"Johnny, Johnny."
"Yes, Papa."
"Eating sugar?"
"No, Papa."
"Telling lies?"
"No, Papa."
"Open your mouth."
"Ha-ha-ha!"
If you have kids, you’d know how to sing this little nursery rhyme, “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” or “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep!” (If you don’t, listen to Mozart’s “Ah vous dirai-je, Maman”)
Johnny, you guessed, is caught eating sugar when he is not supposed to. He is also not supposed to tell an untruth. Does his father forgive him on both accounts? Since he laughs at the end, apparently, he does. But Johnny shouldn’t have been forgiven for telling a lie, even if it was about the candies! Why? Child psychologists say parents try to understand why the lie is occurring, or the motive for lying. You have to eliminate the compelling reasons if there are any. The subject is somewhat complicated for a lay person like me, but they say there might be three basic motives: to get out of trouble for something they did or didn’t do, to gain something personal, or to impress, protect or make someone feel better. This third group, known as prosocial lying, is the most worrisome motive, which, if not handled properly, your kid might end up like: Trump the narcissist! Trump the egoist! Trump the storyteller! Trump the belligerent! You know, Trump, the president of the U.S.
Psychologists say Donald Trump’s persona compels attention and analysis, and many of them from all ideological camps agreed upon a label of narcissistic personality disorder as the condition that explains his behavior. Remember: more than 70,000 mental health professionals signed a petition warning of Trump's potential dangerousness. Also, remember please, they are professionals who do not diagnose public figures even if they have personally examined them. Yet, imagine the danger they felt on behalf of the public.
The “prosocial lying” as a kid, child psychologists say, evolves into fabricating stories (i.e., “I have ended six wars... no, seven wars, all of these deals I made without even the mention of the word 'cease-fire'”; “The EU gave the United States a $600 billion present, I can spend however I wanted”) or into “loud but empty threats” (i.e., “Unlike Biden’s hollow threats, my sanctions would be a devastating blow to Russia, because they are currently struggling economically”; “I don’t rule it out. I don’t say I’m going to do it, but I don’t rule out using military force to annex Greenland”; “It will be very nice to depopulate Gaza and put it under U.S. occupation.”) or in non-sensical bloviation (i.e., “I am also a war hero”; “I don’t really believe I’ve made any mistakes”; “‘I’m a negotiator like you Jews”; “I am the least racist person there is”).
Jokes aside, The Washington Post documented 30,573 false or misleading claims Trump made during his first presidential term, an average of 21 per day. Fact-checkers at Western media are still working on his second-term scores. I believe his numbers get better because he has no political opposition in Congress. The Toronto Star described Trump's lying as unprecedented in American politics! Scholarly analysis of Trump's X posts found significant evidence of an intent to deceive. Check out the Wikipedia page devoted to Trump’s false or misleading statements.
It is all Donald Trump Sr.’s fault. He should have emphasized the benefits of honesty and the wrongness of lying. But it is too late. Trump, Jr., is already a 79-year-old man, with swollen ankles and hands, diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency and is too old to learn new tricks. When you are a liar, you are a liar. In an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper, Trump biographer Michael D'Antonio claimed in 2018 that Trump has been lying since he was a child.
But we still have to find an answer to the question of why leaders lie. We are lucky because political scientist John Mearsheimer, in his 2011 book, asks that exact question, telling us “the truth about lying in international politics.”
Mearsheimer (by now you must know he is my favorite international relations scholar), a R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, argues that leaders lie to foreign audiences as well as their own people because they think it is good for their country. That is true for the presidents like Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s (in)famous lie about the Greer incident in August 1941 was told due to a deep commitment to getting the United States into World War II, which he thought was in America's national interest.
“The Greer incident” refers to a confrontation involving the USS Greer, an American destroyer, during World War II, while on a mission to deliver supplies to Marines in Iceland. The Greer tracked a German U-boat after receiving a report from a British pilot. Therefore, on Sept. 11, 1941, Roosevelt announced that henceforth the U.S. Navy was to “shoot on sight” any German vessel in parts of the Atlantic loosely defined as those areas necessary for American defense. The whole incident was a lie; no German U-Boat, no tracking, etc. He simply wanted the U.S. to enter the war.
Mearsheimer writes that democratic leaders are actually more likely to lie to their own people than autocrats. Thus, dictator Saddam Hussein did not lie about having weapons of mass destruction; he truthfully said Iraq had none. But Democratic President George Bush lied to the American people about the threat from Iraq. Mearsheimer argues that leaders believe that lying is effective, and it is easier because people trust them.
In the book, Mearsheimer classifies political lies into five categories: inter-state lies, fear-mongering, strategic cover-ups, nationalist myths and liberal lies. He explains leaders lie, especially when there would be no “blowbacks” (unintended consequences or backfiring) and where “spinning” is part of the political culture. Mearsheimer delves not into the moral dimension of lying; being one of the inventors of realism in political analysis, he looks at it simply from a realist perspective.
Trump’s excessive pride in himself and arrogance of seeing government affairs as his transactional achievements make everything “cash treats” in his eyes, without any moral force of any ideals. How could he lay claims to the long-fought-for Armenian-Azerbaijani peace with a showpiece agreement signing ceremony at the White House? With that smirk on his face when his guests promised to nominate him for the Nobel Prize? Trump lacks the intellectual sophistication the office requires; thus, he makes up for it with crude showmanship and lies.
Several academics studying American politics concluded that many politicians lie to the public. But Trump is unique in his lying, says Carole McGranahan, an anthropologist at the University of Colorado: “He is the most accomplished and effective liar to have ever participated in American politics; moreover, his lying has reshaped public discourse so that the frequency, degree, and impact of lying in politics are now unprecedented.”
In his article in the Toronto Star, historian Douglas Brinkley wrote that, “U.S. presidents have occasionally lied or misled the country, but none were a serial liar like Trump.”
Donnel Stern, writing in Psychoanalytic Dialogues in 2019, declared: “Trump lies as a policy, and will say anything to satisfy his supporters or himself.”
Some observers think that Trump is not in fact a liar, but more of a hustler. According to Eduardo Porter of The Washington Post, Trump does not have to check U.S. unemployment or inflation statistics to assert that he inherited from the last administration an economic catastrophe and an inflation nightmare, because, for a hustler, the facts do not matter.
The real casualty in Trump’s lies and untruths is the Grand Old Party. The Republicans, as a whole, have increasingly adopted a position in defiance of facts. That is not something to laugh at with Johnny The Liar, Little Star Twinkle, or Baa, Baa, Black Sheep!
