Karnac the Magnificent predicts how many times Donald Trump lies

Late night comedian Johnny Carson's hilarious skit redux: "How many times does Donald Trump lie?"
Donald Trump lies more often than you wash your hands every day. (In other words, Trump's serial lies are a political infectious disease hazard!)
By Chris Callizza

Echo opinion published in CNN Politics

(CNN) In his first 869 days as president, Donald Trump said 10,796 things that were either misleading or outright false, according to The Washington Post's Fact Checker. 

Do the math and you get this: The President of the United States is saying 12 untrue things a day. Which is a lot! 

But, it's also hard to wrap your head around how much lying or, uh, misleading that actually is. So, think about it this way: Trump is lying more every day than a majority of Americans wash their hands. According to data from the American Cleaning Institute, just 50% of Americans wash their hands in excess of 10 times a day. (Not for nothing: Here's the CDC's guidelines on proper handwashing!)

Try this thought experiment: Every time you wash your hands for the rest of the day -- after using the restroom, before you eat etc. -- think of that as Donald Trump saying something that isn't true. For more than half of you, that won't even equal the number of times Trump doesn't tell the truth every day of his presidency (including weekends!).

Trump's willingness to bend and break the truth isn't new. Since becoming a candidate for president way back in 2015, Trump has shown a remarkable capacity for creating his own reality, a reality that often doesn't comport with established facts. The pace at which he misleads has increased as his presidency has gone on. So too has his willingness to directly question the idea of whether capital "T" truth even exists.

Stupidity runs amok with Donald Trump! "Stick with us. Don't believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news," Trump told the annual VFW convention in 2018. "What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening."

Asked about Meghan Markle's 2016, comment that she would move to Canada if Trump won, the President said this: "I didn't know that she was nasty. I hope she is OK." Within 24 hours of making the initial comment, Trump tweeted: "I never called Meghan Markle 'nasty.' Made up by the Fake News Media, and they got caught cold! Will @CNN, @nytimes and others apologize? Doubt it!" So, yeah! Trumpzi lies run amok!

It is also the defining trait of Trump's presidency to date, and, I think, the likeliest legacy he will leave behind -- whether (please God, not!) he is a fake president through 2020 or 2024. 

What Trump has done -- through both the audaciousness of his lies, their frequency and his assault on the media as a neutral referee -- is made it virtually impossible for the average person to credibly delineate between what's true and what's merely political spin.

Trump has effectively created a self-fulfilling falsehood machine. 

It works like this:

1. He says something that is either misleading or totally refuted by known facts
2. The media fact-checks him, noting said known facts as evidence that he isn't tell the truth
3. Trump seizes on these media fact-checks as evidence that journalists are out to get him
4. His followers, uh, follow suit -- asking questions like: "How many times has CNN lied since Trump became President?????"

Wash. Rinse. Repeat (WRR- Trumpziism): Urban dictionary, "Used to indicate that a certain pattern of behavior will, inevitably, occur again - usually despite furious claims that it won't."

The cumulative effect of this cycle -- after nearly four years of it -- is a steady erosion of truth or even the broader idea that we as humans have things on which we all can and should agree. What Trump has proven (or maybe re-proven when you look at the sweep of history) is that if someone in a position of power is willing to unblinkingly say things that aren't true, they can create a parallel universe of falsehoods that a not-insignificant number of people will believe.

Hopefully, politicians who follow Trumpzi into the presidency may not have the gall to push the lie line as far as he has. But none of them will come into office unaware of what he did to shape his own political reality.

Tearing families and "put them back together again"

(CNN) From the moment images of children being separated from their parents bubbled up in the national consciousness late last week, it became abundantly clear that something had to be done, and quickly.

Regardless of how we got to this point -- a decision by the Trump administration to put in place a "zero-tolerance" policy regarding people trying to enter the country illegally -- the images (and the audio) demanded action. 

Tearing kids away from parents, even parents who are trying to cross into the country illegally, gets beyond dry policy debates. 

Tragically, the separations are an emotional issue -- about who we are as a country and who we want to be.

And yet, President Donald Trump and his administration spent the better part of a week insisting that his hands were tied (they weren't) when it came to ending the crisis at the border. He called on Congress to act. He sent out the head of the Department of Homeland Security to insist that "Congress alone can fix it." Then on Wednesday afternoon -- even as the House was preparing to vote on an immigration bill on Thursday -- Trump suddenly announced he would be signing "something" that would end the separation of families at the border.

Later Wednesday, he signed an executive order to keep parents and kids together.

"We're signing an executive order. I consider it to be a very important executive order. It's about keeping families together, while at the same time being sure we have a very powerful, very strong border," Trump said.

If your head is spinning at that turn of events, you aren't alone.

In fact, you probably have that feeling in common with every Republican in Congress. Trump's announcement that he would sign an order to deal with family separation runs directly counter to what his White House was saying just hours earlier. 

In fact, the message from the White House went from "You guys need to fix this" to "Ah, hell, I'll just do it" in the blink of an eye.

That whipsawing came as the result of a fundamental miscalculation by Trump and his allies: That staking out a "tough" stand on the need to harden the border would counteract any agita caused by the "zero-tolerance" policy at the border. What Trump missed, and he reportedly acknowledged this in his huddle with House Republicans on Tuesday night, was the power of the images that were coming from the border. Images of kids crying as their parents were arrested and taken away. Audio of kids crying for their parents. Human suffering in words and pictures. Tough talk didn't hold a candle top what people were seeing on their TVs.

That miscalculation was bad. But it was compounded by another strategic decision by Trump: To cast the border crisis as something that not only wasn't his fault but that he was powerless to fix -- neither of which were true.

"The Democrats are forcing the breakup of families at the Border with their horrible and cruel legislative agenda," Trump tweeted last Friday. "Any Immigration Bill MUST HAVE full funding for the Wall, end Catch & Release, Visa Lottery and Chain, and go to Merit Based Immigration. Go for it! WIN!"

On Monday morning, Trump tweeted: "It is the Democrats fault for being weak and ineffective with Boarder [sic] Security and Crime. Tell them to start thinking about the people devastated by Crime coming from illegal immigration. Change the laws!"

By that night, Trump's administration had doubled down on its powerlessness and blamelessness -- via a disastrously bad press conference by Kirstjen Nielsen, the head of the Department of Homeland Security.

"Congress and the courts created this problem and Congress alone can fix it," Nielsen said. "Until then, we will enforce every law we have on the books to defend the sovereignty and security of the United States. Those who criticize the enforcement of our laws have offered only one countermeasure: open borders, the quick release of all illegal alien families and the decision not to enforce our laws."

Ahem. Cough. Nervous collar tug.

Facts, for once, got in the way of that argument. Time and time again over the past five days, it was pointed out that the zero-tolerance policy -- coupled with the fact that children cannot be held in a federal prison -- was at the root of this crisis. And that just as easily as Attorney General Jeff Sessions put the zero-tolerance policy in place, Trump could rescind it, allowing law enforcement officials discretion as to who they referred for prosecution.

Caught in the middle of Trump's wild swerving? Republicans in Congress, who saw their already-complicated efforts to pass some sort of comprehensive immigration bill dealing with DACA and border wall funding made that much more difficult by Trump's demand that they solve the family separation policy for him.

Trump added to that chaos repeatedly, first by suggesting at the end of last week that he would veto the compromise plan backed by Speaker Paul Ryan and the GOP leadership, and then on Tuesday night when he endorsed both the compromise bill and its conservative alternative -- providing more than enough cover for members of the House Freedom Caucus to oppose the compromise legislation.

Then, just hours after Ryan, in his weekly press conference, promised that Congress was going to solve or at the very least mitigate the border crisis with legislation that would get a vote on Thursday, Trump cut the legs out from that effort by announcing he was just going to take care of it despite the fact that he had said he couldn't take care of it less than 24 hours before.

The whole thing -- from beginning to (presumed) end -- was a debacle for Republicans trying to build momentum in advance of the November election. The Republicans just spent the better part of a week looking feckless amid pictures of children crying on our southern border. And, in the end, Donald Trump who is the leader of the GOP, completely reversed course from his previous rhetoric, leaving congressional Republicans holding the bag.

This was never going to be an easy issue for Trump, stuck as he was between his calls for toughened border policies and the pictures of children being taken from their parents. But the protracted process, the attempted (lies!) and obfuscation* of facts, the blame game, the jerking around of Republicans in Congress -- all made it much, much worse for Republicans.

*obfuscation ~ making something obscure, unclear, or unintelligible

Donald Trump's apprenticeship: failed on the job empathy training

President's find their leadership stride during times of crises. It's unfortunately a somber right of passage. They are remembered by how they lead during trials and tribulations. 

President Franklin Roosevelt reached out to the hearts of Americans during his fireside chats. President John F. Kennedy showed strength during the Cuban Missile Crises. President William Clinton provided inspirational bereavement to the survivors of Oklahoma City's domestic terrorist bombing. President George Bush '43, spoke to the American people during the September 11, 2001 terrorists attacks. President Obama spoke eloquently and compassionately at more funerals than most people attend in their lifetimes.

In comparisom, it is a tragic lack of leadership in Donald Trump, that prevents him from finding his stride. Consequently, he isn't credible in any leadership capacity.

Moreover, as the cynical writer Andy Borowitz wrote, Donald Trump appeared to read his "post-post Charlottesville Virginia speech", where he was supposed to condemn white the supremacists, like he was a hostage, a person who was being recorded under duress.

CNN reports how Donald Trump is missing a key ingredient to being a successful president

Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large

Tue August 15, 2017

Evidently, Donald Trump has a major empathy problem.

That's not new -- but it is very, very important both to understand his reaction to Charlottesville, as well as his presidency going forward.

Way back in May 2016, Chris Cillizza wrote this:

"As the nation turns its eyes to the general election, I have one question that continues to nag at me as I think about the possibility of Trump in the White House: Can he be empathetic? Like, at all? And does he need to be?"
Watching Trump fumble his initial response to the violence following white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia on Saturday, I was reminded of that question. 

Trump ran as an unapologetic tough guy. But, what happens when you need a softer touch -- in moments like the one that transpired in Charlottesville over the weekend?

"Ultimately, I think a lack of empathy is just one piece of a portrait of a person who is unbalanced and damaged," Stuart Stevens, a Republican consultant who has long vocally opposed Trump, told me of Trump at the time. "He has spent his life in a bubble, surrounded by hired yes men and women who have never told his inner child to grow up."

Unfortunately, the 2016 voters who supported Donald Trump appeared to want a US  leadership change, more than they wanted a leader who cared about them.

That may be an overly-harsh analysis. But, it's hard to dispute Stevens' assertion that Trump's capacity for empathy is extremely low and, when he is required to reach out to people who he doesn't know or who don't support him, he is extremely uncomfortable and often simply unwilling to do it.

Trump's two Charlottesville speeches are prime evidence. In his Saturday remarks, Trump seemed to be entirely focused on ensuring that people didn't blame him for these violent acts and making clear that protesters "on many sides" were responsible for what happened.

On Monday, Trump, defying all political logic, started by touting his many accomplishments as president before turning to denounce the neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups responsible for the violence -- which left a woman dead and dozens injured -- in Charlottesvile.

Particularly in Monday's speech, it was clear that Trump was checking a box that his advisers insisted he needed to check after swinging and missing so badly Saturday. They told him to read the speech, so he did. But, he quite clearly didn't feel as though it was necessary to do so.

Ask people close to Trump and they will insist he is a kind and understanding person.
"He is a compassionate person," said ousted White House communications director -- and longtime Trump pal -- Anthony Scaramucci in an interview with Stephen Colbert on Monday. (See! Told you!)

And, there is little question that Trump is extremely close and fiercely loyal to his family and a very small inner circle of friends. But that is a very different thing than being empathetic about the struggles of people you've never met or who you know didn't vote for you or don't like you.

For Trump, being president has always been about kicking ass and reasserting America's spot at the front of the line. It's sort of like this moment at a NATO summit at the end of May (where he bullied his way to the front row of dignitaries- such an ugly display of ignorance!)

And, it worked for him during the campaign! People -- especially Republicans -- were sick of politics as usual. The color-within-the-lines politicians hadn't done much of anything they liked so they were willing to take a chance on someone who didn't sound or act like anyone who had ever run for president before.

The 2016 exit poll bears this out. Of the 15% of voters who said knowing the candidate "cares about me" was the most important trait in making up their mind who to vote for, Hillary Clinton beat Trump by 23 points. 

Among the 39% of the electorate who said a candidate who "can bring change" was most important, Trump won by 68(!) points.

People didn't think Trump really cared much about them. 

But they wanted change more than they cared about being cared about.

The problem for Trump -- as so starkly exposed by his response(s) to Charlottesville -- is that being president is a very different thing than running for office. 

Where a lack of empathy doesn't stand out all that much as a candidate -- there is a president in place doing that empathizer-in-chief job -- it stands out hugely when you are actually the President and the country turns to you for unity and inspiration.

And when you deliver a speech in which you cast an incident of white supremacist violence that left a woman dead as a both-sides-do-it situation, you lose credibility even with people who want to believe you have it in you to be more and better than you were as a candidate.

Empathy is not usually the sort of thing you can just start having. 

And it's not something that Trump even seems terribly concerned that he lacks. But, as president, empathy matters. There will be more moments over these next three and a half years where Trump will be called on to recognize and identify with the real grief people are feeling while also reassuring them that better days will come. After what happened over the last 96 hours in Charlottesville, it's not clear Trump has it in him to do that.

MaineWriter addendum: 

Being the leader of all Americans is not "on the job training".  

In fact, the 6 months leadership probationary period is ended. Donald Trump isn't an apprentice anymore. It's time he is removed from his job.