Days after being sworn in, President Trump insisted to congressional leaders invited to a reception at the White House that he would have won the popular vote had it not been for millions of illegal votes, according to people familiar with the meeting.
Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that widespread voter fraud caused him to lose the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, even while he clinched the presidency with an electoral college victory.
Two people familiar with the meeting said Trump spent about 10 minutes at the start of the bipartisan gathering rehashing the campaign. He also told them that between 3 million and 5 million illegal votes caused him to lose the popular vote. (our emphasis)Let's for a moment review the symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (via the Mayo Clinic):
-Having an exaggerated sense of self-importance
-Expecting to be recognized as superior even without achievements that warrant it
-Exaggerating your achievements and talents
-Being preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate
-Believing that you are superior and can only be understood by or associate with equally special people
-Requiring constant admiration
-Having a sense of entitlement
-Expecting special favors and unquestioning compliance with your expectations
-Taking advantage of others to get what you want
-Having an inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs and feelings of others
-Being envious of others and believing others envy you
-Behaving in an arrogant or haughty manner
Ding- ding- ding! We have a winner! Twelve out of twelve, a perfect score for Cheeto Benito!
Now, getting back to the alternative facts at hand, this continual need to lie, even when telling a lie to the faces of sophisticated people who know you're lying, is the mark of someone with a serious mental illness. But rather than continuing to practice psychiatry without a license, we'll defer to Steve Benen's analysis:
The rationale for the president’s brazen lying is easy to understand. Americans were given a choice between two major-party candidates; Trump lost by nearly 3 million votes; and he lacks the tools necessary to deal with the implications of the results.
As a result, the president apparently finds it necessary to keep reality at arm’s length, because the truth hurts his feelings. It leads him to embrace a comforting, albeit ridiculous, lie – or to use the Trump White House’s preferred parlance, alternative facts.
That said, this is the sort of lie that should give pause to all Americans, including Trump’s most ardent Republican followers.
The idea that Trump secretly won the popular vote after excluding illegally cast ballots is plainly bonkers. After he made the claim the first time, it was thoroughly researched and proven to be demonstrably wrong. Trump’s own lawyer said, in print, under penalty of court sanction, that the claim isn’t true.
Trump, comforted by the fiction he created, nevertheless still believes his lie, raising as-yet-unanswered questions about the new American president’s critical thinking skills, discipline, and capacity for evaluating evidence. (our emphasis)We would take issue with Benen's formulation of "as- yet- unanswered questions": we believe those questions about Rump's capacities, unfortunately for humanity, have been answered long ago. Simply put, he's unfit for the office of president. What must happen going forward is that he not be pampered or indulged. It's going to be an ongoing struggle to keep rebutting his simpleton lies while at the same time fighting the very real reactionary policy and legislative agenda that's emerging from his Russo- Republican administration. We can and must be prepared to do that, while we put forward a smart, progressive agenda (like this, for starters) that we can run on in 2018.
*UPDATE: Rump's lapdog Mike "Dense" Pence can't handle the truth either, judging from this whopper (which, as a participant in the DC march, I can testify is 100% lie):
Vice President Mike Pence is getting in on the "alternative facts" fun.
Pence or his team made the claim that "well over half" of the huge crowds out protesting Trump's inauguration during Saturday's Women's March in Washington were actually fans of the new president in a Facebook post, the latest example of top Trump administration representatives choosing to misstate basic facts.
"Our Administration is proud to stand with American women and of our supporters' significant role in this cause. Despite the misleading Liberal Media's claims, we clearly saw that well over half of the participants in yesterday's march were Trump supporters," reads a post on Pence's official Facebook page posted on Sunday.*[Ed. Note: We picked up on the Pence story which was also run in the New York Daily News, but it turns out it's a spoof - Snopes has the debunking here. We apologize for spreading the (unfortunately credible given the past few days) fake news.]
Riiiight! So why was Rump reportedly "enraged" at the size of the Women's March crowd?
UPDATE II: "Baghdad Sean" Spicer doubles down on the lie in today's press conference. The madness is all around.
Firehose. Of. Falsehoods.
