Trump’s Entire Being Is an Exaggeration

The American president is absolutely discredited. He doesn’t know how to talk without lying, threatening and exaggerating

He lies but he doesn’t fool anyone. And he lies so much, and so fast, that his lies no longer manage to hide anything. In the end they’re a way of telling the truth by denying it, to the point that the lies are irrelevant. We all know that his two years in the presidency are already among the worst in all of American history. That’s why he felt the need to claim the opposite, even at the risk of making his audience double over laughing.

Donald Trump is absolutely discredited. Even as a liar. He doesn’t know how to talk without lying, threatening and exaggerating. At first he was scary. Now people crack up. He himself cracks up over making others crack up. The lies have become harmless. Not so with the threats, although now it’s known that they’re just a somewhat brusque and vulgar way of beginning a negotiation: If last year Trump threatened Kim Jong Un with the total destruction of North Korea and now he’s praising his courage, who’s to say that in a year he won’t be negotiating with the Iranian regime he now wants to overthrow? As for the exaggerations, they’re a matter of style: He doesn’t know how to talk any other way. Everything that comes out of his mouth is excessive, either because it magnifies the topic or because it diminishes it, with arrogance or with disdain.

Now, in the middle of his term, what’s new is the laughter. These incomparable past two years were declared as being the best in all of American history: That’s what the United Nations General Assembly took Trump’s comments to mean when it responded, sincerely applauding the president’s acceptance of the guffaw his exaggeration had provoked. A year ago Trump’s speeches were still able to arouse unease and uncertainty. Now they arouse hilarity. They’re not lies, they’re jokes.

Bad jokes, of course, but let’s be clear − not harmless. They distract from the devastating threats against the international world order, world trade and any idea of multilateral organization that Trump makes in the forum − the United Nations − dedicated precisely to upholding all that he attacks.

His slogan − patriotism against globalization − isn’t a joke, but rather the announcement of a global campaign in favor of the law of the jungle. This contrast is shared by his former aide Steve Bannon, the Trotsky of the anti-globalist far right, in his campaign for national-populism in the European elections.

There’s a qualitative leap between last year’s threat to the isolated North Korea and this year’s threat to an Islamic Republic of Iran that was on the path to recovering its connection with the world. All eyes are on the other five signatories to the nuclear deal that Trump broke from, (Germany, United Kingdom, France, Russia and China). Isolating Iran pleases Trump’s friends in Israel and Saudi Arabia, but this policy also works for Trump as a blow to the multilateralism and international order he detests.

These bad jokes may provoke hilarity, but the person telling them shouldn’t. In the end, a threat is always a threat, and it isn’t deactivated until it disappears, especially if it’s uttered by an unscrupulous negotiator. The threat to Iran is a thinly veiled appeal to the restart of the nuclear program and the hard-liners’ return to power in Tehran, and an invitation to another regional war − exactly what Israel and Saudi Arabia are hoping for − just as the Syrian war is ending.

Trump’s entire being is an exaggeration, but a dangerous exaggeration. And very useful to the Republican Party, which will keep him propped up even if he’s begun his descent into hell.