Michael Abrahams | A critical analysis of Donald Trump’s pathological mendacity

Politicians have earned a reputation for being dishonest, although, to be fair, we all lie. However, Donald Trump may very well be the most dishonest presidential candidate the United States (US), or any other country, has ever seen. Indeed, political commentators have referred to his propensity to lie as “unprecedented”.

But how bad is Trump’s dishonesty? I am a huge fan of evidence, data, research, and facts. Fortunately, Trump is so blatantly deceitful that there is an abundance of data, and his dishonesty has been the subject of much analysis and research. The Washington Post has a fact-checker team following Trump and has set up a database of his falsehoods. The newspaper reported that during the four years of his presidency, he made 30,573 false or misleading claims, averaging about 21 per day. The researchers also found that the longer he was president, the more he lied. He averaged about six claims a day in his first year as president, 16 per day in his second year, 22 in his third year, and 39 in his final year. On the day before the 2020 election, he made 503 false or misleading claims. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/24/trumps-false-or-misle...

It is mind-boggling to know that not only does someone lie this much, but also that the frequency of the lies increases over time, with the liar experiencing no discomfort. Some psychologists have attributed this escalation of lies to a biological process called emotional adaptation.

Research conducted at University College London and published in 2016 in the journal Nature Neuroscience found that the intensity of the emotional response people experience when they act dishonestly is reduced every time they lie. In other words, they become desensitised. https://shorturl.at/N9Hzu This would explain the upward spiral of Trump’s lies. He lies a lot, feels no discomfort about it, and then lies some more.

DESENSITISATION

And why is his behaviour tolerated? Apparently, desensitisation also occurs among those exposed to the lies. A study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology in 2009 showed that people are less likely to criticise the unethical actions of others when such behaviour increases gradually over time - as with Trump’s lies during his tenure as the president of the United States https://shorturl.at/MvQZR

Indeed, a Gallup poll conducted in 2017 showed that while the percentage of those polled who felt that he kept his promises fell from 62 per cent in February to 45 per cent in April that year, there was little change in his approval ratings. https://shorturl.at/KmGYb

What is disconcerting is not only the gargantuan number of lies told by Trump, but also the types of fabrications. Social psychologist Bella DePaulo examined both of these factors. In a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1996, utilising college students and community members, she and her colleagues found that the average person tells about one to two lies per day. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8656340/ During Trump’s presidency, as mentioned above, he averaged 21. What is sobering is that we are only privy to Trump’s public statements, so the rate is likely to be higher as it is unlikely that he limits his mendacity to occasions when he speaks publicly.

Examination of the types of lies Trump told and the frequency with which he told them was also instructive. For example, two types of lies are self-serving lies, which only benefit the liar, and kind lies, which help others. Most people tell about twice as many self-serving lies as kind lies, but an analysis of the Washington Post database found that Trump told 6.6 times as many. De Paulo said there was one category of lies - cruel lies, which were told to hurt and disparage others - that was so small that the researchers “just tucked them into a footnote” in her 1996 study. She and her colleagues found that just 0.8 per cent of the lies told by college students and 2.4 per cent of the lies told by the community members were mean-spirited. However, DePaulo found that an astonishing 50 per cent of Trump’s lies were hurtful or disparaging.

UNABATED LIES

The above-mentioned data was collected and analysed during Trump’s term in office from 2016 until 2020. But today, as he seeks a second term in office, the lies continue unabated. A team of reporters and editors at the media house National Public Radio (NPR) found 162 “misstatements, exaggerations, and outright lies” during a 64-minute news conference on August 8. https://www.npr.org/2024/08/11/nx-s1-5070566/trump-news-conference Even more recently, he repeatedly lied during a two-hour interview with Elon Musk on X.

Size matters, at least when it comes to crowds, and Trump’s massive ego will not allow him to admit that anyone has ever pulled a larger crowd than he has. On his first day in office, he sent his press secretary, Sean Spicer, to announce, “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration,” which was not true as it was a fraction of the size of the crowd that turned out for President Barack Obama in 2009.

Today, in 2024, Trump’s crowd envy continues. The fact that the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, who is a woman of colour and the offspring of immigrants, is drawing larger crowds than he is, is unravelling the neurons in his already warped brain. So much so that the lies have escalated into the realm of fantasy, with Trump claiming that Harris is using AI to augment the size of her crowds. Regarding one event, he wrote, “There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I.’d’ it and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!” https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/112944255426268462

The number of lies racked up by Trump is the most ever documented for a US president. He is also the first American president to be impeached twice and the first former president to be convicted, this after one of his four indictments.

So, a pathologically mendacious convicted felon will be on the ballot this November in the US. And millions of people will vote for him.

Michael Abrahams is an obstetrician and gynaecologist, social commentator and human-rights advocate. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and michabe_1999@hotmail.com, or follow him on X , formerly Twitter, @mikeyabrahams