Donald Trump lies. At this point that should be about as controversial as saying the sun rises in the east or that water is wet. In fact, he is one of the great oral fabulists of our time, writing fiction with his mouth with a breathtaking rapidity and diligence. And while the content of what he says may be amusing, enraging or depressing it is much less important than why he is actually doing it. Because there are two reasons Donald trump lies.

The first reason he lies can be best related by the old parable of the scorpion and the frog. A scorpion comes up to a frog, sitting on a river bank, and asks the frog to help him cross the water. The frog is understandably reluctant, claiming the scorpion will sting him. The scorpion promises not to, because if it does it won’t be able to cross. The frog, wary but credulous, lets the scorpion on its back and starts swimming them both across the river. Half-way over, the scorpion stings him. The frog cries ‘Why would you do that? Now we’ll both drown!’ and the Scorpion apologizes, saying that he can’t help it. It’s in his nature to sting.

It is in Donald Trumps nature to lie as it is in the scorpions to sting. It is a constitutional requirement, a habit of existence developed over long years and no longer subject to any kind of rational necessity. He lies because he prefers the fiction to the reality, because he yearns for those around him to believe he is who he wishes he was, not who he is. He is not alone in this. Many people lie for the same reason, its just most of them don’t become President.

At this point his defenders would say that all politicians lie. There is some truth to this, but not enough. What all politicians actually do is bend the truth and lie by omission. That is using the lie as a defensive weapon. These lies are usually about intentions and values. Is a program successful? Is that fair? Is this position consistent with your previous stance? All the usual political lies fall under this rubric. But there is something qualitatively different about Trump’s speakings. He lies about facts. What is more, he lies about facts that are abundantly clear. When he claims he is a multi-billionaire. When he denies having ever said things he said repeatedly the same afternoon and that he will say again tomorrow. He constructs a new reality around himself, a reality that is like its creator in every important respect; fatuous, shallow, facile and bankrupt.

 

The second reason he lies is much more insidious. That it is reminiscent of the Eastern-European, post-soviet authoritarians is probably not a coincidence considering his aide Paul Manafort worked for so long for the Russian client government in the Ukraine. The Russian word for the concept as so practiced is dezinformatsiya. It isn’t just the untruth that is important here but the scale of the deception. You don’t just tell one lie about a thing, you tell a dozen. For instance, take the Russian destruction of the Malaysian Airines flight over Ukraine. Everybody knows it was Russian weapons wielded, at the very least, by Russian-trained seperatists and possibly by Russian soldiers themselves. A normal lie would be flat out denial. Instead, Putin and his state-controlled media suggested that it was actually Ukranian forces. And that it was American jet-fighters. And that it was shot down while attempting to prevent an airstrike on the Russian Presidents plane. And that it was an elaborate hoax, where dead bodies were loaded into an aircraft and crashed to discredit Russia. The airwaves are filled with conflicting reports, all bald-faced lies, which muddy the water and prevent a clear appraisal of the facts.

 

The purpose of this strategy is to promote a world-weary sigh, a shrug of the shoulders and a lamentation that ‘We’ll probably never know’. That is why Trump lies so rapidly, and so often. Not just because its in his nature but because he knows that his critics and the media will be struggling to check and cover the lie he told this morning, meanwhile  he lies three more times before lunch.  Thus we find ourselves in this bizarre situation: If he lied only half as much, if he were only half as bad as he is, he would seem much worse.