on fire” in honor of his vice-presidential running mate, Mike “No he didn’t” Pence, who during interviews with journalists, repeatedly denied the Donald’s own public statements.
But Trump and a few of his advisors including Kellyanne Conway, Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie, have gone beyond mere denial of the truth and gotten creative in their contorted re-interpretation of facts and statements that defy the common usage and understanding of the exact words and phrases used by Trump. Hence, “she should be hanged“ becomes “it was a joke“ and “2nd amendment folks - you know what I’m talking about“ becomes “encouraging them to get involved in the democratic process.“ Depending on the level of spin and if the spinners are able to re-contort the statement from 90˚ a full 180˚ to mean the exact opposite of how most people would interpret the statement, this newly-named Conway (or Giuliani?) Truth-Shift bumps the meter to 15 on the newly-expanded scale.
Finally, there is the Trump level, which drags the needle screaming to the never-before-seen number of 20. Where Trump has surpassed his minions in mendacity is in his ad lib, improv creation of whatever statements and positions - whether during rallies, debates or late-night tweets - that may serve to make his point at the moment of their utterance and which are completely untethered to any previous or future utterances to the contrary, and pass them off as truth.
How has he been able to raise this bar to new heights/depths? As with the physical construction projects with which his name is associated, he appears to create these fantasies from discredited domestic sources and even cheaper, perhaps dangerous foreign sources. These have enabled him to fortify his fact-free zone with ever more dubious information and factoids that he believes gives him an edge however ephemeral and potential plausible deniability (“We’re being hacked? Could be the Russians. Maybe the Chinese. Maybe...”).
While many psychiatrists warn against moving into fantasy castles of one’s own making, it appears that the Donald possesses a supersecret, extraspecial inner “Trumpian Knowledge” that trumps that of any other expert on any matter. This allows him to live in his own fantasy castle, in his own fact-free, truth-free zone (referred to as “The Trump Zone”), rent-free and consequence-free. Or as he and his spinners would have you call it, the new and improved “Land of the Free.”