Donald Trump can lay claim to the title of most prodigious liar in the history of the presidency. This challenges commonplace beliefs about the American political system. How could such a deceitful and duplicitous figure win the White House in the first place and then retain the loyalty of so many voters after his endless lies were exposed?
George Edwards, a political scientist at Texas A&M and a retired editor of Presidential Studies Quarterly, states the case bluntly: “Donald Trump tells more untruths than any previous president.” What’s more, “There is no one that is a close second.”
Trump’s deceptions have been explored from multiple vantage points. Let’s take a look at one line of analysis.
In 2008, Kang Lee, a developmental psychologist at the University of Toronto, published “Lying in the Name of the Collective Good” along with three colleagues:
Lying in the name of the collective good occurs commonly. Such lies are frequently told in business, politics, sports, and many other areas of human life. These lies are so common that they have acquired a specific name, the “blue lie” — purportedly originating from cases where police officers made false statements to protect the police force or to ensure the success of the government’s legal case against an accused.
How does that relate to the willingness of Republican and conservative voters to tolerate Trump’s lies — not just to tolerate them, but to cast votes for him again and again?
In a 2017, a Scientific American...
WASHINGTON, April 23 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s years-long campaign to undermine faith in U.S. elections has gained broad traction with the American public, a Reuters/Ipsos poll shows, p...