Let's just take a moment to dwell on this: Donald Trump's detachment from the truth is accelerating rapidly and, apparently, uncontrollably.
When we first started this project for the president's first 100 days, he averaged 4.9 claims a day. But the average number of claims per day keeps climbing as the president nears the 600-day mark of his presidency.
In fact, in the past three months, the president averaged 15.4 claims a day, so almost one-third of the total claims made as president have come in this period. [...]
On July 5, the president had reached a new daily high of 79 false and misleading claims, but he came close on Aug. 30 with 73 claims, when he held a campaign rally and had an extended interview with Bloomberg News.
In other words, the sitting "president" of the United States now lies to the American public, on average, over a dozen times a day—and this even though the man spends many days making few if any public statements at all—and during his political rallies will pepper the listening American public with dozens of falsehoods. Just because he can. Just because he's that dishonest, and because, apparently, being that astoundingly, irredeemably, uncontrollably dishonest is not a disqualifier for public office anymore.
Those of us older than an elementary-school student might recall an instance when a public official was mistaken on a Sunday TV show on one particular day, one administration ago, and that led Republicans into years of "Benghazi" frenzy, with lawmakers absolutely convinced that that single appearance showed a deep and intolerable corruption in that Democratic administration. A single party change later, this spray-tanned, malignant narcissist, dementia-suffering accused co-conspirator can rattle off dozens of known lies during any given day’s ranting, and it's not just left unquestioned—it’s considered the new Republican Party version of “presidential.”
As has been said time and time again by political experts around the world of late, one of the fundamental requirements of autocracy is that there be no objective "truth" that can be used against the autocrat: the new “truth” is only whatever Dear Leader or his surrogates require it to be on any given day or at any given moment in order to best placate the governed. The harvests are the best ever; nobody you know is really unemployed, but only faking it; public reports of illegal or unethical acts by the powers that be are merely the fabrications of malcontents—malcontents who are, according to Dear Leader, the enemy of the people for spreading such rumors, and who may find themselves victims of governmental or mob justice if they dare keep it up. A free press is incompatible with the requirements of autocracy because it pipes up with regular features documenting which of Dear Leader's statements are complete falsehoods. Perhaps the harvests this year are not, in fact, the best ever. Perhaps the evidence that Dear Leader’s closest allies have done illegal or unethical things is, in fact, extraordinarily clear.
Lies on the scale of what Trump burps out during any given day are, at best, a betrayal of democracy. They are anti-American, according to any definition of “American” that includes in any way the long-held values of American-styled democracy. In so gleefully treading upon those values, Donald Trump is at best mentally unwell, but at worst precisely the sort of malevolent thug that he so consistently praises elsewhere in the world. But to hell with him, because we know he lies. All the time. Constantly.
It's his party that enables it, and that is the broader problem. It's the Republican Party itself that went down this path, shuffling first into ever-more-snide levels of anti-intellectualism, before eventually throwing up their hands and declaring that reality itself is unknowable, and only conspiring elitists could think otherwise. It is the Republican Party, elected officials and top staff alike, that continues to support Trump rabidly and unquestioningly as he continues to thumb his nose at every single American who points out he is lying. There are no Republican members of the House or Senate taking even the slightest steps to rein in these offenses to the basic premises of self-determined government—not a damn one, and not even those advertising themselves on book covers as the (supposedly) principled ones.
Instead, the new normal is that the leader of the country is now naturally "allowed" to lie outright to the American people about whatever he wants, whenever he wants, and as humiliatingly and ridiculously as he wants, if it will make this one pus-brained infantile cretin with narcissistic delusions of glory feel momentarily better about himself, or will allow his staff to evade direct questions about the things he is lying about, or about other things that he thinks ought not be asked in the first place. It is a bizarre premise, and a betrayal of the most basic of democratic norms, and it is not something any nation can allow itself to get used to.
Trump’s constant lying should by itself be shocking, but the norms of government have been torn down at such an alarming rate—sitting presidents are now apparently also allowed to funnel government cash to their own pockets; are allowed to mount daily attacks on criminal investigations against them; and are allowed to engage in light treason if it boosts their election numbers a wee bit in the swing states—that his insane autocratic devotion to making things up nearly every time he appears in public or puts his thumbs to his phone is barely an afterthought.
So, ya know, screw that guy. And screw the rest of them, because they have betrayed the country in so many ways, big and small. And they will continue to do so tomorrow, because that is who they are now.