All The Tropes

Donald Trump: Difference between revisions

Page Discussion

Donald Trump (view source)

Revision as of 08:25, 10 November 2021

488 bytes added ,  2 years ago
Bit of cautious copyedit (A-C) and description expansion
VisualWikitext
(→‎A-C: copyedit)
(Bit of cautious copyedit (A-C) and description expansion)
Line 20:
In 2011, Trump briefly ran in the Republican presidential nomination primary for the 2012 election, seen by some as a ratings stunt. He was a proponent of the "[[Conspiracy Theorist|birther]]" theory, so his campaign was ended after the birther train was stopped for good by [[Barack Obama]] providing his long-form birth certificate. Despite this, Trump maintained that there were still "questions" about Obama's birth certificate until he dropped the issue in 2016.
 
InOn June 16, 2015, he again announced his candidacy for president, as a Republican. With his opposition to illegal immigration, and alleged "free-trade agreements" as well as non-interventionist views on foreign policy, among many other things, Trump quickly emerged as the front-runner for the Republican nomination, showing qualities that other candidates in his party lacked. His highly controversial remarks and unorthodox behavior during the campaign gave him a [[Hatedom]] and a [[:Category:Fandom|Fandom]] as massive as each other. It came to a point where Trump became the ''only'' major Republican candidate.<ref>May 2016 [https://twitter.com/Reince/status/727665447684820992 tweet] by Reince Priebus, Chairman of the Republican National Committee.</ref>
 
HeDonald Trump faced [[Hillary Clinton]] in the 2016 general election. He campaigned on a platform promising a renegotiating several "disastrous" international trade deals, stronger enforcement of immigration laws, reform of veterans' care, repeal and replacement of Obamacare, abolition of Common Core education standards, investments in the country's infrastructure, ending corruption in Washington D.C. and a simplified tax code with lower rates. His primary slogan was "Make America Great Again"<ref>The slogan also harkens back to [[Ronald Reagan]]'s slogans in [[The Eighties]], though Trump himself disagreed with Reagan on some stances.</ref> with secondary slogans including "Build the Wall", "Drain the Swamp", and "He's With Me" (a jab at his opponent's main slogan "I'm With Her"). Originally predicted by the majority of the media polling to lose in a landslide (which was born of an incorrect assumption that turnout demographics would equal that of the 2008 election), he would up winning several states in the "Rust Belt" previously thought Democrat strongholds, such as Michigan and Pennsylvania.
 
In the 2020 general election, Donald Trump faced off against [[Joe Biden]]. Despite both being fairly unpopular candidates, and televised debates leading up to the election quickly devolving into a mutual mudslinging spectacle, Joe Biden managed to pull ahead and claim victory, succeeding him as the 46th President of the United States.
He is the oldest first-term president and the ''only'' US president who has never held prior political office or military rank<ref>He joins [[William Howard Taft]] and [[Herbert Hoover]] on the list of never holding ''elected'' office or military rank, but Donald Trump was never appointed to any office either.</ref> and his wife Melania Trump is the second foreign-born First Lady<ref>English-born Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams, First Lady to John Quincy Adams (6th President of the United States), was the first.</ref>.▼
 
▲He is the oldest first-term president and the ''only'' US president who has never held prior political office or military rank.<ref>He joins [[William Howard Taft]] and [[Herbert Hoover]] on the list of never holding ''elected'' office or military rank, but Donald Trump was never appointed to any office either.</ref> and his wife Melania Trump is the second foreign-born First Lady<ref>English-born Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams, First Lady to John Quincy Adams (6th President of the United States), was the first.</ref>.
He is the third president to have been impeached (twenty-one years less a day after [[Bill Clinton]] was), the first to have been impeached during his first term of office, and the first to be impeached twice. He is also the first president to have been [[Persona Non Grata|banned from all major social media sites for misleading information and inciting violence]].▼
 
▲He is the third president to have been impeached (twenty-one years less a day after [[Bill Clinton]] was), the first to have been impeached during his first term of office, and the first to be impeached twice. He is also the first president to have been [[Persona Non Grata|banned from all major social media sites for misleading information and inciting violence]].
 
Some editors would probably have some triumphant line of argument to add here in support or opposition of any of those, but [[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment|they should know better]].
Line 32 ⟶ 34:
{{creatortropes}}
== A-C ==
* [[Ad Hominem]]: Has been on the giving and receiving end of this often. Trump has been known to attack the person in debates alongside - or often instead of - addressing the point raised in an argument. For example, his reason for disliking the retired Admiral McCraven was because [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAZ7jyr3kSs he is a "Hillary Clinton fan."]
* [[Adam Westing]]: At one time, he seemed to revel in parodies of himself, even appearing in a series of OREO commercials with Darrell Hammond (impersonating him. Hammond was the longest-running white male cast member of ''[[Saturday Night Live]]''{{'}}s longest-running white male cast member, and one of the show's best and most frequently-used celebrity impersonators) impersonating him.
* [[All Issues Are Political Issues]]: While President, he claimed ''any'' criticism of his actions was a political attack.
* [[All Women Are Lustful]]: Trump's view of women, especially according to the Pussygate tape. After implying that Nancy O'Dell, who once rebuffed his advances, became sluttier with "big phony tits", he went on to explain that all women all want it with a star:
{{quote|And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. [[Beat|*beat*]] Grab 'em by the pussy. You can do anything.}}
* [[Admiring the Abomination]]: Trump has notoriously given praise to several world leaders viewed as controversial andat somebest viewed asor outright despots at worst. These include [[Vladimir Putin]] of Russia, [[Rodrigo Duterte]] of the Philippines, Xi Jinping of China, and [[Kim Jong Un]] of North Korea (despite Trump previously throwing some shade at Kim and even threatened "fire and fury" against North Korea on Twitter). He once claimed he admired [[Saddam Hussein]] for executing terrorists, and if [[Michael Wolfe]] is truthful in his book ''[[Landslide]]'', he had to be kept by aides from publicly saying positive things about [[Adolf Hitler]] himself.
* [[Appeal to Popularity]]: This logical fallacy underlies Trump's frequent claims that an unspecified but large number of unknown and anonymous "people" agree with him or certify his opinions and positions as correct. He Byseeks to validate his statements by counterfeiting a body of people who allegedly agree with him, he seeks to invoke this fallacy to validate his statements.
* [[Arch Enemy]]: Has several people who've committed themselves to going against him where the feeling's mutual. No need to list any examples - the list that used to be here was quite [[egregious]].
<!-- MOD: Commented out instead of deleted, in case I'm outvoted on the "no need to list any examples" thing. However, the part below where new enemies are listed week-by-week is excessively out of line - one might even say it's Egregious.
 
** He's hosted two [[Wrestlemania]]s and been an active participant in [[WWE]] promos, highlighted by his "feud" with rival CEO [[Vince McMahon]].
** Not content with prime time, Trump took daytime TV by storm when a [[Volleying Insults|tabloid war]] erupted between himself and Rosie O'Donnell, then-host of the American morning talk show ''The View''.
Line 83 ⟶ 84:
-->
* [[Artistic License Law]]:
** "I have an Article II where I have the right to do whatever I want as president,", Trump [https://theweek.com/speedreads/854487/trump-have-article-2-where-have-right-whatever-want-president said in July 2019]. It wouldn't be until more than a year later that Trump learned that Article II didn't quite give him the power he thought he had, particularly over other branches of the government.
** His apparent belief that legal cases are decided for whoever shouts loudest, regardless of evidence.
** His claim that being [[Persona Non Grata|banned from all major social media sites]] at the end of his presidency was a violation of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. The First Amendment forbids the government -- and ''only'' the government -- from regulating speech. Private entities are permitted -- in fact, ''required'' at times -- to regulate speech which they enable. Further, businesses are permitted to refuse to service to anyone they care to -- a right supported all the way to the Supreme Court by conservatives, [[Hoist by His Own Petard|who only imagined it being used by Christian bakeries to refuse to make cakes for gay weddings]]. Not to mention that the social media sites which have banned him have also banned other world leaders and political figures for identical behavior, putting the lie to his insistence that he is being specifically targeted.
** As of March 30, 2021, [https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/30/trump-campaign-non-disclosure-agreement-478648 a federal judge has ruled that the Non-Disclosure Agreements Trump had his campaign workers sign were so broad as to be unenforceable], suggesting that Trump's desire to control his employees' speech exceeds his understanding of the laws regarding the legal ways of doing so.
** Similarly, in [https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/trump-loses-case-against-omarosa-who-wrote-tell-all-white-n1280277 late September 2021], a New York arbitrator ruled that the NDA ex-White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman was required to sign did not adhere to typical legal standards and was "vague, indefinite, and therefore void and unenforceable"." The arbitrator summarized the agreement as imposing on her "an obligation to never say anything remotely critical of Mr. Trump, his family or his or his family members' businesses for the rest of her life,", and ruled that the document did not qualify as a binding contract under New York law.
* [[Artistic License Medicine]]: His [https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-suggests-injection-disinfectant-beat-coronavirus-clean-lungs-n1191216 notorious speech] where he suggested drinking bleach or using an "injection" of disinfectant to clear a Covid patient's lungs is often regarded as one of his costliest mistakes.
* [[Attack! Attack! Attack!]]: Trump rarely if ever backs down. No matter the potential foolishness or folly, he will almost inevitably double down when called on it, usually citing [[Appeal to Popularity|unspecified anonymous "people" who agree with him or certify him as being correct]].
** A case in point would be his defense in 2019 of calling for the death penalty for the [https://time.com/5597843/central-park-five-trump-history/ so-called "Central Park Five"] in 1989, even after the five had been exonerated of the rape and beating of jogger Trisha Meili when murderer and serial rapist Matias Reyes ''confessed to the crime'' once DNA evidence identified him. With no evidence whatsoever, Trump painted the five as still being criminals guilty of unknown ''other'' crimes to justify his demand for their executions.
* [[Attention Whore]]: No doubt as a consequence of his [[Narcissist|narcissism]], Trump craves and revels in constant attention, and will do or say ''anything'' to draw and keep that attention on him. His rage and the subsequent lawsuits he filed when he was banned from his usual bully pulpits in the wake of the January 6, 2021 insurrection attempt are typical of him when he is denied the adulation he thinks he is due from the American people.
{{quote|He lives in terror of being irrelevant.
|Chris Cillizza, [http://lite.cnn.com/en/article/h_74bd112ff36facd1f8e9c922fc99eaec CNN.com, September 8, 2021]}}
* [[Author Vocabulary Calendar]]: Trump's frequent use of "failing" as a pejorative for any news outlet which reported anything negative about him, as though impugning the profit margins of organizations such as ''The New York Times'' was relevant to their journalistic integrity. Along with hisHis insistence that any television program which covered him negatively was always losing or low in ratings, thisalso testifies to Trump's obsession with winning as the only meaningful metric in life.
* [[Awesome McCoolname]]: Trump, as the words has several meanings, including "surpass (something) by saying or doing something better.". His ancestral name was Drumpf, which was changed to Trump [[w:Donald_Trump_Donald_Trump (Last_Week_TonightLast Week Tonight)|sometime in the 17th century]], and has picked up steam as a pejorative (often one that falls into [[Godwin's Law]]) among his many liberal critics and detractors.
* [[Badass]]: He got a very credible threat to his life at least two weeks before his presidential election, to the point the Secret Service evacuated him from the speech he was giving, but instead of letting it stick, he simply went right back to the podium a few minutes later and continued speaking. In fact, throughoutThroughout his entire presidential campaign and into his presidency, Trump has been the target of more than one confirmed assassination attempt and refused to quit appearing in public, even making a point of refusing toor be cowed into doing so.
** [[Badass Grandpa]]: Trump was in his late sixties when the aforementioned threat happened, and he's now an actual grandfather.
* [[Gannon Banned|Bannon Banned]]: Quite a bit of strife in the political fandom was caused by Steve Bannon's appointment as a quasi-Chief of Staff.
* [[Believing Their Own Lies]]: It's unclear, but Trump does at least give the appearance of believing his lies ''du jour''.
* [[Big Bulky Bomb]]: He became the first president to deploy a MOAB, the so-called "Mother of All Bombs" (which itself is a [[Shout-Out]] to Saddam Hussein's "mother of all wars" boast) in 2017. This bomb is so big it has to be launched out the back of a cargo plane, but it's only a conventional explosive.
* [[Big Lie]]: For nearly a year (so far) after the November 2020 election, Trump and his allies -- including Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz -- claimed without proof that [[Joe Biden]]'s victory had been the result of a vast program of voter fraud executed by the Democrats. While they repeatedly insisted that they had evidence to prove this assertion, none ever materialized and no court (out of sixty lawsuits) ruled in their favor. One lawsuit filed with the Supreme Court of the United States by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in early December 2020 actually claimed that [[Insane Troll Logic|the complete lack of any evidence of voter fraud was in fact ''proof'' of the existence of a massive conspiracy that had ''perfectly'' hidden all traces of both its existence and its efforts to "undermine" the "true" results of the election.]] Regardless of the absence of any proof, the members of Trump's [[Cult of Personality]] uncritically accepted these claims, which directly led to the mob assault upon the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.
** Attempts to "prove" that organized voter fraud "stole" the election continued through the summer of 2021, with recounts and audits in states with sympathetic Republican governors or legislatures -- as many as four in some states. As of this writing, all have failed to show ''anything'' close to what Trump's increasingly strident supporters demand that they should -- and one in fact revealed that Biden had actually won with ''more'' votes than initially counted.
* [[Blatant Lies]]: Has been [https://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/ accused of doing this frequently], though not without reason. or proof. The ''Washington Post'' began keeping a record false or misleading claims (lies), [https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims/?tid=a_inl&utm_term=.8c818bcde19a totaling 492 in his first 100 days in office], [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/05/01/president-trump-has-made-3001-false-or-misleading-claims-so-far/ 3001 in his first 466 days], [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/08/01/president-trump-has-made-4229-false-or-misleading-claims-in-558-days/ 4,229 in his first 558 days] and [https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims-database/?utm_term=.b83bfa941966 6420 in his first 649 days]. His lie count varies, but in the first 466 days of his Presidency, he averaged 6.5 'false or misleading claims' a day, whereas in June and July of 2018, [https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/trumps-escalating-war-on-the-truth-is-on-purpose he averaged 16 lies per day]. This dramatic uptick seemingly [[Nothing to See Here|coincided with]] increased pressure from the Mueller investigation. The exponential lie count continued under the aforementioned pressure, coupled with the run up to the Mid-Term elections on November 6, 2018. According to [https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims-database/?utm_term=.b83bfa941966 the graph in the ''Washington Post''], Trump has lied/ made false claims over 1000 times in October 2018].
** As of November 1st, 2018, [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/when-i-can-i-tell-the-truth-trump-pushes-back-against-his-peddling-of-falsehoods/2018/11/01/e8278d68-ddbe-11e8-85df-7a6b4d25cfbb_story.html?utm_term=.d0db42789b88 Trump claims to tell the truth "when [he<nowiki>]</nowiki> can"]
** As of December 10th, 2018, as part of their Fact Checker, the ''Washington Post'' created the ultimate category of lie, or misleading claim. Based on their prior "[[Pinocchio]]" scale whereby a claim is award 1 (shading of truth) to 4 (lying) [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/about-the-fact-checker/?utm_term=.2b9b75331487 Pinocchio's] depending on its relative truthfulness; the new category is called a "Bottomless Pinocchio" and stands for any false claim repeated publicly more than 20 times. These claims constitute [https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/fact-checker-most-repeated-disinformation/?utm_term=.7ea2e566af6a ''disinformation'']. The biggest Pinocchio's of the year were given [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/12/14/biggest-pinocchios/?utm_term=.8604e49c9f53their own page].
** "I do not tolerate ANY extreme violence." (PostedTrump posted this to Twitter on October 8, 2020 in response to Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer's accusation that he encouraged White Supremacist groups and their violence.) And then on January 6, 2021, [https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/politics/2021/01/06/what-trump-said-rally-speech-spark-u-s-capitol-storming/6568337002/ he told a rally "And after this, we're going to walk down there, and I'll be there with you"] before doing nothing to prevent that crowd from storming the Capitol building. He was not right there with them. As soon as he was done speaking he returned to the White House to watch the insurrection he'd launched on TV.
** And then on January 6, 2021, [https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/politics/2021/01/06/what-trump-said-rally-speech-spark-u-s-capitol-storming/6568337002/ he told a rally "And after this, we're going to walk down there, and I'll be there with you"] before doing nothing to prevent that crowd from storming the Capitol building. He was not right there with them. As soon as he was done speaking he returned to the White House to watch the insurrection he'd launched on TV.
** [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/19/george-conway-what-i-really-believe/ George Conway] has described him as "the most prodigiously documented liar in American history, if not the history of the world."
** As of the end of his presidency, the ''Washington Post'' credited him with [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/24/trumps-false-or-misleading-claims-total-30573-over-four-years/ over 30,500 false or misleading claims] during the four years he was in office.
* [[Broke Episode]]: Trump's businesses have filed for bankruptcy six times.
* [[Brooklyn Rage]]: Made efforts to cultivate this image over the years. Trump's persona, at least in the media, is that of a [[Nouveau Riche|straight-talking]], tough New Yorker - an image he's made efforts to cultivate over the years.
* [[Brutal Honesty]]: He is quite outspoken, especially where things such as [[Political Correctness Gone Mad|excessive political correctness]] are concerned. As for how honest, that's a subject of some debate; [[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgement|suffice to say he's said both truths and falsehoods]].
* [[The Bully]]: A noted behavior over the years.
** Trump received his [[The Cameo|cameo]] in ''[[Home Alone|Home Alone 2]]'' because he demanded it in exchange for permission to film in the Plaza Hotel, which he owned at the time. In a [https://www.insider.com/home-alone-30-an...eo-2020-11 December 2020 interview with ''Insider''], director [[Chris Columbus]] explicitly described it as "bully[ing] his way into the movie".
** In early January 2021, Trump attempted to bully his vice president Mike Pence into illegally calling the election for him by browbeating him: [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/us/politics/mike-pence-trump.html "You can either go down in history as a patriot, or you can go down in history as a pussy."] {{spoiler|(Pence chose [[You Keep Using That Word|"patriot"]], enraging Trump with his "betrayal".)}}
* [[The Caligula]]: Trump matches many of the qualities listed in the article, most notably his extreme behavior (which was very obvious after his 2020 defeat) and his intolerance of disagreement or things he doesn't want to hear (- it's not for nothing that his own press secretary invented the phrase [[Blatant Lies|"Alternative Facts"]]). And while he's never renamed a city for himself, one need only point at all the gaudy buildings he's built with his name on them, or his frequently-expressed desire to [[Monumental Damage|add his face to Mount Rushmore]].
* [[Calvin Ball]]: Trump would ignore many unwritten "rules" for running a successful campaign and win anyway.
** He completely ignored the "rule" that a campaign should "never put a candidate in a hat if you can avoid it" <ref>One notable violation leading to failure was Dukakis wearing a tank commander helmet and looking horrible in it, providing Bush Sr. with material for successful ads against him.</ref> and not only made his "Make America Great Again" hat iconic, but successfully wore a hard hat when accepting an endorsement from West Virginia Coal Association <ref>An endorsement he admitted right there isn't hard when running against Hillary, who said she wants their employers "out of business"</ref>.
** Trump was the first major party candidate in 40 years not to release his income tax return. He claims an ongoing audit prevented him from doing so.
* [[The Cameo]]: Trump has [[w:Donald_Trump_filmographyDonald Trump filmography|appeared as himself]] ([[Adam Westing|or characters parodying himself in some way]]) in numerous shows (including ''[[The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air]]'' and ''[[The Nanny]]'') and even a couple of films like ''[[Home Alone|Home Alone 2: Lost in New York]]''.
* [[Catch Phrase]]: "You're fired." Inverted regularly in the season finales of ''[[The Apprentice (TV series)|The Apprentice]]'', when he announces "You're hired."
** "Make America Great Again" (MAGA for short) was his electioncampaign version.slogan It wasn't original:- he re-purposed "Let's make America great again" from [[w:Make_America_Great_AgainMake America Great Again|Reagan's 1980 campaign]]. Although he intended on using "Keep America Great" as his 2020 versionslogan, it wasn't seen as much as the original.
** Trump's other 2016 campaign [[Slogans|slogans]] included "Build The Wall", "Lock Her [Hillary Clinton] Up" and "America First".
** Trump's now-suspended Twitter feed was populated with tweets filled with the catchphrases, or [[Stock Phrases]], [https://web.archive.org/web/20200607232314/https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/968468176639004672 "Witch Hunt!"] / [https://web.archive.org/web/20200609033514/https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/925006418989715456 "No Collusion!] (regarding the Mueller investigation) and [https://web.archive.org/web/20200611101231/https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/818990655418617856 "Fake News"] (regarding any and all negative stories about the Donald).
* [[The Chosen One]]: Repeatedly invoked and lampshaded by Trump himself, as well as some of his allies. He Hashas been spoken of in religious terms among his followers, such as when Rick Perry told Trump that he was God's chosen one. Trump also refers to himself as the only one who could have done X, for a whole host of X.
{{quote|"I am the chosen one."|Donald J. Trump, [https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-49429661 21 August 2019]}}
** This is his explicit role in the QAnon conspiracy theory/pseudo-religion, combined with [[The Messiah]], at least before Joe Biden's inauguration in 2021 -- according to the original dogma, Trump was to be elected to a second term, then sweep through the government arresting and executing all Democrats for being cannibalistic Satanist pedophiles, and establish a permanent Republican/conservative government. The remaining QAnon adherents are [[Insane Troll Logic|still recalibrating their prophecies]] to explain the discrepancy.
* [[Compensating for Something]]: Trump's resurgence in business was accompanied by the, erm... [[All Psychology Is Freudian|erection]] of a 68-story Trump Tower in Manhattan's Upper East Side. Pleased with the finished product, he sprouted '''more''' "Trump Towers" in major cities throughout the U.S.
** Also while on the campaign trail, he assured America that despite his small hands, he had "no problems in that department".
** Has been attributed to him in other areas "has the ''best'' words", is "''like'' a smart person", has "''one of the best'' temperaments" and, the clincher, he is a "''very'' stable genius."
* [[Con Man]]: A frequent charge leveled at him over the years, both formally and informally.
** [[w:Trump University|Trump University]] (also known as the Trump Wealth Institute and Trump Entrepreneur Initiative LLC), which he founded and which was owned and operated by the Trump Organization, was an unaccredited school which claimed to train students in real estate, asset management, entrepreneurship, and wealth creation. It was infamous for high-pressure sales tactics and misleading marketing, and was the subject of fraud and racketeering investigations in several states, plus two class-action suits in federal courts. No less an eminence than the arch-conservative publication ''The National Review'' described it as [https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/trump-university-scam "a massive scam"].
** He was also described as such during his presidency, but no more so than for his end-of-2020 fund raising, where his apparatchiks claimed that any donated money would go to fighting the confirmation of Joe Biden or to help the Georgia Senate run-offs, but (as explicitly noted in the fine print) most of which actually went to Trump's own political action committee.
** So described by attorney and Trump critic George Conway in [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/19/george-conway-what-i-really-believe/ "What I Really Believe"], an opinion piece published in the ''Washington Post'' on January 19, 2021:
{{quote|I believe he’s a con man, a pathological liar ... I believe he doesn’t care about, and may not even fully comprehend, the difference between truth and lies, between honesty and mendacity.}}
* [[Conspiracy Theorist]]: Trump never met a [[Conspiracy Theories|conspiracy theory]] too wild to embrace and retweet, as long as it made him look good or his enemies look bad. He would gladly delve fathoms deep into [[Cloudcuckoolander]] territory if it served his needs, such as the claim that Hugo Chavez, who had died three years before Trump was elected, was behind [[Thanatos Gambit|a vast international conspiracy to deny him re-election. Starting well before his political career, he has promoted dozens of them; among the most troubling were his assertion that Barack Obama was not born in America and thus not eligible to be President ("Birtherism"), that Muslims in Jersey City were celebrating the 9/11 attacks by partying in the streets as it was happening, that Ted Cruz's father was involved in John F. Kennedy's assassination, that there was widespread voter fraud in 2016 (the election he ''won''), that there was even more voter fraud in 2020, that Obama was "wiretapping" his campaign, Hillary Clinton ordered Vince Foster and dozens of others murdered (not a conspiracy theory he started, in his defense, but one he seems adamant is true), Global Warming is a "Chinese hoax", and that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was murdered (which he did seem to make up himself). He gladly took up QAnon, the whackjob right-wing movement that was convinced that all Democrats were blood-drinking, Satan-worshiping pedophiles and that Trump was [[The Messiah|a savior]] who would defeat them all and make the world safe for fascism.
** Starting well before his political career, he has promoted dozens of them; among the most troubling were his assertion that Barack Obama was not born in America and thus not eligible to be President ("Birtherism"), that Muslims in Jersey City were celebrating the 9/11 attacks by partying in the streets as it was happening, that Ted Cruz's father was involved in John F. Kennedy's assassination, that there was widespread voter fraud in 2016 (the election he ''won''), that there was even more voter fraud in 2020, that Obama was "wiretapping" his campaign, Hillary Clinton ordered Vince Foster and dozens of others murdered (not a conspiracy theory he started, in his defense, but one he seems adamant is true), Global Warming is a "Chinese hoax", and that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was murdered (which he did seem to make up himself). He gladly took up QAnon, the whackjob right-wing movement that was convinced that all Democrats were blood-drinking, Satan-worshiping pedophiles and that Trump was [[The Messiah|a savior]] who would defeat them all and make the world safe for fascism.
* [[Consummate Liar]]: Averted. Trump's apparent uncontrollable compulsion to make himself look better or more knowledgeable at all times has led to him lying about things that can easily be verified or which were witnessed by thousands or millions of other people -- starting with the claim that his 2017 Inauguration had a larger crowd than any other Inauguration ever, especially [[Barack Obama]]'s -- a claim immediately disproven by the National Parks Service, which released [https://www.cnet.com/news/nps-donald-trump-inauguration-barack-obama-crowd-size/ side-by-side aerial photographs] demonstrating just how tiny the turnout was for Trump, and how immense it was for Obama.
** In the interests of fairness, it should be noted that more than a year and a half after his inauguration, the characterization of this as a deliberate lie was challenged by then-Press Secretary Sean Spicer, who claimed that [https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/07/politics/trump-inauguration-photos/index.html Trump's boast was based on cropped photos provided by an anonymous NPS photographer which left out the vast tracts of empty space that were filled with people for Obama's inauguration, and thus Trump hadn't ''lied'', he'd been ''misled''.] This had the problem of contradicting Trump's comment that the boast was based on his own on-the-spot observation of the crowd during the ceremony.
* [[Crunchtastic]]: Trump has a ''bigly'' vocabulary of the best words. Even if a few are made up. (See, for example, [[w:Donald_Trump_on_social_media#"Covfefe"|Covfefe]]).<ref>Unfortunately, the [[wikipedia:COVFEFE Act|COVFEFE Act]] (intended to extend to Twitter posts the same requirement of preservation that other Presidential communications have) died in committee, so future generations might not have access to this unique vocabulary.</ref>
* [[Cult of Personality]] : [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/12/24/paleologos-on-poll-breaking-down-donald-trump-cult-like-following/4037335001/ His following], who comprise approximately a third of Republican voters by best counts, and who uncritically accept everything he says.
 
== D-F ==
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/1939969"