This is why it doesn’t matter when Donald Trump lies

AMERICA’S new president, Donald Trump, is vulgar, sexist and racist. He’s also a liar. This is why none of that matters, writes Joe Hildebrand.

IN the dying days of the Gillard government, as the PM and the Labor Party lay prostrate in the polls, factional hardheads contemplated the once unthinkable: A return to Kevin Rudd.

Rudd was politically more dangerous and electorally more popular. The only catch was just about everybody in the ALP hated him.

But when this reservation was put to one party elder he simply shrugged his shoulders.

“So he’s a c***,” he said. “So what?”

In other words, in politics it doesn’t matter whether you’re a c*** or not. All that matters is whether you’re a c*** that wins.

On November 8, 2016, around 63 million Americans reached the same conclusion about Donald Trump. They felt so angry, so abandoned by the system, that they were prepared to vote for anyone who promised to tear it down.

“But,” protested the establishment, “he’s a vulgar, sexist, racist, uncouth, billionaire reality TV star!”

“So what?” they said.

It wasn’t that they liked or even agreed with all the crazy stuff he said, it was that they just didn’t care — and they liked that he didn’t seem to care either. They didn’t vote for him because he insulted war heroes or assaulted women, they voted for him despite that. Because they were so pissed off with the usual political establishment they were prepared to get in bed with Satan himself if that was what it took to upend it.

A new era: The Obamas hand over to the Trumps. Picture: Jim Watson/AFP

Unfortunately many in the American left and liberal media still seem wholly incapable of seeing what drove Donald Trump to power and are thus hopelessly ill-equipped to remove him from it. The only trick in the playbook seems to be to dig up one more scandal, one more “gotcha” moment, and hope that this will be the one that sinks him.

If Einstein is right that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result then it’s not Trump who is the crazy one.

This brings us to the latest outrage about Trump’s inauguration numbers and the fact that he has been caught out shamelessly making claims about crowd numbers that are demonstrably untrue.

But the real question isn’t whether Trump’s numbers were bigger than Obama’s or not or whether he was lying about the turnout. It’s “So what?”

For example, The Huffington Post covered the crowd size issue with the headline: “Trump And His Press Secretary Flagrantly Lied On Their First Full Day In Office. That Matters.”

Actually, no it doesn’t. If Trump talking crap mattered even remotely to his supporters Hillary Clinton would be in the White House right now.

After all, they just voted for a guy who bragged about grabbing women by the pussy; it’s unlikely they’ll turn on him for bragging about crowd numbers. If that is the best strategy Trump’s opponents can come up with he might just get another four years.

Indeed, one of the great ironies of the Trump phenomenon is that the US political and media establishment is so assured of its own intelligence and so convinced of Trump’s idiocy yet is constantly being outsmarted by him. And it is questionable whether Trump is even trying.

When it comes to promises and policy Trump is the human equivalent of a million monkeys at a million typewriters. He just blurts out whatever thought pops into his head whenever it does so. Far from deliberately crafting deceptions, there appears to be little if any deliberation at all.

Instead it his critics who seek to ascribe weight and meaning to every untrue or uncouth statement while Trump just drops bombs and moves on.

Sigh. Picture: Mandel Ngan/AFP

He made his latest comments after veering off script at a CIA function, saying the crowds “went all the way back to the Washington monument” despite clear photographic evidence they did not.

For Trump it was all over in a matter of seconds while to counter him The Huffington Post used three reporters, more than a dozen sources and almost 1000 words. And I doubt it changed a single vote.

Indeed, the problem with being perpetually offended and outraged by everything Trump says and does is that it’s exhausting, while being Donald Trump is a breeze. If this is a war of attrition he’s already won.

There is also the very real possibility that Trump doesn’t even know he’s lying. As the great George Costanza has taught us: “It’s not a lie if you believe it!”

And so, with a completely straight face, Trump told an audience at CIA headquarters “I am so behind you” despite publicly rubbishing its work just a couple of weeks earlier.

A former presidential aide told me she’d heard the atmosphere in the room at the CIA function was excruciating but Trump cheerfully tweeted afterwards:

“Had a great meeting at CIA Headquarters yesterday, packed house, paid great respect to Wall, long standing ovations, amazing people. WIN!”

Like The Great Gatsby’s Tom and Daisy Buchanan, Trump sows chaos then simply retreats back into his own happy world. And like Homer Simpson, he appears able to eradicate all memories of any unpleasantness and replace them with nymphs dancing around a maypole.

And this is what the US political and media establishment still don’t seem to get: They keep complaining that Donald Trump is breaking the rules yet Trump is not even playing the same game.

Big and brash, President Donald Trump. Picture: Alex Brandon/AP

Indeed, with Trump even the laws of nature are contestable. When challenged about the bogus crowd claims his adviser Kellyanne Conway said they were simply “alternative facts”. Wicked.

This is the much talked about “post-truth world”, in which fake news and real news are indistinguishable and facts are simply whatever you believe.

The great irony is that just like the invading aliens in Independence Day — the most instructive political documentary ever made — Trump is using the left’s own defence systems against it.

Thanks to the complaint that Hillary Clinton lost the US election because of the spread of fake news (which mysteriously only seemed to infiltrate midwestern swing states) Trump now just declares any news report he doesn’t like to be fake. And given the sloppy desperation by some outlets to discredit him in some cases he may even be right.

Besides, it was the left who invented post-truth in the first place. Long before the internet started throwing up conspiracy theories or bogus stories, postmodern academics were encouraging their students to challenge notions of rationality or objective reality. Trump and his supporters are just doing the same thing off campus.

So maybe Trump’s a liar, maybe he’s a c*** or maybe he’s just a fool. So what?

Instead of getting outraged by everything he says over and over again or protesting his very existence, Trump’s opponents should find out why people voted for him in the first place and offer them a better alternative.

After all, if he’s as bad as they say he is how hard can that be?

Originally published as This is why it doesn’t matter when Donald Trump lies