Bullshit is an American tradition. Think the theatrics of P.T. Barnum, miracle products sold ad nauseam on television in the 1980s and, of course, politicians. Who can forget President Bill Clinton saying “It depends upon what the meaning of the word is is” during his grand jury testimony in the Monica Lewinsky scandal?
And then there’s Donald Trump. He presents as a man with no fact-checking filter, someone happily buying his own convenient bullshit. That’s not quite the same thing as lying.
That isn’t to say Trump doesn’t lie. He’s a politician, after all. But he exists outside the binary of truth and lies. It’s the netherworld of flimflam, hyperbole, sales pitches, and ad copy delivered with all the quiet dignity of a wet T-shirt contest. Donald Trump is a very modern artist, weaving a barrage of anecdotes, fake and real statistics, gossip, and memes into a nebulous and suggestive species of patter.
Democrats have tried to paint Trump as an American Hitler, a Russian agent, a man consumed with evil and hatred. But what they fail to understand is that Trump’s casual relationship to the truth is an echo of past politicians. He is hardly the first bullshitter to ascend to the White House; he’s just the best ever to do it. He paints a picture of a reality he would like us to see, not as it really is.
In this respect, Trump is the crack cocaine variant of many of his predecessors. Ronald Reagan was a folksy, sentimental bullshitter, a president as a Hallmark greeting card. Bill Clinton was a slick bullshitter, perfect for spinning stories at the dawn of the cable news era.
Today, Eli Lake explores the soft spot that Americans have for bullshitters like Trump, and their disdain for liars like Richard Nixon. He argues that if you want to understand why Trump may be on the verge of winning the White House again, you have to reckon with our country’s relationship to the pungent brown stuff. It pervades everything from our economy to our culture. Bullshit is dangerous when it comes to science. But in politics, bullshit is sadly essential.
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Let's talk about "BS". 'The Border is Secure'. 'If you get vaccinated, you can't get or spread COVID'. 'Men can get pregnant'. 'Bidenomics is working'. 'Crime is down'. Okay - I'm done.
Entertaining podcast but the assumption that we, Trump supporters, do not recognize his “bull shit” is laughable. The refreshing thing about Trump is we’re all in on the joke. In that sense, he was the most transparent president we’ve endured. The more interesting point, which you don’t seem to discuss fully, is every single man who achieved this office, is a “bull shitter”. Some may have possessed more morals and ethics, but in the end, they had a fair share of crap they had to do to and say to accomplish their goals. We learned under Bill Clinton that a used car salesman could be a decent president. But the elites were on his side. And with Barack O’Bama, we learned a once in a lifetime political character, with an amazing message and the delivery of Martin Luther King, could be a pretty lousy president. But the Elites were on his side. And now we’re faced with an openly flawed, undisciplined and outrageous person in Donald Trump who, we know from his tumultuous last presidency, kept our country moving forward in a positive direction. And he did this despite the Elites using every institution they control, handicapping h him in every way possible.