Trump's Big CON: Is He Lying or Delusional?

UPDATE VII:  "O.K., at this point it’s not news that the commander in chief of the world’s most powerful military is a man you wouldn’t trust to park your car or feed your cat. Thanks, Comey. But Mr. Trump’s pathological inability to accept responsibility is just the culmination of a trend. American politics — at least on one side of the aisle — is suffering from an epidemic of infallibility, of powerful people who never, ever admit to making a mistake. . .

[W]hat’s going on with Mr. Trump and his inner circle seems to have less to do with ideology than with fragile egos. To admit having been wrong about anything, they seem to imagine, would brand them as losers and make them look small.

In reality, of course, inability to engage in reflection and self-criticism is the mark of a tiny, shriveled soul — but they’re not big enough to see that.

But why did so many Americans vote for Mr. Trump, whose character flaws should have been obvious long before the election?

Catastrophic media failure and F.B.I. malfeasance played crucial roles. But my sense is that there’s also something going on in our society: Many Americans no longer seem to understand what a leader is supposed to sound like, mistaking bombast and belligerence for real toughness.

Why? Is it celebrity culture? Is it working-class despair, channeled into a desire for people who spout easy slogans?

Read The New York Times, America’s Epidemic of Infallibility.

UPDATE VI:  "America is now governed by a president and party that fundamentally don’t accept the idea that there are objective facts. Instead, they want everyone to accept that reality is whatever they say it is. . .

Mr. Trump has declared [the media] 'enemies of the people' — not, whatever he may say, because they get things wrong, but because they dare to challenge him on anything.

'Enemy of the people' is, of course, a phrase historically associated with Stalin and other tyrants. This is no accident. Mr. Trump isn’t a dictator — not yet, anyway — but he clearly has totalitarian instincts.

And much, perhaps most, of his party is happy to go along, accepting even the most bizarre conspiracy theories. . .

It’s part of a much bigger struggle, in which what’s really at stake is whether ignorance is strength, whether the man in the White House is the sole arbiter of truth."

Read The New York Times, Facts Are Enemies of the People.

UPDATE V:  "We’re seeing a broad White House effort to corrode the very ideal of reality-based governing, something that includes not just a discrediting of institutions such as the CBO but also the weakening of the influence of science and data over agency decision-making and the deliberate misuse of our democracy’s institutional processes to prop up Trump’s lies about his popular support and political opponents."

Read the Washington Post, Donald Trump’s deliberate corruption of reality-based governing.

UPDATE IV:  "Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) called Sunday for President Trump to either prove his claim that President Barack Obama tapped the phones in Trump Tower during last year’s election campaign or drop the accusation.

'The president has one of two choices, either retract or provide the information that the American people deserve,' McCain said in an interview on CNN’s 'State of the Union.' 'I have no reason to believe that the charge is true, but I also believe that the president of the United States could clear this up in a minute.'

Read the Washington Post, McCain to Trump: Retract wiretapping claim or prove it.

UPDATE III:  "Rep. Schiff (D-CA) was asked on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports if there was any proof to back up Trump’s claim [regarding wiretaps].

He answered, 'No, and I think it’s a preposterous claim. As other people have pointed out, if it were true it would mean that a federal judge had found probable cause to believe that Trump or his associates were engaged in a crime, or that a FISA court judge had found that they were acting as agents of a foreign power. This is what the president is suggesting when he says that he was wiretapped. But it’s a preposterous claim, and I think it’s certainly one explanation that he’s merely trying to distract, but a more troubling conclusion might be that this is simply a president that can not separate fact from fantasy, and as a Commander In Chief doesn’t know right from wrong.'

Schiff was suggesting that the President Of The United States is potentially not of sound mind."

Read Politicususa, Top Member Of House Intel Committee Questions Trump’s Mental State On National TV.

As stated before, Trump is a psycho-narcissistic con man.

UPDATE II:  For a 'tally of the lies and distortions', read the Washington Post, Trump just gave a remarkable new interview. Here’s a tally of all his lies.

UPDATE: Actually, Trump is a psycho-narcissistic con man.

A "lengthy interview, which aired late Wednesday night, provided a glimpse of the president and his state-of-mind on his fifth full day in office. It revealed a man who is obsessed with his own popularity and eager to provide evidence of his likability, even if that information doesn't match reality."

Read the Washington Post, In his first major TV interview as president, Trump is endlessly obsessed with his popularity.

As noted before, this can't end well for the country.

Trump is clearly a con man. So that begs the question: why?

"Is he lying or is he unable to separate what he wants to believe and what exists, literally, in front of his eyes? The first makes him morally unfit, and was the basis upon which many #NeverTrumpers refused to vote for him. If the latter, they — and we all — have a constitutional crisis the likes of which we have never seen. With Trump, however, we have learned the past provides no guarantees."

Read the Washington Post, Maybe Trump isn’t ‘lying’.