by Dan Burns

Apr 20, 2026, 6:00 AM

What really is the deal with Trump’s chronic lying?

For the most part I avoid calling someone a liar unless I’m sure the person certainly knows he’s claiming something is true when it’s false, or vice versa. Because of the human capacities for rationalization and motivated reasoning I generally don’t consider that to be the case in political contexts. People honestly believe, at least to some extent, what to me and others who seriously try to be objective and fact-based is obvious nonsense. But Trump’s untruths are so constant and blatant that in common with most who write about it I’m going to go ahead and call him a compulsive liar. And take a look at why he is that.

I ran across this not long ago. It’s far from the most significant lying he’s ever done, but I think it’s a great example of what we’re dealing with here.

Certainly, if you listen to what Donald Trump had to say about his high school baseball “career,” he was definitely a truly great one. In fact, in his own words, he was “said to be the best b-ball player in New York State.” Or as he’s also said, “I was supposed to be a professional baseball player,” adding with a Trumpian flourish: “Fortunately, I decided to go into real estate instead.”

Now, admittedly, an author at Slate checked out some of his high school (the New York Military Academy, or NYMA) box scores and found this: “His junior year, Trump went 2 for 10 in the three game stories I found in the archives. In Trump’s senior season, I couldn’t find much of any NYMA baseball coverage in the Evening News. But the Poughkeepsie Journal and Journal News had him hitting 1 for 9 in three games. Combined, the nine box scores I unearthed give Trump a 4 for 29 batting record in his sophomore, junior, and senior seasons, with three runs batted in and a single run scored. Trump’s batting average in those nine games: an underwhelming .138.” And in his senior year, it seems, in seven games he got one hit in 21 at-bats for a striking .047 batting average.
(TomDispatch)

I read a number of articles about this, and I think this one summarized some things particularly well.

So why say things that are so untrue?

Is Trump serious about any of this?

The aggregate opinion seems to be both an unhelpful no and a yes, so the answer remains unclear…

My colleague Jennifer Saul and I are scholars in the political philosophy of language. We’re among those who cite this example of Trump bullshit in our work on bullshit in authoritarian political speech and how bullshit can succeed even though everyone recognizes that it is, in fact, bullshit…

Really obvious bullshit can succeed politically, we proposed, because there are many audiences in mass communication. Bullshit targeted at Audience A can be a big hit with Audience B, if B thinks A deserves it.

Then it becomes a display of power over A, with B enjoying the spectacle. This overt bullshitting lends itself to authoritarian politics for someone cultivating a strongman image. It marks an opponent for disrespectful treatment, and advertises that the bullshitter cannot be held to account.
(The Conversation)

This is from 2020, but it still holds. Does it ever.

But there was no hint of a collapsing brand this week on the streets and in the stores of two Ohio cities where Trump won more than 60 per cent of the vote in the 2016 election. In the eyes of his voters in Newark and nearby Zanesville, Trump was either correct, possibly correct, mistaken but well-intentioned, or a delightfully cunning manipulator fomenting chaos to strengthen his political hand.

“What he was wanting to do was keep things stirred up so it was all confused. He said he was going to do that from the time he started running for the election,” said the man on the bike, retired factory worker John Tolliver, 75. “That’s what it’s going to take. When they’re confused, they don’t know what they’re doing, they’re going to make a mistake, and he’s going to grab them.”

…Yet Trump has also managed a remarkable feat: maintaining a reputation among millions of Americans as a man of rare honesty at the same time as he launches an unprecedented daily barrage of Oval Office lies.
(University of Notre Dame website)

I’ll say what I want, make any claim that I please, and if you don’t like it, tough. What are you going to do about it, anyway? This is highly regarded by hard-core MAGA types as “owning the libs.”

One point that I think is important wasn’t made in what I read. As an extreme malignant narcissist Trump has to continue to believe that he is some kind of supreme god among us mere humans. His constant lies reinforce his view of himself as the greatest person ever, who should get to do whatever he wants and be universally admired – indeed, worshipped – for it.

With most politicians who are given to bullshitting it’s at least somewhat performative. That is, it’s political rhetoric, with a long history of everything goes. With Trump it’s deeper. He is delusional, and while there is something performative about his lies as well, in his “mind” there is no real boundary between reality and fantasy.

But also, the constant bullshitting does indeed work. This vile, repugnant, absolutely classless lout without a single redeeming quality as a human being got to the White House twice. His chronic lying seems to be backfiring now, at least more than it has before. But he’s still POTUS, and still getting very wealthy off his flagrant corruption even though he’s unlikely to be around much longer to enjoy it.