What unites Greenland, Venezuela and Ukraine? Trump’s immoral lies and Europe’s chronic weakness |
Donald Trump made 30,573 “false or misleading” claims during his first term, according to calculations published in 2021 by the Washington Post. That’s roughly 21 fibs a day. Second time around, he’s still hard at it, lying to Americans and the world on a daily basis. Trump’s disregard for truth and honesty in public life – seen again in his despicable response to the fatal shooting in Minneapolis – is dangerously immoral.
Trump declared last week that the only constraint on his power is “my own morality, my own mind”. That explains a lot. His idea of right and wrong is wholly subjective. He is his own ethical and legal adviser, his own priest and confessor. He is a church of one. Trump lies to himself as well as everyone else. And the resulting damage is pernicious. It costs lives, harms democracy and destroys trust between nations.
Like US voters, foreign leaders have grown accustomed to the president’s chronic mendacity. But the price for indulging it, for not calling it out, for not taking a stand rises exponentially as his behaviour becomes more dictatorial and erratic. Trump’s lies and deceptions are a common aggravating factor in three intractable present-day international crises.
He falsely claims, for example, that Chinese and Russian warships are “all over the place” in Greenland, necessitating a US takeover. Ahoy there! What ships? asks Denmark’s foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen – who, unlike Washington’s empire-builder, has first-hand knowledge of the........