Pathologically dishonest doesn’t begin to describe it
by digby
Stop and think about this for a moment. I don’t think we’ve really wrapped our minds around this because of the sheer volume of lies coming from this man. Most of us probably don’t know anyone in real life with a personality disorder so extreme. Anyone like him would be considered crazy and would not be able to hold down a job or have any kind of normal life. It would be disabling.
But this is the most powerful man in the world and tens of millions of people love him:
It took President Trump 601 days to top 5,000 false and misleading claims in The Fact Checker’s database, an average of eight claims a day.
But on April 26, just 226 days later, the president crossed the 10,000 mark — an average of nearly 23 claims a day in this seven-month period, which included the many rallies he held before the midterm elections, the partial government shutdown over his promised border wall and the release of the special counsel’s report on Russian interference in the presidential election.
This milestone appeared unlikely when The Fact Checker first started this project during his first 100 days. In the first 100 days, Trump averaged less than five claims a day, which would have added up to about 7,000 claims in a four-year presidential term. But the tsunami of untruths just keeps looming larger and larger.
As of April 27, including the president’s rally in Green Bay, Wis., the tally in our database stands at 10,111 claims in 828 days.
In recent days, the president demonstrated why he so quickly has piled up the claims. There was a 45-minute telephone interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News on April 25: 45 claims. There was an eight-minute gaggle with reporters the morning of April 26: eight claims. There was a speech to the National Rifle Association: 24 claims. There was 19-minute interview with radio host Mark Levin: 17 claims. And, finally, there was the campaign rallyon April 27: 61 claims.
The president’s constant Twitter barrage also adds to his totals. All told, the president racked up 171 false or misleading claims in just three days, April 25-27. That’s more than he made in any single month in the first five months of his presidency.
About one-fifth of the president’s claims are about immigration issues, a percentage that has grown since the government shutdown over funding for his promised border wall. In fact, his most repeated claim — 160 times — is that his border wall is being built. Congress balked at funding the concrete wall he envisioned, and so he has tried to pitch bollard fencing and repairs of existing barriers as “a wall.”
Trump’s penchant for repeating false claims is demonstrated by the fact that The Fact Checker database has recorded nearly 300 instances when the president has repeated a variation of the same claim at least three times. He also now has earned 21 “Bottomless Pinocchios,” claims that have earned Three or Four Pinocchios and which have been repeated at least 20 times.
Back in the Clinton years there was much pearl-clutching over the fact that Clinton lied once on national television when he said he’d never had sex with Monica Lewinsky in a press conference. There were speeches on the floor of the congress and endless lugubrious commentaries about how this lie had damaged the very fabric of our nation — that parents didn’t know how to explain such mendacity to their children.
So now we have Trump. And this avalanche of lies about everything is our new normal.
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