No, really, what the every-humping fuck was that interview that President Donald "I Toot Truck Horn Real Good" Trump did with Michael Scherer of Time magazine? Ostensibly, it was about "truth" and "falsehood," but, as you can read in many places, it was filled with so many lies that it was less a discussion of political reality and more "Grandpa tells you about that big fish he caught that one time."
But the other thing that comes through is just how pathetically weird and confused and obsessed our goddamn president is. Look at this line from towards the end of the interview: "I inherited a mess with jobs, despite the statistics, you know, my statistics are even better, but they are not the real statistics because you have millions of people that can’t get a job, ok." What does that even say? Because it sounds like "Numbers aren't numbers unless they're my numbers but my numbers are too good to be true because if they're right that means that the earlier numbers are right so fuck numbers and go with what I think is true."
It's mind-boggling in its utter and complete degradation of language and logic. As Trump has proven time and again, George W. Bush was a goddamned member of the Algonquin Round Table by comparison. And Trump's ego is so fragile that it's like house made of tissue-paper cards. He wants you to know that he is a genius: "I’m a very instinctual person, but my instinct turns out to be right. When everyone said I wasn’t going to win the election, I said well I think I would." Motherfucker, that's not instinct. That's being a candidate for office. Of course, you think you're gonna win. Why brag about that? It's like saying, "Man, no one thought I was going to take a shit today, but, I took a shit. I showed them."
His reaction to the subject of the interview was to keep insisting that he was right about everything and that proves he doesn't lie. Like his constant refrain that he predicted that the United Kingdom would vote in June to leave the EU. Well, on June 1, he didn't even know what the fuck Brexit was. He did say that he supported Brexit, but he didn't make any predictions. This is going to become his new "I was against the Iraq War" as he repeats that he was right about the vote: "Brexit, I predicted Brexit, you remember that, the day before the event. I said, no, Brexit is going to happen, and everybody laughed, and Brexit happened." What did he really say the day before the vote? More or less, "What the fuck do I know? Have you met me?"
Then we move from mere bullshit to absolutely delusional. It's not enough that he lied about his "prediction." It's gotta become a dramatic tale about how "everyone" was against him while he stood strong and was proven right. Later in the interview, unprompted, he brings up Brexit again: "I got attacked on Brexit, when I was saying, I said long before the day before, I said the day before the opening, but I was saying Brexit was going to pass, and everybody was laughing, and I turned out to be right on that. I took a lot of heat when I said Brexit was going to pass."
In one discussion, he went from everyone laughing at him for predicting something the day before the Brexit vote to "long before" that he was saying it despite being attacked. It's the story that Trump wants desperately to be true about himself, that he is some irrational dreamer who stood firm against the odds and succeeded. And, you know, when it came to winning the presidency, he was right, except for the thumbs of Putin and Comey being on the scale. But even that is more like when he opened up the Trump Taj Mahal when everyone told him he was crazy to do it. Sure, it opened and then it all came crashing down. That bankrupt hulk of a building is about to become someone else's water park.
When someone believes their own mythology, they become parodies of themselves. Trump has never not been that parody, and now, as his supposedly legendary dealmaking ability falls to pieces in the health care bill debacle, he is frantically trying to maintain the illusion of the myth. Without that myth, he's just a sad old man in an ill-fitting suit who wants to play truck driver.
