President Donald J. Trump believes patently false stories, narratives, and explanations for various reasons, many of which we may never know. At times he seems delusional or paranoid enough to make an emergency court order for psychiatric examination advisable and at other times he seems like a craven liar.
He is responsible for the word "birtherism" entering the lexicon. We may never know whether he really believed the newborn Barack first saw the light of day in Kenya.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan's most quoted line “ everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts” clearly does not apply to Donald Trump.
Trump is the most gullible and ignorant president in history.
I could have written this anytime since the ascendance to Trump onto the national stage. However, I was prompted to write this when he posited the barely plausible explanation that Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi might have been murdered by “rogue killers.” I doubt he thought of this melodramatic plotline himself. Saudi King Salman probably was well aware of how gullible the president is when he suggested the “rogue killers” scenario.
We have to wonder where Trump got the idea that Amercian election hacking could have been done by a “400-pound guy sitting on his bed.” My bet is that Vladimir Putin came up with that one for him.
Apparently, the only thing Trump needs to know to discern whether a claim is true is that it is uttered by a despot is true is that it is expressed the way Putin did, and most recently the way King Salmon did: “All I can do is report what he told me. He told me in a very firm way that they had no knowledge of it. He said it very strongly,” His denial to me could not have been stronger, that he had no knowledge.”
Trump embarrassed himself and the science-based world community with his remarks about client change once again in his interview with Leslie Stahl on “60 Minutes.” Climate change isn’t the only thing he’s said he believes that has science teachers cringing. He has repeated the false claims that vaccines cause autism and that asbestos is harmless.
(I have to note that he has to be the first president to utter the words “I am not a baby” in public. When Stahl asked him how he “fell in love” with Kim Jong-Un he answered “I’m not a baby. I know these things.”)
Trump is either incapable of engaging in critical thinking or simply doesn't want to be bothered with making the effort to do so. He doesn’t particularly care about expounding on subjects he doesn’t know anything about. His supporters are willing to believe anything he says. Social science researchers are saying that his alternative version of reality actually appeals to them. I don’t know if anybody has studied what other objectively false things they believe. I read that there is a resurgence of people who still believe the earth is flat.
Thanks to Trump those who may have missed this in a psychology or sociology course have learned the meaning of confirmation bias. We know that confirmation bias is the tendency of some people to interpret and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs. An example, Trump believing he had the biggest inauguration crowds ever. An example of the later is his belief he saw thousands of Muslims across the Hudson River in New Jersey were cheering the collapse of the World Trade Center.
If confirmation bias was a contagious disease the CDC would have identified Trump as patient number one.
Trump has prompted mental health professionals in the "duty to warn" community (those like me who have been warning that Trump is too dangerously mentally ill to be president for going on two years now) to try to figure out whether he believes his own lies. We use the term “pathological liar” to refer to his behavior. However, lacking the ability to assess Trump in person, clinicians can only speculate as to what is going on in his mind when he lies.
This hasn’t stopped numerous pundits and Trump’s political critics from Bernie Sanders to Ted Cruz from calling him a pathological liar. Recently Sanders called Trump a “pathological liar” who “works night and day on behalf of his fellow billionaires.” Ted Cruz called the campaigning Trump a pathological liar when he repeated a tabloid story about his father being tied to the JFK assassination.
There are so many examples of Trump purveying conspiracy theories it is difficult to select the most paranoid or ridiculous. For example at a March 2016 rally in Dayton, Ohio, a man attempted to charge the stage. Trump reTweeted a video which he said proved the man was a terrorist linked to ISIS. "He was playing Arabic music. He was dragging the flag along the ground, and he had internet chatter with ISIS and about ISIS. So I don't know if he was or not. But all we did was put out what he had on his internet. He's dragging the flag, the American flag, which I respect obviously more than you. What do I know about it? All I know is what's on the internet. And I don't like to see a man dragging the American flag along the ground in a mocking fashion."
Trump even said he was unsure about what caused Scalia's death. Trump falsely said a pillow was found over the justice's face.
The only upside I can see to Trump’s ignorance and gullibility is that he may believe he has nothing to fear from the Mueller investigation.
Update: The latest Trump lie of Trumpian proportions is that now that Elizabeth Warren has released the DNA tests that show she has a Native American ancestor is that when asked about his promised $1 million charitable donation if she could provide proof he’s saying he never made this promise. What are we to make of this example of baldfaced easily provable lying except to say it has to demonstrate some kind of psychopathology?
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Update: File this under “Trump’s Little Lies,” one which it is gratifying to see he was roundly mocked for on social media.
Donald Trump’s Vow To Rally In ‘The Biggest Stadium In Texas’ Falls 94,000 Seats Short: Twitter users mock the president for booking a modest arena instead of a large stadium for his Ted Cruz event.
What they eventually chose was about 94,000 seats short of the mark.
Trump’s Oct. 22 event for the senator he used to routinely mock as “Lyin’ Ted” will be held at the NRG Arena in Houston, which seats about 8,000. The Trump campaign told the Dallas News that no larger venues were available on that date.
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About the author: Hal Brown, MSW, is a retired clinical social worker and mental health center director. He was one of the first members of the “Duty to Warn” movement started by clinical psychologist John Gartner. He has written extensively on Daily Kos about Trump being a malignant narcissist who is unfit to be president.