Is Donald Trump stupid or cynical?
Donald Trump is not your usual politician, and unfortunately that is not a compliment.
Politicians speak a lot in public and sometimes make mistakes or purposefully spin the truth, so there will be times when a politician says things that are not true. But most politicians, when caught lying, stop telling that lie. Trump is not like most politicians; he continues to say things that are untrue. The question is, does he not understand what he’s saying is wrong, or does he know it’s wrong, and says it anyway because it helps him politically?
Does Trump live in such a bubble, surrounded by sycophants who only tell him what he wants to hear, that he really does not understand reality? His assessment of his performance in the recent debate would suggest so. He claimed victory, saying that it was his “best debate ever,” which would be news to anyone who watched it; he said “every single poll last night had me winning, like, 90-10.” Does he not understand that a poll from the right-wing media outlet Newsmax does not reflect reality, or is he citing it because he thinks it helps him politically?
During the debate, Trump claimed Democrats support abortions “after birth.” Any rational person would recognize that as murder, and the debate moderator fact-checked him on the spot: “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.” Does Trump really think Democrats favor this or does he think painting Democrats as baby-killers will help him politically?
In the same debate, he claimed that Haitian immigrants were “eating the dogs… eating the pets of the people that live there.” This had been debunked by officials in Springfield, Ohio, including the Republican mayor, and Mike DeWine, Ohio’s Republican, Trump-supporting governor. Does Trump not believe them? A rational person hearing such a thing would say, “That sounds unusual; I should investigate that before I assume it to be true.” Is Trump so gullible he believes it because he “saw it on TV?” Or is he demonizing immigrants because he thinks it’s an issue that helps him politically, so truth is the victim of political expediency?
At his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Trump claimed immigrants are “coming from prisons, they’re coming from jails, they’re coming from mental institutions and insane asylums.” There is no evidence for this, but claiming immigrants are criminals or insane demonizes them and serves his political purposes.
The term “gaslighting” became popular in 2016 when Trump first ran for president because he seemed to ignore reality and simply say what he thought would help him. He has been convicted of sexual abuse, has been accused by more than a dozen women of sexually assault, and he appointed justices to the U.S. Supreme Court with the goal of overturning Roe v Wade. He faces a huge gender gap, so now he tells women, “You will no longer be abandoned, lonely or scared…I will be your protector.” In the words of Chico Marx, “Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”
After 9/11, Trump claimed that he saw “people over in New Jersey that were watching it, a heavy Arab population, that were cheering as the buildings came down. Not good.” That didn’t happen, but it feeds the narrative of Arabs being terrorists. He brought Laura Loomer, a white nationalist 9/11 denier, to a 9/11 commemoration. Does he not know her views or does his effort to appeal to her supporters trump decency?
Trump’s campaign is based on the idea that under the Biden administration, America has become a hellscape, and to build this narrative Trump claims that under President Biden crime has exploded. But the most recent FBI data shows that the murder rate has dropped 11.6% from 2022 to 2023, the largest decline in 20 years, and near a 50-year low. But that doesn’t fit with the story Trump wants to tell, so he ignores it.
Trump plays on people’s fears. The transgender issue is a complicated one many people don’t understand, but understandably have concerns about. At a rally in Wisconsin, Trump said: “Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day in school,’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation? Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?”
This is not happening, but there are valid questions about how much a school must tell parents about a child’s in-school gender identity, and when people should be allowed to have transgender surgery. Instead of considering these issues in a rational manner, Trump creates a false bogeyman because he thinks it will garner him votes.
He doesn’t offer solutions, he just uses issues for political gain.
“Stopping the Steal” is a new documentary on HBO that focuses on Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results in 2020. It documents the crazy theories that Trump’s legal team were promulgating, and the valiant efforts of Republican officials to convince Trump that he lost. Although occasionally Trump let slip that he knew he lost – in the White House watching Biden on TV, he told a staffer, “Can you believe I lost to that f–ing guy?” – most of the time he simply ignores the evidence these Republican officials provide. Did he not understand the evidence, or was he simply willing to ignore it because that didn’t support the world he wanted to inhabit?
The president of the United States should be trustworthy and able to understand reality, not live in a bubble. Abraham Lincoln had a team of rivals advising him, not a team of sycophants. Does Trump continue to repeat debunked lies because he does not know they’re lies or because by repeating them, he gets people to believe them? Either reason makes him unfit to be president.
Kent James is a member of East Washington’s borough council.