Trump says Boy Scout leader called him about his 'greatest speech.' Boy Scouts say there was no call

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Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/08/02/trump-says-boy-scout-leader-ca.html

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For Pete’s sake “Trustworthy” is THE FIRST ONE ON THE LIST

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So Boy Scouts are now also part of the liberal deep-state, slandering the President with fake news?

Cool.

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I must wonder if there are even 5 minutes in any given day that 45 can make it through without lying.

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This rises to slander of whoever Trump’s claiming called him. I say pose a lawsuit, premised on the potential damaging loss of huge numbers of boyscout participants, demanding that Trump name who called him and prove it.

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If his life depended on his telling the truth, would he survive? My money is on no.

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Wait, Trump glibly lied about something not even worth lying about? Shocked, I am… not really…

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I am unconvinced that Trump even recognizes the existence of such a thing as objective truth which exists apart from his own thoughts and opinions. He’s a classic example of Solipsism.

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It’s hard to deny that the scouts and leaders gave him a standing ovation since they were, in fact, already standing.

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Scenarios:

  • Trump is lying, knowing that it will just be someone else’s word against his.
  • Trump genuinely thinks the head of the boy scouts called him despite the fact that it didn’t happen.
  • Someone in the white house called him pretending to be the head of the scouts and placate him to prevent him from tweeting something nasty about the boy scouts after their apology for his remarks.

I bet I could brainstorm many others.

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download

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Ha, this will be a brilliant addition to the Trump movies made in the future. I’m imagining Kushner trying to adopt a manly voice on the phone and telling him how great he is.

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I used to think he was a compulsive liar, but now I think he genuinely believes he is the greatest president of all time. It explains his constant rage at not being acknowledged for things he hasn’t actually accomplished. God help us.

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Well, it wouldn’t be the first for his whitehouse: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/07/25/rick-perry-thought-he-was-talking-to-a-world-leader-about-pig-manure-it-was-a-prank-call/?utm_term=.64b79b32b539

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He’ expanding his repertoire; he usually only lies about not having attended calls and meetings.

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My first response to this news was, “Well, there’s Trump lying again.” But it occurs to me that, as is the possibility with some other untruths he’s spoken, it’s not a lie, per se. It could be that he’s just deeply, deeply confused about reality. Someone called him to tell him what a great speech it was, and he honestly believes that the guy was the “head of the Boy Scouts.” Though with Trump, the line between “confusion” and “lie” is complicated - it’s clear that he has less than no critical thinking skills and that he will accept - or fabricate, perhaps even without being aware of it - any “facts” that stroke his ego and will “believe” in them for as long as that’s the case.

I think this is true. He’s like a complicated baby who lacks object permanence - except it’s “fact permanence.” It’s really hard for me to get my head around it, it’s so not-normal.

I think so. I think on another, not-conscious level, he also has deep feelings of inadequacy that he’s trying to squash, and that explains some of his behavior.

I think at this point it’s clear - he tells untruths about everything, all the time. He’s not connected enough to reality to do otherwise.

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Wait a second…you mean to tell me that Trump lied about something in an attempt to inflate his ego and make it seem as of he has been lauded as the best at something?

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He will die alone, in a squalid room with one lightbulb, on a pee-soaked mattress, cursing the world for not recognizing his greatness.

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There’s a spectrum between using words to convey the meaning of those words and using words to externalize your mood. I lean very, very hard towards trying to choose the words that mean what I want to convey. Trump leans so hard on using words to achieve results that the meaning issue has vanished completely.

I think the best way to understand Trump is to ignore, 100%, what he means when he says something - he doesn’t mean anything. Instead, think about what he mood he is in when he said it. Normally if I saw someone lying about something like this, it would tell me they were feeling deeply insecure to tell such an obvious lie. But that’s only because I assume some sort of cost/benefit analysis on their part. Being found out when lying has a cost, the benefit you get from a lie like that is very low.

But I don’t know if Trump is capable of doing that kind of analysis. I think we have to take him at face value.

So I think the statement here tells us nothing other than that Trump was feeling good about himself when he said it.

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“It was a Scout Leader…no, wait, TWO Scout Leaders…no, the HEAD of the Boy Scouts. Yeah, that’s the ticket.”

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