Trump’s baseline is lies
President’s lack of basic honesty puts nation in danger
After his positive diagnosis for the coronavirus, even many of Donald Trump’s fiercest adversaries expressed empathy. Then the president threw it all away. Upon his return to the White House, he cavalierly dismissed the pandemic yet again with more egregious behavior and imbecilic lies. They could result in additional infections and deaths. He doesn’t care.
Lying is the baseline of Trump’s existence.
It is his raison d’être, the essence of his personality. He can’t help but lie, totally ignoring the veracity of anything he utters or tweets. Just ask his sister. His labeling as “fake” anyone who disagrees with his policies, or definitively disproves his self-delusions, is predictable and wearying.
A small but especially revealing example of this ceaseless disregard for reality is his insistence that a painting he owns is an original work by the great impressionist Pierre-auguste Renoir.
That. Is. Not. True.
Though insignificant among his endless litany of lies, this particular dishonesty perfectly demonstrates his inherently flawed character and stubborn fantasies.
While researching his book, “Trumpnation: The Art of Being the Donald,” journalist/author Tim O’brien recalls a flight from New York to L.A. about 16 years ago. Trump proudly pointed out a painting on his plane asserting it was an original Renoir.
O’brien, who was from Chicago, had the temerity to point out that the 1881 treasure, Two Sisters (on the Terrace) was in fact owned by the Chicago Art Institute. It has been exhibited there since 1933. Trump was having none of it.
On the return flight, ignoring the previous day’s conversation, The Donald boasted yet again, “You know that’s an original Renoir.” The journalist refrained from further comment.
In contrast, years earlier, this great art connoisseur and collector had reneged on his promise to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to preserve and donate architecturally significant elements from the iconic Bonwit Teller department store on New York's Fifth Avenue, which he demolished to make way for the monument to his ego, Trump Tower. After they were destroyed, a spokesman for the Trump Organization, one John Baron, announced that the Art Deco friezes had no monetary or artistic value. That was an utter lie according to MET officials and independent art experts. Furthermore, the 20’x 30’ rare bronze entrance grill work was inexplicably “lost.” “We don’t know what happened to it.” That’s a rather large item to misplace.
We now know who “John Baron” was/is.
During the 2016 post election “60 Minutes” interview at Trump’s uber gaudy apartment in New York, he dictated the camera positions. In the background, the fake Renoir was purposefully on display. Undoubtedly, he informed Lesley Stahl she was beholding a $10 million original work of art.
Shortly before the interview Trump told Stahl why he attacked journalists: “I demean you all so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you.”
That may be the only factual statement he’s ever made.
What a persistently petty, insecure, weak, disgraceful man. Purporting a reproduction to be a genuine masterpiece is a relatively minor transgression of truth. The problem is that Trump spouts unrestrained exaggeration, incorrect information and blatant lies repeatedly in much more serious and dangerous ways. His destructive policies, disregard for Constitutional principles, contempt for the rule of law, attacks on vital government institutions, and his denigration of pretty much everyone in his usual incoherent, contradictory, unstable way, and you have a consequential threat to the Republic.
The impeached president seems incapable of showing basic human decency, even to the dead victims and mourning families of the pandemic.
His perpetual deceit and unhinged behavior stain our national integrity and undermine our international reputation.
Perhaps Trump should hang a copy of Picasso’s bigly painting “Guernica” in his apartment. It is a more fitting image to represent his dystopian visions and affinity for cruelty and sadism.
Inevitably, he’d claim that it’s the original.
You can bet your unmasked Renoir on that.