How Much of Trump’s Worst Utterances are BS and How Much Are Something Else?
Under the Harry Frankfurt academic concept of bullshit, people with no tether to truth will say anything to get their way. What if Trump has lost contact with reality?
I’ve long thought of Donald Trump as someone who almost perfectly exemplified Princeton emeritus professor Harry Frankfort’s short volume, “On Bullshit.”
As I wrote in 2020, Frankfort noted that both honest people and liars orient to truth—one to communicate it, the other deny it. Bullshitters have no such restriction. They will say anything they think will get them what they want.
“Human thought depends on the structure of language and a general agreement about what words mean,” I said at the time. “Distort that, and over time people can get confused, losing respect for fact in public discourse. The founders of our country and the framers of our Constitution believed in the ideals of research, reasoned debate and rational thought—sadly forgotten by too many of us.”
Years of spinning evasive takes on reality have degraded respect for truth and empirical reality. That is true for both major political parties, but the GOP has by far been more egregious. Trump embodies the spirit as the “rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.” Or reborn, as he seeks a second election to the most powerful position in the country.
My views are not softening exactly but shifting somewhat. I have assumed that Trump was the consummate bullshitter. Throughout most of his life, and certainly his career, he has demonstrated his willingness to say anything in his effort to get what he wants. And to do anything, which is why he ultimately lost the defamation suit that E. Jean Carroll brought, with the resulting $83 million verdict, because in his own actions and words, he’s perfectly happy to sexually force himself on women, whether you call it rape or try to pretend that maybe what he did wasn’t technically that, depending on what jurisdiction’s definition is to apply. Whatever, it seems clear.
But back to his words because of President Biden and the “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” wording special counsel Robert Hur chose. A line many are taking up, even though it seems wildly inappropriate for a prosecutor, special or not, to deliver what would seem a wildly inappropriate formation with the air of medical judgment.
Memory is a slippery thing, especially as you grow older, at least so I’ve been told by one of the world’s leading experts on the subject in a previous interview. You can forget something’s name even though you remember all sorts of things about the subject, and eventually you will remember. It’s irritating and part of aging, but it really doesn’t necessarily mean true cognitive impairment.
People make verbal slips all the time. I’ve seen that with professionals of all stripes and in interviews have had to question them to be sure we’re on the same track, and, ultimately, we are.
But when strange things are coming out of someone’s mouth, like assuming Nikki Haley was in charge of security of Congress on January 6, 2021 or that liberals would change the name of Pennsylvania if he lost in November, or the massive collection of 1,000 fact checks that Poynter’s Politifact had made of Trump’s statements. “It's not unusual for politicians of both parties to mislead, exaggerate or make stuff up,” they wrote. “But American fact-checkers have never encountered a politician who shares Trump’s disregard for factual accuracy.” Three quarters of them garnered either “mostly false,” “false,” or “pants on fire.”
Is it all bullshit? Does he just make stuff up? Is his assumption that enough people will nod and believe him to get him the presidency? Or, and this is the thought I had that has felt disturbing, does he no longer know? Is he facing some form and degree of cognitive impairment under which he really believes what he says? Like when he has walked away from public events when he was supposed to stay and do something?
I almost hope that it is all bullshit because that would be less disturbing. But I don’t know.