March 15, 2016 5:52 AM

Don't be stupid, be a smarty. Come and join Trump's Republican Party.

Donald Trump says he is a truthful man. “Maybe truthful to a fault,” he boasted last week at a North Carolina rally where one of his supporters sucker punched a protester. But truthful he is not…. POLITICO subjected a week’s worth of his words to our magazine’s fact-checking process. We chronicled 4.6 hours of stump speeches and press conferences, from a rally in Concord, N.C., on Monday to a rally on Friday in St. Louis. The result: more than five dozen statements deemed mischaracterizations, exaggerations, or simply false…. From warning of the death of Christianity in America to claiming that he is taking no money from donors, the Manhattan billionaire and reality-show celebrity said something far from truthful many times over to the thousands of people packed into his raucous rallies. His remarks represent an extraordinary mix of inaccurate claims about domestic and foreign policy and personal and professional boasts that rarely measure up when checked against primary sources.

Yes, I understand that if you’re looking to politics for veracity and integrity you’re setting yourself up to be YUUUUGELY disappointed. Politicians lie; that’s neither breaking news nor particularly notable…but few do it as frequently, openly, shamelessly, and without concern for any potential fallout than Trump. It’s almost as if for him the mere act of words making the perilous journey from his brain and exiting his lips renders his utterances true and beyond reproach. The truth is something for losers, Liberals, and fact checkers to concern themselves with. What’s true is that his followers simply don’t care that much of his verbal vomit (every five minutes, on average) is pure, unadulterated, Grade-A bullshit. It may be a “fact” he made up on the spot, a claim he’s altered in order to puff himself up, or a false statistic he’s repeated so often that he’s come to believe it as Gospel…and so have his followers.

The sad reality is that, at least for those on the Far Right, honesty and integrity are no longer considered prerequisites or even admirable qualities in a Presidential candidate. Indeed, speaking truthfully may even be a liability, in the sense that the truth simply is; it’s not something that can be massaged or molded to fit the narrative of the moment in the way Trump can and does.

These untruths - strung together as they are in all of his speeches - have helped drive one of the most rapid ascents in modern presidential campaign history. Stephen Colbert once invented a word to define the political discourse of the time. “Truthiness,” the comedian declared on his debut episode in 2005, was the truth as felt in one’s heart and gut, not what was written up in reference books. A decade later, Trump has taken the idea and run (for president) with it.

Call it what you want (I call it an “idiocracy”), but it seems that the American Sheeple would much rather be entertained than informed and persuaded. They’d much rather have their fears and prejudices validated than evaluate policy proposals. They’d prefer to be told who to hate and who’s responsible for everything wrong with America today. Trump provides all of that to True Believers…and SO much more.

From denying there’s violence at his rallies (“it’s a love fest”) to lying as he breathes to dismissing campaign protesters (“I never hear their voices”), Trump isn’t a truthful person.

Donald Trump will with any luck be a passing fad, something we’ll look back in December and let out a collective sigh of relief when we realize we’ve dodged a bullet. What frightens me is what might happen the next time a demagogue rises to the top. Trump if nothing else has proven the powerful appeal of skillfully executed demagoguery. What happens when someone who’s not a “small-handed vulgarian” (Would that I’d beaten Grayson Carter to that perfect description….) appeals to low-information voters without the obvious crudity, dishonesty, and race-baiting? Based on events to date, it seems unlikely that Trump could credibly be considered a one-off.

There will undoubtedly be another demagogue- one more glib, suave, and far less crude than Donald Trump. If nothing else, The Donald has demonstrated that there’s a significant market segment receptive to racism, rage, exclusion, and the politics of personal destruction. I shudder to contemplate what may happen when someone with a more palatable (read: less bombastic and grotesque) public demeanor decides to travel the path blazed by him?

If a “small-handed vulgarian” can flirt with White House dreams, ANYONE with a lack of shame, overdeveloped delusions of grandeur, and the demeanor of a circus clown can run for President. That prospect should scare the Hell out of any American with a functional intellect…if only because so many of Trump’s supporters have chosen to ignore sense and reason.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on March 15, 2016 5:52 AM.

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