There’s nothing that Donald Trump likes more than to use a well-crafted lie to make the people around him love him in the moment. It’s perhaps the defining feature of his personality since he possesses no actual skills — he relies on hyperbole and lies to give others an impression about him that is truthfully no more than words deep.
That’s the kind of tactic that works on people who end up supporting him, though. The vast majority of people who are still onboard the Trump Train believe a great number of things that aren’t true about this President because he’s told them lies — and no matter how much those lies are exposed as fabrications, his base refuses to let go of them.
It’s sad, actually, to think that there are otherwise ordinary Americans who, because of Trump, mistakenly believe that there’s a wall already being built on the southern border (there isn’t), or that the MS-13 that exists in America isn’t almost entirely comprised of US citizens (they’re not illegal immigrants), or that veterans now have a choice to see their own doctors if the waiting lines at the VA are too long because of a bill Trump signed (Obama signed that bill).
There are lots of explanations for why people buy into his lies and why they defend them after they’re disproven, but I’m a football fan, so let’s use a sports metaphor: Say you had a quarterback who management gave a HUGE contract, tens of millions of dollars, and then they got hurt. In comes the backup, who plays better than the highly-paid guy — but management is already looking forward to how soon the guy they paid millions to can come back, whether he was winning or not.
They’re committed. It’s the same with Trumpers. They are fully invested, even if the lies he tells are gross, obscene mischaracterizations of easily-disproven things.
On his trip to Iraq over Christmas, Trump did the same thing again, and he did it to our troops.
Is anybody here willing to give up the big pay raise you just got? You haven’t gotten one in more than 10 years. More than 10 years. And we got you a big one. I got you a big one. I got you a big one.”
That’s not just a lie about what Trump’s done, it’s a lie about what’s happened in the past: The last time troops didn’t get an annual pay raise was 35 years ago, and even that was only because the date of the increase was moved forward a few months to January of the following year. But that’s Trump’s M.O. — he needs them to not only think he’s done something good for them, but that no one else would have or ever has.
We had plenty of people that came up. They said, ‘You know, we can make it smaller. We can make it 3 percent. We can make it 2 percent. We can make it 4 percent.’ I said, ‘No. Make it 10 percent. Make it more than 10 percent.’”
Speaking of percents — zero percent of that is true. Three and four percent are not smaller than the most recent pay increase for soldiers, because it was actually 2.6 percent. Not ten percent, or more than 10 percent, or any of that nonsense.
So what about the soldier who’s listening to the President of the United States tell him he just got a ten percent raise? If that soldier makes $3,500 a month and hears that, does he immediately starting budgeting an extra $350 into his plans? Only to discover that Trump was full of shit, that his raise was only $91 — still good, but the difference between saving for a vacation or feeling a little less stress about your cell phone bill.
Trump doesn’t care about that. He cares about those troops loving him in the moment — like a deadbeat dad who shows up once a year with far too little child support and tells his kids he’s taking them to Disneyland, only to disappear back into wherever deadbeat dads go for another year until the courts start hounding him about child support again.
Don’t toy with the troops, Mr. Trump. They’re not props, and they’re not there for you to make yourself feel better with.
Featured image via screen capture
