Given his talent for lying, what can we believe from Donald Trump’s recent whoppers uttered at campaign rallies? There are so many.
One of his smaller lies is Trump’s repeated claim that his uncle John Trump was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for 40 years (actually 37) and that he was the longest serving professor ever at the school (not true).
Trump claims the Biden administration has hampered oil production in the United States. At the same time, the Department of Energy reported a record high week of production in late January while also predicting record high daily production averages of 13.2 million barrels in 2024 and 13.4 million barrels in 2025 (even more than Saudi Arabia). Trump would call that “fake news.”
In New Hampshire, Trump proclaimed that Nikki Haley, his main primary opponent in the state, was in charge of security at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Was he mistaken, joking, or just intending to denigrate Haley, who was a private citizen on January 6, 2021?
Observers quickly jumped on Trump’s mistake (lie). He was probably referring to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. But the Speaker is not in charge of security at the Capitol. The Capitol Police Board is. The Speaker is not on that board. In the District of Columbia, the president is in charge of the National Guard. In the states, the governors are in charge.
Trump’s apologists quickly suggested that he had intentionally used Haley’s name because he wanted to trap the liberal media into speculating that he had “lost it.” Does the observation by Trump’s former attorney general Bill Barr that Trump was “detached from reality” (regarding the results of the 2020 election) apply here too?
Another example of detachment from reality is Trump’s musing about building “a dome” over the United States, presumably to ward off missiles from adversaries. Even given the impracticality of such a venture, doesn’t the self-proclaimed super intellect and possessor of robust cognitive skills realize this would wipe out airplane travel, prevent rain and snow from reaching the land surface, interrupt the flow of full sunlight (like our smoky June 2023 skies thanks to fires in Canada), and wipe out food production? Is he supposedly joking or just trying to be entertaining?
“I love the poorly educated,” Trump proclaimed in Las Vegas during February of 2016. Certainly those who listen to and believe Trump will be among the poorly educated. He surmises that 98 percent of his supporters couldn’t match him on the cognitive test.
A Richard Nixon campaign aide’s statement in 1968 pertains here: “Voters are basically lazy. Reason requires a high degree of discipline, of concentration. Impression is easier. The emotions are more easily aroused, closer to the surface.” (Source: Page 41 in the 2023 book Democracy Awakening by Heather Richardson).
How true still today, very unfortunately. Is that part of the reason why tens of thousands of people in Calumet and surroundings counties are going to vote for Trump twice this year?