Kurt Schlichter - The 21 Biggest Lies About Donald Trump

Dedicated to Irina, J, and J

Defamation (n): A derogatory and deliberately false statement that causes the victim harm, either directly or per se, by the nature of the statement.

Libel is printed defamation; slander is spoken defamation. Thats how a lawyer would put it.

Put another way, its a lie.

Mark Twain once said that there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics. He was right for his time, but today were inundated with a fourth kind of lie, the kind of lie told about Donald Trump and you.

Our public square is filled with volley after volley of falsehoods that the left and its pseudo-conservative Renfields fire at our president and his supporters. There is no longer any argument or reasoned discussion, just lies. Editorial pages, the airwaves, and social media are all filled with hyperbolic accusations, making a scorched earth Yucca Flat out of rational discourse.

Crank your masochism meter to High and turn on MSNBC. Listen to the self-congratulatory panels preen, populated with third-tier guests whose diverse views range from Donald Trump is Hitler II to Donald Trump is the Antichrist without the upside. Its all baloney, all the time. And its getting worse.

Lies have always been a part of politics, but today defamation has replaced actual debate. Its almost quaint to see someone offer a coherent, thoughtful argument instead of spewing a spray of cheesy slander. When was the last time you heard someone provide a detailed, pointed critique of Donald Trumps policies? Not of his character or his alleged personal failings, but his policies?

Its been a while, hasnt it?

Now when was the last time you heard some establishment politician, media hack, or Twitter malcontent call Trump a racist? Well, probably the last time you heard or read an establishment politician, media hack, or Twitter malcontent.

Defamation is all the Trump-haters have left because the facts arent working out for them. We have a booming economy (the viral tangent notwithstanding), no new wars, and a renewed faith in the American dream. By all objective standards, President Trump is leaving his mark as a great American president.

But when your goal is power, why concern yourself with facts, evidence, or bourgeois concepts like reason? The Trump-haters dont have a substantive critique of Donald Trump; they just cant stand his hulking, tweeting presence in the Oval Office. Each Trump victory represents another daunting obstacle to the establishments unrestricted exercise of power. They believe they deserve to rule you, despite their manifest mediocrity, because they really want to. Theyre like spoiled children who just had someone take away their binky.

We want to be in charge damn it, and that Bad Orange Man is in the way.

Oh, and so are all of you who support him.

In their minds President Trump isnt the only problem. You are a problem too. You are in the way, and thats why every obnoxious libel that they print about Trump, every vile slander that they utter, every deliberate falsehood that they transmit, is not really aimed at Donald Trump. Its aimed at you.

You are the liars targetyou, who are not part of the club, who are not cool, and who do not initiate conversations by clarifying your pronouns like our betters do. Youre their target because in 2016 you dared to flex your muscle. You dared to exercise your right to control the direction of your own society. You dared to hold accountable the elites that failed to achieve anything except failure for nearly a quarter century.

Trump is merely a symbol, an avatar of the righteous anger and resentment of the American people at our failed establishment. You are the final and most daunting obstacle to their real goal, unlimited power, and they will never forgive you for getting in their way.

Who are they anyway?

They are the authors, politicians, bureaucrats, writers, tweeters, talking heads, hipsters, millennials, movie stars, and aging rock stars who havent had a hit since they wrote crappy songs dissing Ronald Reagan. They are the elites, the establishment, the globalists, and the ruling class who want to make sure you dont get a seat at the table.

We typically call them the liars, if only for the sake of simplicity. So many groups, factions, institutions, and cliques have adopted the use of conscious falsehood as a strategy to defeat Donald Trump and the people he represents that its hard to put them all in one group.

Sometimes the liars are the members of our political establishment, the power brokers Trump challenged. Sometimes they are the elites, the self-designated betters whose self-professed wisdom, morality, and virtue prompt them to lecture, hector, and scold those they consider their inferiors. Sometimes they are leftists and their weak sisters the liberals, while sometimes they are people who posed as conservatives until Trumps ascent revealed their grift. Sometimes they are the mediabut Im speaking in circles. Weve already covered liberals, and theres no need to be repetitive.

You see, theres a method to the liars mendacity. Their unprecedented defamation campaign has a purpose. Its not just meaningless bluster: the liars want to build a false narrative that morally disenfranchises you. You are bad people living in a bad country presumptuously exercising rights to which you are not entitled. As that weird Swedish climate change kid might say, How dare you! HOW DARE YOU!

Defamation is a weapon, designed to reinforce a narrative that will make you shrug, accept your own manifest unworthiness, and submit to your betters. It might even work, at least for a little while. After all, most Americans are nice people and would never think to call someone a racist or a homophobe or a religious nut bent on imposing some sort of handmaiden-themed theocracy unless the accusation were true. So, when someone says those things about us, our natural response is to wonder whether our accuser may have a point. We care, and in the narrative judo of modern American culture, our opponents use that against us.

In 2016 we elected a guy who doesnt care. Not even a little. Donald Trump is a guy who was born without a shame gene. Thankfully, it makes him impervious to their defamation. Could you imagine Mitt Romney under the pseudo-moral pressure Trump thrives on? He couldnt show his ripped belly fast enough. With one sentence at that 2012 debate, Candy Crowley practically decked him out in a diaper and a leash. Just think how fast hed submit if everyone he knew in his social circle started up on him.

Not Donald J. Trump.

Call him racist? Trump doesnt care. To resurrect an ancient meme, hes a full-on honey badger when it comes to peoples lying about him. He has a bottomless well of self-confidence and is delightfully free of self-doubt, which drives his enemies bonkers. Not only does he know hes not a racist in any intelligible sense of the word, he also knows that his administration has done more for minorities than any of his predecessors. And hes a brawler. Instead of hanging his head in shame, he punches back.

Call him sexist? Or a sexual predator? Again, he doesnt care. Hes interested in results, and as far as his playboy days that were splashed across the covers of New York tabloids a couple decades ago, he regrets nothing. Oh, it drives his enemies up a wall when they accuse him of tagging a series of Playboy bunnies and pneumatic strippers and then a significant number of his supporters respond by offering him a figurative high-five.