@SUB: When Anderson Cooper asked Trump if he sexually assaulted women, and he stalled a long time before answering no when pressed, he was cleary lying with intent. Some of his falsehoods are for sure delusions, but by no means all.

Donald Trump is like a 3 year old in that he cannot tell the difference between truth and fiction. Thus he is incapable of lying.

He makes delusional statements that he genuinely believes to be true which is why he is able to say what he says with a straight face. Deceit requires mens rea. Trump doesn't have that when he talks because he actually thinks he's telling the truth.

Actually, it does.

Trump is saying things that are not true. Think of like a 3-4 year old. They say things all the time that are incorrect. But they are unaware that what they are saying is not true. But you as an adult wouldn't think the 3 year old is lying. You understand that they are incapable of knowing what the truth is.

With Trump, it's basically accommodation/assimilation.

A 3 year old sees a dog and says "Doggie!" The parent says "Very good!" Then the kid sees a horse and says "Doggie!"The parent says, "No, that's a horsie!" The kid says "Horsie!" and the parent says "Very good!"

You wouldn't say the kid is lying. He just doesn't know.

Now try it with Trump. Pretty ****ing scary when you think about it.

Trump absolutely knows he is lying. He's just a narcissist who has very low self-esteem.

Of course both of us are speculating on what's going on in Trump's mind. For all we know, he might have been taken aback by the question or had some kind of Alzheimer's moment. Maybe he had to think back and remember every girl he came onto and if they (in his mind) wanted to **** him.

I view him as more likely delusional and mentally unstable than a mentally stable liar. I'm honestly not sure which one is worse or if one is actually worse than the other. That matter may be purely academic when it comes to the decisions he makes and their impact.

Maybe FOX can trade an apology for a SB ring.

You are delusional

in some instances ofc you are correct.

but he also flat out lies and knows hes doing all the effin time too.

All these things that baffle you guys can be explained by his narcissistic personality disorder. He is a textbook case.

LordJVK's opposition strategy is the worst.

+1. This is why the allegations of 4D chess are wrong, and the allegations that he is knowingly lying are sort of missing the point. His lies are compulsive in the literal sense, because narcissists must perpetuate a certain perception of themselves.

The hilarious irony here is that there are actually fewer terrorist victims now than there were in like the 70s in Europe, but people erroneously believe that there are MORE now because the 24-hour media sensationalizes the **** out of them.

O/U on the % of Trumpkins who know what "peer-reviewed" means? 5%?

Snap take the under.

This is a good article that makes me question how much of a buffoon Trump really is, or if his buffoonery is being played expertly by Bannon to provide cover: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/...n-munich-post/

And the happy ending:

How many of today's journalists would stand their ground in a similar spot?

Go watch his interview where he talks himself into saying women who get abortions should be put in jail. You won't think he's a jedi master after that.

It's probably under 10 for gen pop. Don't think knowledge (even cursory) of the peer review process is any kind of indicator of intelligence.

ETA: Errr, except in the sense that it's correlated to possession of a higher ed degree.

In general Bannon funding "respectable" research and shopping it around to mainstream press is true, but overblown.

I think it's less about media coverage and more about the ethnicity of the terrorists. IRA, ETA, etc. were frequently painted as heroes in some circles. You could openly raise funds for them in polite society.

The thing is that narcissists are good at this sort of thing as a general rule. That is, they are good at manipulating the people around them into seeing the world through their preferred lens. Trump isn't "trying" to do anything strategic per se, but he's using the same manipulative tactics that would work better on an interpersonal level. In national politics the narrative is harder to control. What you are seeing is not him masterfully manipulating that narrative. It's him struggling to control it when people are able to shine a light on his dishonesty.

Narcissists are always surprisingly effective at manipulation from the perspective of those who are aware of the truth. I think I've said this before in so many words, but Trump has basically stumbled unwittingly into a narcissist's nightmare. He is in one of the few positions on Earth where people are both eager and able to pull back the veil, and his ability to control it is minimal. All of his lies and shenanigans stem from that reality.

All these contradictions melt into air once you fully embrace the power of bull****:

If you are looking for a smart, reasonable conservative who also supports DJT, you're gonna have a bad time.

to think bill oreilly turning against trump might be america's only path to fight deplorables

Nah, Bill will fall in line. He just got a little extemporaneous there.

didnt say he wouldnt

fox news people actually becoming honest journalists is the one thing that would end Trump's sanity and his cult.

If they turned against him his whole fake news claims (about everyone else) would fall apart.

*but I guess theyd only turn against him when they know he's done, so they're useless.