Donald J. Trump, 2015

“All politicians lie”, it is said. It’s a political extension of “everyone lies”. While it might not be entirely true, the cliché exists because the behavior is common. And most of the time, it’s easy to see why they lie.

Not so with Donald Trump.

When politicians lie, it’s usually fairly obvious that they’re lying for the same reasons children lie: self-preservation (to avoid unpleasantness) or to gain something. “I didn’t break the window”, if untrue, is an attempt to avoid punishment. “I did my chores”, if untrue, could be an attempt to gain praise or allowance money. Sometimes lies are for convenience — when a short, quick, harmless lie will end an unpleasant situation more easily than a long/complex truth.

Both the left and right jumped on President Barack Obama for his “you can keep your doctor” lie, which he repeated frequently and then quickly abandoned when it became convenient. But no one ever questioned why he lied — we all knew it was part of stumping for the healthcare plan.

When President Bill Clinton uttered the infamous (and untrue) phrase “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky”, no one wondered why he lied.

Some of President Ronald Reagan’s lies were later attributed to his mental condition, though it’s still a matter of debate as to exactly when he began to be afflicted. Others, like the infamous “trees cause more pollution than cars do”, are oft-explained as misunderstanding science, but the reason for that one was clear: Reagan wanted fewer environmental protections.

When they lie during campaigns, we know it’s to secure votes or donations (depending on the audience of the lie). When they lie while holding office, we know it’s to get certain legislation passed or to protect themselves from investigation. In almost every situation, the why of the lie is more obvious than the lie itself.

Donald Trump — at least to me — is different. His lies are different too. It doesn’t help that many of his speeches and debate responses resemble gibberish when seen in print form. It’s a rare occurrence to see a complete sentence. It’s rare to see a sentence without a self-interruption. His phrasing is odd for a politician — this video is one of many examples.

One of the most outstanding features of his lies is that he often doesn’t even say them. Read some of his “sentences” (more accurately described as “word collections”) in written form. Notice how he begins to say what you think he will say, but then interrupts himself with an irrelevant comment. Your brain might later remember that he finished the first part, but upon reflection you’ll realize he never did. Other times, he’ll phrase the lie as “people are saying”. Later you’ll remember that he said it, but when you check the transcript, you’ll see that what he actually did was quote anonymous (and possibly made-up) “people”.

Another weird feature of Trump’s lies is that he often contradicts them for no reason. A normal politician will say different things to different groups. For example, promise a teachers union protections for all teachers, but then promise another group rigorous testing for teachers to weed out the “bad ones”. We all expect this; it’s called getting votes. But Trump will be addressing the entire nation and say completely contradictory things, often in the course of the same speech. Very often, I can’t actually pinpoint a reason for his statements.

(Yes, he does the normal politician lies too — “we’re gonna bring back jobs”, “we’ll build a wall”, etc. — to get votes, and those we can shrug off because everyone does it.)

In a binary world, there are two possibilities: (1) he doesn’t realize he’s doing this, or (2) he does realize he’s doing this.

If the former is true, it becomes tempting to give him an armchair diagnosis of mental aberration. If the latter is true, then something more sinister is going on.

The facts of Trump’s life do not really support the first possibility. The ease with which he has skated through the business world over many decades — remaining wealthy despite repeated failures in business, for example — do not support the hypothesis that he’s deranged. It in fact supports the opposite conclusion.

This leaves the other possibility: that Trump knows what he’s doing.

For me, this is difficult to fathom. Most people I have known have been fundamentally honest. Many of us might lie for convenience, for self-preservation, or to gain something, but almost none of us lie repeatedly and regularly for no discernible reason. And we tend to expect this even of most strangers. In fact, I don’t know that I’ve ever met anyone who has lied without an obvious reason.

Some have opined (for example, this ThinkProgress op-ed) that “His aim is to undermine peoples’ perceptions of the world, so they never know what is really happening”, with the result that: “When fake news becomes omnipresent, all news becomes suspect. Everything starts to look like a lie.” The conclusion drawn from such an epiphany is that Trump is attempting to circumvent democracy itself.

“When political actors can’t agree on basic facts and procedures, compromise and rule-bound argumentation are basically impossible; politics reverts back to its natural state as a raw power struggle in which the weak are dominated by the strong.”

While the premise is easy to swallow, I’m not convinced the conclusion is true. One of my reasons for automatic skepticism is that it sounds so obviously like a crackpot’s conspiracy theory. It also sounds too much like the far left’s sky-is-falling warnings we heard throughout the campaign — “Trump is the new Hitler!” they cry, inadvertently proving Godwin’s law and associated corollaries.

As a skeptic of such theories, an automatic first question is: “What does he stand to gain?”

Donald Trump — I’m still operating under the conclusion that he’s doing this intentionally — has nothing to gain from Hitleresque policies, nor from almost any form of authoritarianism. As a businessman, he stands to gain from the prestige of the office of President, from changes to tax law and regulatory practices, and from enhanced access to information. All of those can make him wealthier than he’s ever been — and all he has to do is spend four years in office.

This explains the confusing lies during the campaign, but not the torrent of untruths after the election. I’m still grasping at that, and haven’t found a satisfactory answer. The best I can come up with right now is that it’s still helpful to him in some way. Perhaps it serves as a form of distraction and deflection. It gives TV talking heads something to discuss instead of the shocking cabinet selections Trump has made, something for the rest of us to retweet or gripe about.

It reminds me of a car salesman asking about your family or telling you about a fishing trip — neither of which have anything to do with buying a car — when it keeps you from asking about fuel economy, helps you forget to ask about previous owners, or takes up time that you could have better spent by shopping somewhere else. The whole point is to keep the conversation under his control instead of yours.