Peter Baker
“He has an aversion and antagonism to the truth,” said [Tony Schwartz, ghostwriter of the ‘Art of the Deal’…”]
“He has utter disregard for the truth except to twist it as a weapon.”
Mr. Trump’s administration began with a lie about the size of the crowd at his inauguration. Credit Chang W. Lee
For generations, Mr. Trump has propelled himself to success in business and politics through an endless string of fabrications. He has lied about his net worth, about the height of his buildings, about the ratings of his reality television show, about the origins of America’s first Black president, about the legitimacy of the 2020 election, about migrants eating pet cats and dogs, even about whether he has visited Gaza.
This was not political at first. It was a modus operandi from the early days when he took over his father’s real estate business. His origin story itself is suffused in mythology. He likes to say that he got his start as a developer with just a $1 million loan from his father, but in fact, his father’s empire provided about $413 million when all the payments are adjusted for inflation, according to a 2018 investigation by The New York Times.
Even when the facts about his own family were inconvenient, he simply switched them. He used to say that his grandfather came from Sweden when in fact he came from Germany….
…‘Lost by a Whisker’
By the time Mr. Trump left office, he had finally come up with a lie that was so profound, so consequential that it drove a cleavage through American society. Americans might not have cared all that much whether he told the truth about his businesses or his policies; many wrote that off as so much bluster. But now they were forced to take sides on the biggest lie of all, his insistence that he won the 2020 election.
No evidence ever emerged suggesting fraud or wrongdoing on a level that would have changed the outcome in a single state, much less flip the multiple states that would have been required to tilt the Electoral College in his direction. But Mr. Trump said it happened and he said it so often and so intensely that elected officials, political candidates, civic leaders, party figures and even everyday citizens were compelled to declare: Did they believe in the system or did they believe Mr. Trump?
That schism has come to define the country in the past four years and is at the heart of the election wrapping up on Tuesday. The outcome may be reasonably read as a verdict on Mr. Trump’s version of reality. If he wins, he will take it as vindication and has promised to use the next four years seeking “retribution” against those who refused to go along with his false claim. If he loses, his opponents will see it as validation of democracy even as they brace for what will surely be another claim of a stolen election and many Americans may not trust the result…
Connect the Dots 101 
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