3 September

One Man’s Truth: How Trump Never Lies

by Jon Katz

Keith: I used to chat occasionally with a grade-school chum who had somehow found me online… I found out she was pro-Trump… I asked her what was the most compelling reason she supported Trump? The answer…”He always tells us the truth.” I was astonished and realized there was simply no point in continuing our dialogue.  — Keith

I was struck by Keith’s message this morning; I realized how important and sometimes painful a subject truth is and how important it is for me to write about it, especially now.

I live in upstate New York, way up past Albany, and I often ask my friends and neighbors  – almost all of whom support Trump  – the same question Keith asked his school chum.

And I have always gotten the same answer from every single person I asked.

Because he always tells the truth.

I do see a point in continuing the dialogue; I think the country depends on it, and so does my peace of mind. It’s my favorite worn cliche: I can light a candle or curse the darkness.

Since 2016, I made a choice not to argue and shake my head and fear and hate, but to try to understand what was happening to my country. I like most of the people I know up here, and they’ve been good to me, and as I’ve said, the ones I know are neither bigots nor idiots.

I think our future depends on listening, and I am not a natural listener, I am forever grateful to Hospice for helping me understand how to do it.

It is difficult for me to understand the idea that Trump “always tells the truth” because to my eye, and in my way, he lies more than any public official or public person I have ever seen or followed.

And I really dislike people who lie.

Trump is redefining the very idea of truth and lies. “I lie to myself all the time,” wrote S.E. Hinton in The Outsiders, “but I never believe me.”

How is it possible that nearly half of the country sees President Trump as the most truthful leader they have ever known, and the other half sees him as a sociopath and a liar?

Could it really be all the fault of Fox News and our modern zealots on the right, or is there something so many of us are missing, even if we can’t agree with it or see it the same way?

I’ve had a lot of conversations up here about Trump, nothing formal, and nothing too deep, I think we lean too much on polls rather than human interaction.

But I learned in my hospice work to be an active listener, and I have listened, and I have learned a lot.

We are not best friends, these people, and me,  but I have not been threatened or treated with disrespect or contempt.

Neither, I hope, have they.

I’m dangerously curious sometimes; that was my trait as a reporter; talking to people I make uncomfortable or who make me uncomfortable is a kind of a hobby.

Maria says this is why I have few friends. I’ve always found it more useful to talk to people who disagree with me than people who agree with me.

Yet every day of my life, someone writes to me to say that they like my work even though they often disagree with me. I’m never sure which side I am on.

I’ve learned that truth is learned and subjective, and it is possible to see the truth in completely different ways. I suppose is it arrogant for me to say I know the truth and other people don’t.

There is never, in my mind, only one truth or one way to look at the truth. “The truth,” said Oscar Wilde, is rarely pure and never simple.”

We are living in a great hysteria. They think our democracy will be finished if Trump is not re-elected. We think our democracy will be finished if he is re-elected. We all believe we love our country and care about it. There is no dialogue, no middle ground; the MediaHysteria is just as great as the political one.

We are hamsters on the wheel, spinning around and around.

We can’t all be right, can we?

Our fact-checkers say Trump has lied more than 20,000 times in public. Theirs says he always tells the truth; it’s us and the media who lie.

So, where does a sane and rational person go with this staggering divide, these two radically different ways of understanding truth? Do we simply dismiss half the country as gullible and incomprehensible ignoramuses? It doesn’t feel right to me.

Do we just keep slugging it out and draining our spirits until one side or the other collapses or is beaten into the ground?

I admit to often seeing President Trump as a despot, a wanna-be tyrant. I love and am comforted about Gandhi’s statement about despots:

“When I despair, I remember that the way of truth and love has always won all through history. There have been tyrants and murderers, and they can seem invincible for a time, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it–always.”

But I also know Gandhi lived in a very different world than ours. It is always simpler to fight despots and conquerors than neighbors and fellow citizens.

The people who believe Trump is telling the truth are correct. Trump speaks his mind; he cares nothing for a convention, courtesy, precedent, or political correctness.

His niece Mary Trump suggests that he does not know the difference between facts and his own sense of reality, he speaks the truth that is embedded in his consciousness, and it squares with the truth as many millions of people know it.

Trump, say people close to him, believes he is telling the truth when he lies, it is everyone else who lies. I’ve noticed that whenever Trump is challenged over a lie, he just looks blank and usually walks away. It doesn’t ever seem to register with him.

Trump does not seem to know he is lying or care; he just speaks whatever it is on his mind. In a world where politicians parse every word and thought, Trump is pure and honest to many people. He doesn’t seem to give most of what he says a thought.

And to people enraged and weary at being lied to all of their lives, that kind of honesty is brave and fresh and is a truth all of its own. The truth for them is that our government has failed them, and he expresses this in many ways every day.

Like them, he has no respect for our idea of traditions, that doesn’t seem to have worked out for them or benefited them.

I am struck by how similar many Black complaints about America are similar to the complaints of so many of the Trump supporters I have spoken with.

The country doesn’t work for us. Everyone else has it better than us. We are constantly being persecuted. People think we are stupid and worthless or lazy. The rich thrive while we get screwed. Our children can’t afford college or find good jobs. We have no health care, and our communities are riddled with gun violence. The government works only for the elites, the people who go to Harvard or Yale, the people born to money. We don’t have a chance. We have lied to all of our lives. And nobody cares. Every election year, someone promises to help us, and no one ever does. The system is broken, useless; it needs to be taken apart. That is the truth.

Trump’s followers surprise me by often seeing themselves as a victim of cultural racism, a system that keeps them at the bottom of the pile. The police aren’t shooting their sons in the back, they are dying instead from drug overdoses.

And how many stories do you see in the media about that?

To my consciousness, and because of the way I am raised, I see Trump as a compulsive liar. I was taught that lying was sinful and immoral, I was punished whenever I lied.

In his own heart, it is clear that Trump is an outlier, an outsider, an aggrieved object of contempt and ridicule from people who go to Harvard and Yale,  from journalists and the entrenched political establishment, the people with real money, the people whose respect he could never win and can’t win now.

Like the people who love him, he is full of grievance and a thirst for revenge. To me, he is far more disturbed than the people who tell me that he is a truth-teller. To them, he is obnoxious sometimes, but always honest, always brave, always fighting for them.

“But what has he actually done for you?,” I asked.  “Nothing,” one man told me. “But at least he is taking apart the system.”

Aldous Huxley wrote that facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. Social media has taught us otherwise.

One person’s facts are not the same as another person’s. There is no longer any universal truth. We can like that or not, it is the new truth. And if Trump has taught me nothing else, it is that we have to approach truth in a different way in 2020.

The institutions who decided what was a fact or not – academic, Congress, organized religion, scientists, journalists politicians – are all diminished in influence and often despised as remote and sneering.

They are all completely removed from the lives of Trump supporters, they never see them, hear from them, talk to them, listen to them.

They say they are expected to take their word for everything, but none of them seem to have ever interacted or known any of the people who tell them what is right or best.

These elites – and they are elites –  are a remote nation, disconnected from the work and lives of Trump’s followers, at least directly. They have lost faith in the idea that science will make their lives easier. It hasn’t.

They see masks and shutdowns as just another elitist campaign to ruin their lives and jobs and starve their families.

Somehow, in his strange and twisted life, Trump has learned to speak the language of the people who love him.

The Judeo-Christian ethic defined American truth for most of its history; it is also in disarray and confusion. Evangelical Christians are enablers and creators of some of the biggest lies in American life; they define the truth as what is good for them and their faith, no matter who else it hurts.

If Christians can lie and be rewarded for it, why shouldn’t working-class people in Iowa or Pennsylvania? It’s a good question.

Flannery O’Connor wrote that “the truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” Another noble sentiment from a member of the literary elite. But our time shows us that the truth really does change according to our ability to stomach it.

I read it to a neighbor once, and he looked at me as if I had dropped out of the bottom of a horse.

“I have no idea what the hell that means,” he said.

We are drifting towards an all-or-nothing kind of selfish society. We have forgotten how to listen, only to speak and worry. We have to redefine our values and make a case for them.

Our progressive culture, of which I have to say I am a part, shares a common sense of obligations and priorities – lying is wrong, care about the poor, trust government, welcoming immigrants, get an education.

But the people who love Trump have different values and priorities. They have never discussed theirs with us, and we have never discussed ours with them. But they care about things, too.

We had lived in different words ever since the end of World War II when economists and politicians decided farming and rural life were no longer efficient or profitable in a globalizing world.

And since the government decided their work and jobs were worthless if it means buying cheaper air conditioners.

The Trump people have seen their world disintegrate for more than half a century, just as Black Americans have been victimized in their own way, and that racism is embedded in our historical DNA and has been tolerated since the country’s birth.

Demagogues appear when the government lies and breaks its promises to the people. It seems to me that the government has lied to the people we call Trump supporters, as it has to Blacks. They are losing faith in it.

The Trump people I know are not dumb. They know Trump’s tweets are obnoxious and offensive. They know he lies and distorts what most of us know as truth.

But they aren’t literal when they say he always tells the truth; they speak in a larger sense of their own values: the system is broken, it needs to be disrupted,  and dismantled.

Why do you love Trump so much, I asked a roofer I know?

“Because you hate him,” he said “nothing personal.

What he was saying was that the more we hated Trump, the more they love him. That is something deeper than brainwashing.

When Trump says something offensive or politically incorrect, as he does almost daily, they are thrilled to see someone challenge the things they are so often accused of and feel shackled and disrespected for.

To many of us, that is bigotry. To them, it is fury at having been made to feel stupid, crass, and unimportant for years. It’s tempting to think they are all brainwashed and unknowing, but I think the problem is deeper than that.

It seems in recent years, our political system has made many millions of people feel dismissed, disenfranchised, persecuted, or left behind, certainly including women and gays.

In one sense, I think Donald Trump has a lot in common with John Lennon, who believed in everything until it was disproved.  “So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?”

Trump believes in fairies and dragons, he lives in his own reality.

This time often leaves me wondering what the truth is and who gets to define it. I understand Keith’s frustration with his high school chum, but I don’t believe I can break off the dialogue with everyone who sees the world differently than me.

That is many millions of people, just about half the country. For all its pain and conflict, I believe the election has opened the door finally for a real dialogue between our two nations.

I’m not myopic, there are no simple and easy solutions there. I hope Joe Biden means it when he says he wants to try to work it out. Trump does not.

Half of the country needs to find a way to finally meet with the other half and do some hard talking and listening about what truth really is and how much it matters.

33 Comments

  1. this was painful & uncomfortable to read…. and I thank you for it. I kept thinking of how pundits say “Trump says the quiet part out loud” as he confesses to crimes & unethical behavior. I roll my eyes at what I see as Trumps stupidity. But this article has me thinking his followers see that as telling the truth …. that they think all politicians are committing crimes & engaging in unethical behavior & that Trump just has the balls to be upfront about it.
    Ughhh…. this is all so maddening. Thank you for pissing me off yet again, so I can look at things differently.

      1. I commend you for your efforts to be diplomatic but I think you’re giving Trump way too much credit. At best he is a catalyst for change.

        1. Thanks Annie, reading the piece, I have a hard time seeing that I’m being generous..I just don’t do black and white. Nothing is that simple..It’s my purpose to try to explain what is happening, not jump into the shouting match.. People need to think, not hate..

  2. When you look at what people watch on TV and believe: Realty shows that aren’t realty at all but just pure fabrication. it isn’t hard to understand why so many believe Trump’s lies. But I think the problems go a lot deeper than being glued to the tube and made to believe in falsehoods. There’s a meanness and greed in our society that just wasn’t so severe even 20 years ago. Mask wearing is an example. Hopefully no one will point a gun at me in a store, but people are slipping their masks off and taking a chance of infecting me with a deadly virus that I most likely will not survive. I don’t believe it’s lack of education either. Because there’s always common sense. True education changes the way you think but most of us know a liar when we see a liar. If hard-working underpaid people think Trump will save them then they are living in a fantasy. Trump will bury them. Today, the media says there’s a vaccine that will be ready days before the election. Obviously, no safe vaccine will be ready by this year. It takes years of tests to see if a vaccine is safe and effective for everyone. Of course, this is a political ploy. This isn’t science but politics. The problems are deep in this country but it will take empathy to solve them and actions that help all Americans not just the rich.

  3. For the family and friends I’ve asked about this and was interested in listening to their answers, this is what I heard: yes he is crude and lies a lot but he gets our votes because of the abortion issue, immigration problems and because God chose him to lead our country.

    1. yup….You are talking about Evangelic supporters of Trump, those issues are central to them. But most Trump supporters are not Evangelicals, they like his policies..

    2. I find it Incredibly difficult that people really believe that a man who has cheated on his three wives, who brags about sexually abusing women on television , who frequents prostitutes and pays them off, is anti abortion! I expect at some point someone will come forward and say thatTrump paid for their abortion. He knows the abortion issue will gain votes. That is what matters to him. He doesn’t care about pro life beliefs. He does and says what will help him win. They say actions speak louder than words and his behaviour is incongruent with anti abortionists beliefs!

  4. Makes sense to me.This Is the way I see it. It all had to be dismantled. Counting on our getting it before it’s too late and we find ourselves in total destruction. Counting on The beginnings I see of a changed wsh, a new consciousness.

  5. Jon…
    This was a very thoughtful post. But I had a hard time with it. I was raised in a way that didn’t accept lying. And in my engineering training, a problem rarely had two right answers. Yet many engineers admit that our social problems are far too complex for straight mathematical responses. (“Complexity” usually implied a human element.)

    I have known some people well enough to understand why they might be lying. And that can help. But in his case, knowing more might be even worse.

    So discussions about the direction of the country need to remove him from the issue, in order to personally engage with the debater. “He speaks for me” is not acceptable; ask “what do you think?”

    Perhaps then there could be better outcomes. That is what we should strive for. We’ve got to find a way to talk.

    1. Excellent question to ask. What do you think? But don’t they often repeat the same “reasons” and rarely dig deeper to explain what they think?

  6. Totally agree with Keith’s comment. Although Trump’ crazy behavior was evident before his Presidency, the ugly pattern was cemented in a 2017 TV interview when Kellyanne Conway coined the term “Alternative facts” to justify the falsehood coming out of the White House. Although gone up thousand-fold, it has now become a daily diarrhea that the world has to endure from the man who promised to shake the Washington establishment. For his followers, he spews nothing but the truth and watching his top officials spinning ‘alternative facts’ 24×7 is gut wrenching.

      1. Thanks Jon, I totally agree and acknowledge this blog is 100% yours, I was only referring to the earlier comment from Keith to your last blog about Trump’s followers saying “he only tells the truth”.

  7. Thank you once again Jon. I needed your words. I’ve unfortunately had the same responses from friends family and old school mates and sadly people that I had strong faithful relationships with through my church. I’ve had to distant myself for the mental frustration of social media and will only respond privately as now. Keep writing and telling the truth.
    Love the line about “falling out of a horse”. No kidding I laughed out loud!

  8. “Maria says this is why I have few friends. I’ve always found it more useful to talk to people who disagree with me than people who agree with me.” You’ve made me laugh, Jon, it takes a wife to tell you the “truth” right?! And you roll with it. This week I had a retired airline pilot tell me when he came to my property and sat his fanny on a bench not socially distancing, having just flown back from Germany and not isolating himself for 14 days, as he is required to do, that I was a sheep following all the Covid-rules, I was nuts, I was this that and the other thing, all bad. I kicked him off my property and called the police on him. Stupid person…no Covid19 rules, no corona virus, and you ask, how can people not see the truth and not see lies.
    .
    The truth is according to those who speak it. Facts speak for themselves.
    Keep on writing Jon, you at least give us something to think about and consider if we’re open to it.
    Sandy Proudfoot

    1. I’m glad Sandy called the police on this idiot. I’m tired of being passive. I’m the lady who will walk up to someone not wearing a mask and verbally tear them a new asshole. I’m tired of being stuck in my home for 6 months because so many are in denial and wearing a mask seems to them that their freedom is being taken away. I’m thinking of buying a giant werewolf and sitting it in my yard and tying a sign on it that says Trump. I bet my Trump supporting neighbors would love that. Venting a little – sorry.

  9. I see hundreds of news stories about the opioid crisis in rural America. NPR the network news the newspapers have covered this extensively.
    I don’t watch Fox so perhaps they have not covered it but to say it has been ignored is not true.
    African Americans have rightfully pointed out that when white people were overdosing and dying, it became a public health issue. When black people use drugs they are criminals and thugs and need to be jailed.
    The virus has pushed the overdose tragedy off the front page but it is still covered.

    1. I don’t agree, Jamie, if these were white suburban kids it would have been a daily headline, the roof would have come off…The government has done precious little to stop this for years, one in three farmers in America have experience overdoses in their families, according to the U.S. Dept of Agriculture, their life span is shorter than any other cohort, they have little or no access to health care. They are not the only ones suffering, but to dismiss or rationalize their own suffering and pretend anybody gives a shit is short-sighted and cruel. I find it sad that African-Americans and white Americans are competing to see who suffered the most…both suffer and one day they will realize they have much more in common than not, and then politics will change..

  10. Jon enjoyed your post. We are retired organic kiwi farmers from NoCal. I appreciate your perspectives. But living in liberal NoCal for 48 years has delivered us back to our home state as lower middle class conservatives who only want to preserve the republic and way of life in some reasonable facsimile. I came from a farming family, never wealthy but raised in the 50 ‘s when life was good and everyone had morals. With a good education we strove to be the best we could in our own way. We love dogs, sheep, goats, horses and feel a strong connection to nature. We sail when we can find crew here in FL. Never traveled much but would love to see upstate NY as my husband and i met in NYC in 1968. I am sure we have alot in common. Sorry to upset your followers the other day. I do have a sharp tongue. (o:

  11. Thanks for thinking about listening and understanding truth. The thing that frustrates me most along these lines is that it is “our side” who does the listening. We’re the ones who do the probing and want to understand how the other side thinks and feels and figure out where they are coming from. Maybe I’m wrong but it seems “they“ just want to convert us or like your roofer friend, piss us off.

  12. A fairly substantial portion of Trump supporters (there are plenty in my family) are not so much suffering economically as wanting their doubts about current trends to be heard. Progressives come out with absolutes like “no human is illegal,” “the future is female,” and “looting is a form of reparations” and they wonder if there is room for them in the Democratic party. Is there really no downside to unlimited immigration? is it not clear to everyone that men (especially non-professional men) are falling behind women? is it racist to be frightened of violence in the streets? the upshot, since Trump validates those doubts (in a horribly excessive way) is that they feel Trump wants them and the Democrats do not. Most people, most of the time, vote for the party that seems to want them.

  13. Hi Jon,
    Wow…looks like I stirred up a hornet’s nest. I think that’s good for discussion on any issue. With my former classmate, it’s like we were speaking different languages. I never put her down, used name calling or any of that stuff. I would, however send her information that Trump’s statements were false or contradictory. As you so well pointed out, her response looked like she didn’t even read what I wrote or care, along with a few nasty comments.
    It twisted my guts into a knot to read those replies especially from a Christian.
    I appreciate your thoughts on the subject of Trump telling the “truth”. Quite frankly, that also twisted me up a bit as I read it. I will go through the article more in an attempt to gain more insight into Trump supporters. Plus, I’ll seek out more input from folks I communicate with. Can’t hurt.

  14. I think you completely misunderstand, and diminish the corrupt intent and dismissive diminishing of American values that D Trump is. In that way, I think you’re drinking the kool-aid, too.

  15. Commenting from out in fly over land, I have a true appreciation for your effort to understand what powers Trump’s devotees. I too have noticed that many in my area (I live in a sea of red) are quite intelligent and otherwise normal members of the community. I’ve had a hard time keeping from wincing when I hear “I love Trump because he stands up for our military” or “Trump always tells the truth” and even “Trump is not a racist”. I have a even harder time being patient when I hear “Trump is draining the swamp”. I’m sure you can imagine why I find testimonials like this don’t square with what is reported daily, never mind my 30+ years of experience in the public service to compare it to.

    I too learned my listening skills as a hospice volunteer. There is truly no greater skill to add to one’s set for any occasion. It is something that has to be practiced constantly lest it rapidly fall away.

    Listen I do, as I have little choice but to listen in my town. And despite the many ways I’ve tried to imagine how these statements could be sincere, I always return to the conclusion that statements like these are a cover. I believe they are cover for unspeakable fears. Fears that the world is changing and they DON’T WANT IT TO CHANGE and will do anything, including vote for a con man who has been unable to implement a single coherent policy, or execute a single plank in his promised platform.

    Fear. Fear of change. Fear of people that are different. Fear of the future. When people give these kinds of reasons for supporting Trump you can actually smell the fear.

    I’d be the first to say, if you fear not being able to live a middle class life with a high school diploma, your fears are valid. That’s not in the cards. If you fear America falling away as the world’s leader in everything, you are probably right. We’re not competing against war torn allies and bombed out enemies the way we were in the 1940-50’s. That nagging fear that your daughter wont raise her kids the way you raised her, or maybe not even have kids, then that’s a reasonable fear. Along with many of the above comes bundled that fear of the “other”. They people not pictured in that Norman Rockwell painting. The blacks and the Mexicans and people from over seas. That fear, particularly in white rural America is as real as it gets.

    I’ve found I can listen, and even extend a little empathy to this Trumpians, but I can’t go that extra mile and give credence to the fears they cloak with praise for the Dear Leader. What they pine for is lost to history, and if memory wasn’t so selective, they might recognize that what we are losing really wasn’t that outstanding to begin with. Nevertheless it’s gone. Hell we’ll never see 2019 again let alone 1950. So, to those who fear the future, largely because they are being left behind, I have great sympathy, but I can’t give credence to their fears by drawing some false equivalency with the fears of the black man, the gay woman, or the tech savvy teen. Things are never going to be the same, and those that choose to be the rock in the river will learn in the end that the river always wins.

  16. We must remember the old saying “How do you know when a politician is lying? Answer: When their lips are moving.”

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