Why does Trump lie so much?

[Bonefishblues]

Over last two night I watched the Channel 4's 2 part documentary (on-air) about Trump's "Stolen Election". Nothing new and no great surprises but bringing it all together with interviewing republicans at senior positions and with responsibilities really brought home the madness of Trump.

Ian

Those Georgia election officials were, and are, brave people.

[Mike Sales]

The US is still not prepared for inevitable Russian attacks on its elections, the former special counsel Robert Mueller, who investigated Russian interference in 2016 and links between Donald Trump and Moscow, warns in a new book.

“It is … evident that Americans have not learned the lessons of Russia’s attack on our democracy in 2016,” Mueller writes in a preface to Interference: The Inside Story of Trump, Russia and the Mueller Investigation by Aaron Zebley, James Quarles and Andrew Goldstein, prosecutors who worked for Mueller from 2017 to 2019.

Mueller continues: “As we detailed in our report, the evidence was clear that the Russian government engaged in multiple, systematic attacks designed to undermine our democracy and favor one candidate over the other.”

Zebley, Quarles and Goldstein tell the story of the Mueller investigation, from its beginnings in May 2017 after Trump fired the FBI director, James Comey, to its conclusion in March 2019 with moves by William Barr, Trump’s second attorney general, to obscure and dismiss Mueller’s findings.

Mueller did not establish collusion between Trump and Moscow but did initiate criminal proceedings against three Russian entities and 34 people, with those convicted including a Trump campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who was jailed. Mueller also laid out 10 instances of possible obstruction of justice by Trump. Though he did not indict Trump, citing justice department policy regarding sitting presidents, Mueller said he was not clearing him either.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... rt-mueller

Cui bono? We need to look at UK disinformation too.

[Mike Sales]

Over last two night I watched the Channel 4's 2 part documentary (on-air) about Trump's "Stolen Election". Nothing new and no great surprises but bringing it all together with interviewing republicans at senior positions and with responsibilities really brought home the madness of Trump.

Ian

Those Georgia election officials were, and are, brave people.

I watched too, and was also impressed by the integrity of some Republican Georgian and federal office holders. They were a credit to their party and country.
The sight of Giuliani's hair dye running down his sweating temple made him look the shoddy liar he is.

[briansnail]

The sight of Giuliani's hair dye running down his sweating temple made him look the shoddy liar he is.

What is worrying is how many innocent people he perhaps wrongly convicted.Acting on the assumption telling the truth is not his forte.
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I ride Brompton,Hetchins 531

[Stradageek]

Just look what Trump's continual lies have done. This is from a Guardian interview with Janet Jackson when asked about Kamala Harris:

I wonder where she stands on the forthcoming election. After all, I say, America could be on the verge of voting in its first black female president, Kamala Harris.

“Well, you know what they supposedly said?” she asks me. “She’s not black. That’s what I heard. That she’s Indian.”

She looks at me expectantly, perhaps assuming that I have Indian heritage.

“Well, she’s both,” I offer.

“Her father’s white. That’s what I was told. I mean, I haven’t watched the news in a few days,” she coughs. “I was told that they discovered her father was white.”

I’m floored at this point. It’s well known that Harris’s father is a Jamaican economist, a Stanford professor who split from her Indian mother when she was five. “My mother understood very well that she was raising two black daughters,” Harris wrote in her book The Truths We Hold.

The people who are most vocal in questioning the facts of Harris’s identity tend to be hardcore QAnon-adjacent, Trump-loving conspiracy theorists. I don’t think Jackson falls into that camp, but I do wonder what the algorithms are serving her. I start again. Harris has dual heritage, I say, and, given this moment, does Jackson think America is ready for her – if we agree she’s black? Or, OK, a woman of colour?

“I don’t know,” Jackson stage whispers. “Honestly, I don’t want to answer that because I really, truthfully, don’t know. I think either way it goes is going to be mayhem.”

James O'Brien's "How they broke Britain" documents the same sad story of how truth no longer matters

[Cugel]

Just look what Trump's continual lies have done. This is from a Guardian interview with Janet Jackson when asked about Kamala Harris:

I wonder where she stands on the forthcoming election. After all, I say, America could be on the verge of voting in its first black female president, Kamala Harris.

“Well, you know what they supposedly said?” she asks me. “She’s not black. That’s what I heard. That she’s Indian.”

She looks at me expectantly, perhaps assuming that I have Indian heritage.

“Well, she’s both,” I offer.

“Her father’s white. That’s what I was told. I mean, I haven’t watched the news in a few days,” she coughs. “I was told that they discovered her father was white.”

I’m floored at this point. It’s well known that Harris’s father is a Jamaican economist, a Stanford professor who split from her Indian mother when she was five. “My mother understood very well that she was raising two black daughters,” Harris wrote in her book The Truths We Hold.

The people who are most vocal in questioning the facts of Harris’s identity tend to be hardcore QAnon-adjacent, Trump-loving conspiracy theorists. I don’t think Jackson falls into that camp, but I do wonder what the algorithms are serving her. I start again. Harris has dual heritage, I say, and, given this moment, does Jackson think America is ready for her – if we agree she’s black? Or, OK, a woman of colour?

“I don’t know,” Jackson stage whispers. “Honestly, I don’t want to answer that because I really, truthfully, don’t know. I think either way it goes is going to be mayhem.”

James O'Brien's "How they broke Britain" documents the same sad story of how truth no longer matters

We humans have lived in an imagined world for a long time now. Humans have also wrought a lot of their imaginings into physical realities too - so there is sometimes a connection between the imagined and the real.

Lately the imaginings have become enough for most humans. What reality is actually doing to us has become irrelevant (until it kills us) as we can exist in a fog of irreality created by the wildest imaginings of not just Hollywood but the mass media fodder known as "news" (infotainment). Anti-social media and its crazed content is now "news" for most.

We're doomed.

[Bonefishblues]

Asking Janet Jackson about something approximating to reality has its limitations on many levels, wouldn't you think?

[Cugel]

Asking Janet Jackson about something approximating to reality has its limitations on many levels, wouldn't you think?

Slebs do make it easy for us to mock their obvious disconnection from most aspects of reality. But let's not pretend that we ourselves are immune to wild imaginings - our own and those of others. All of us are captured by the language(s) we think in and by a thousand cultural constructs that are all imaginary, even if someone has done their utmost to construct also a physical correlation.

It's a rare experience to "feel the real" for any modern human. So much mental concept-fog gets in the way. There's a simplistic but perhaps fundamentally true observation that only 10% of what we apprehend as "out there" is physical sense data, with the other 90% being constructed with an overlay of the expectations created by the cultural installations placed in our minds as we're socialised, educated and otherwise made part of one or more of the many human cultural groups.

As a species, we seem happy to perform vast harms, to other, ourselves and anything/everything, in pursuit of mad notions about gods, ideal polities, economic claptrappery and a whole range of other purely imaginary things constantly conjured up by cultural efflorescence. Any of us may find some cultural "finger" pressing our pre-programed buttons and off we go on some mad pursuit doing all sorts of damage on the way and, moreso, when we reach our latest desirable objective.

********************

When in the forest watching the simple acts of Cadi the collie, I often wish it could be the same for me. But once we're infected with a language, there's no saving us from what it tells us to do. Trump may be an extreme example of cultured craziness but we're all infected to one degree or another.

[briansnail]

A certain USA Presidential candidate claims there would be no wars e.g Iran.If he was in charge.The stugnet virus attacked the Iran reactor centrifuge.The virus then spread everywhere.Giving lots of countries an opportunity of attack.Once they learnt how to use it.To keep the peace Obama did a deal to contain Iran.Keeping them onside USA.Trump strategies somehow always end up doing Russia a favour. Certainly it helped steer Iran into the willing embrace of Russia.Let us hope the peacekeeping ability of Trump.Does not result in WW3.

[djnotts]

With followers like this, Trump might as well lie as not.

"False claims suggesting that Hurricane Milton was “engineered” and that the weather in Florida is being “manipulated” have been spreading on social media.

There is no technology that allows humans to create and control hurricanes.

But on platforms like X and TikTok, posts alleging - without evidence - that the US government is secretly controlling the weather have been viewed millions of times."

[djnotts]

Betting odds seem to suggest that telling lies is "working" again. And Europe is, rightly, increasingly nervous.

" The Financial Times leads on EU preparations of a possible second Trump presidency. Polling suggests he and Kamala Harris are currently tied. EU officials are said to be holding daily meetings to discuss where a Trump administration could "cause the most pain for the bloc". According to people familiar with the talks, officials are discussing topics including how to withstand a "barrage" of trade tariffs, offset an end to US aid in Ukraine, and maintain sanctions against Russia if the US decides to lift theirs." (BBC News)

Maybe a few "checks and balances" remain in US, but overall a Trump victory likely to have a profound effect for Europe and NATO. And not for the good.

[francovendee]

I see the coming Trump victory as a turning point for the whole world. When he gets in things will never be the same.
I don't mean just whilst he's president but ongoing. Today's values of honesty and transparency (not good at times) will seem like a distant dream.

[Stradageek]

I hold onto the hope that the pollsters are all lying and Kamala Harris is in fact well in the lead.

If the polls are close, the PACs will pay for more polls and more TV advertising time, if Kamala is well ahead the gravy train stops

[Bonefishblues]

Betting odds seem to suggest that telling lies is "working" again. And Europe is, rightly, increasingly nervous.

No, the odds are being manipulated by a cabal of wealthy people who are heavily invested in a Trump victory. The odds follow the money, they don't represent probability.

[Pebble]

I wouldn't really trust the polls, do folk tell them the truth, do the pollsters tell the truth - too many axes to grind
Bookies are more interesting, money is it at stake, big money, why would they have trump as odds on?

A sad day for the planet if Trump wins, he does not care about all the things I hold dear, like the environment and all the flora and fauna, he couldn't care less. Burn as much fossil fuels as you like.
Disaster for Ukraine, and peace in Europe, why is he sort of friends with Putin? very strange

On one bright note he will let Israel sort out Hamas, Houtis & Hezbolah. and hopefully shut Iran up.. But that is all small beer compared to the harm and instability he will cause.

The world is becoming a more dangerous place and an increasingly insane trump is the very last thing we need. He wasn't the best 8 years ago, this time round is going to be far far worse. No more trying to be Mr Nice Guy, just hate and vengeance against his many opponents.