Trump is not a liar

He’s a bullshitter! Quoth Harry Frankfurt (found via this article)

“A liar knows they are lying, which means they know what the truth is, and have a certain respect for it. But a bullshitter either doesn’t know or doesn’t care, and is fundamentally unable to handle being caught. “

Harry Frankfurt – On Bullshit

I was thinking about this when I was seeing the trumpettes valiantly arguing against the world calling Trump a liar for claiming that a living president agreed that The Wall is a good idea.

Trump didn’t lie, he was just trying to bullshit you, as he always does.

Trump Metaphors

I quite liked how this person put it after Trump instantly flip-flopped on NAFTA:

[Trump] walked into the control room, thinking he’s gonna change everything and it’ll be great. But the walls are plastered in tiny buttons and switches and dials and he realises he doesn’t know what 90% of them do.

There was a big new switch on the wall labelled “TPP” that was in the ‘off’ position. He said he wouldn’t turn it on, and he successfully doesn’t turn it on. That was easy. How hard could this be?

He pulls the lever marked “BORDERS” down, towards the ‘off’ position. Mission accomplished. But after a moment it springs right back up on its own. He pulls it down again, and it springs back up again. Embarrassed, he quickly moves to another part of the room.

He goes over to the dial marked “NORTH KOREA” and starts twisting it in a clockwise direction, upon which an alarm on the ceiling starts ringing and flashing red. Everyone’s watching him and he wants to look like he knows what he’s doing, so he decides to leave it in its new position and see what happens.

Then he wondered over to the big switch labelled “NAFTA”, but the crowd behind him made a huge commotion, and his assistants caught his eye and shook their heads, so he’s backing away.

Meanwhile there are a bunch of pressure gauges creeping into the red, but he hasn’t actually noticed them yet.