HORIST: Trump is the carnival barker in the greatest (political) show on earth

Donald Trump’s veracity has been the subject of controversy throughout his career.  Since winning the presidency, it has become the obsession of the left-wing news media.  They see it as his Achilles Heel, so they devote thousands of hours of airtime and miles of newsprint telling the public over and over that Trump says a lot of things that are not only not technically true, but are often ridiculously untrue.

The Washington Post keeps a record of Trump prevarications, which they claim now exceed 5000 since assuming the presidency.  Of course, that count also has credibility issues since it is the product of a publication dedicated to bringing down the Trump presidency.  Many of those 5000 so-called lies are honest mistakes.  Others are matters of opinion – with the folks at the Washington Post arrogantly declaring their biased opinion to be fact-based.  Some of what the Post calls lies depends on which information source you accept.  However, that still leaves a lot of Trump’s quips a bit short of accuracy.

We also have nothing to compare Trump against.  We do not have any record of intense lie monitoring of past presidents.  We know some of the big ones.  We know President Obama lied when he said he opposed gay marriage.  According to his top advisor, David Axelrod, that lie was necessary to get elected.  We know Obama lied when he said you can keep your doctor and that your insurance premiums would go down because one of his top advisors, Jonathon Gruber, admitted they had to lie to get Obamacare passed in Congress.  But no one in the media maintained a daily fib file on the former President.

And what about the media, itself.  As a constant consumer of news, I see inaccurate, deceptive and dishonest reporting every day.  It is one of the reasons that the American public has a VERY low regard for the Fourth Estate in general – and, if you check out the ratings, the left-wing press in particular.  For obvious reasons, those low polling numbers are rarely reported by the media.

Now having said all that, it is clear to anyone with a modicum of objectivity that Trump says a LOT of things that are not true – that are provably not true.  In that regard, he is like the carnival barker whose promises invite you inside the tent to see the mermaid woman, the fellow with no bones and the captured space alien.  Sure, people will buy tickets, but they know what the barker describes is more theatrical than real.

In many ways, Trump is both the barker and the manager of the political carnival.  In the office, he is a serious down-to-business executive who hires the best staff to seriously run the enterprise.  But, on the platform, he is the barker.  That is the dichotomy between Trump the showboater that the Democrats and the left hates and Trump the policy producer that the President’s fans love.

It has been said that people who hate Trump take everything he says literally, but not seriously.  His supporters take him seriously, but not literally.  There is a lot of truth to that.

Those in the New York City/Washington, D.C. media bubble are vexed by the fact that no matter how much they pound on Trump’s pugnacious personality and his fact-challenged off-the-cuff statements, half of America does not react as they do.  The folks in the press just cannot get us recruited into the #NeverTrump Resistance Movement — and it drives them nuts.

As the midterm election draws near, the media is becoming increasingly crazed by the fact that their intense pounding on Trump has not only not damaged his favorable rating with the public, it appears to have raised it.  His current 47 percent favorability rating is now approximately 12 points higher than it was just a few months ago – and is his highest on record.  It is in a virtual tie with his 49 percent unfavorable rating.  It is higher than the Obama’s rating at this time in his presidency.

Let’s face it.  The Democrats and the political left had no idea what hit them in 2016 – even though it had been hitting them for the previous decade as they lost office after office across the land.  And … they still don’t get it.

Trump is the kind of person we see around us every day.  He is a classic bullsh*tter.  Yes, he is a sort of con man that makes grandiose sales pitches.  But – and this is important – Trump delivers a good product for Americans with strong conservative values.  He is not a snake oil salesman.  He is more like a Maserati salesman, who makes all sorts of exaggerated claims about what the car will do for you, your image and your ego.  But, he also delivers a damn good car – and that is what counts.

What the left does not get about Trump’s lies is that he does not intend for anyone to believe the specifics – and we do not.  He says, a contract to sell arms of Saudi Arabia will generate thousands of jobs, then hundreds of thousands and finally millions of jobs.  That is hyperbole at its best, and we know it.  But the contract is still good for America’s bottom line and the relationship with Saudi Arabia is critical to our own national security.

Conversely, the press says Trump is lying when he talks about a $110 billion military equipment deal with the Saudis.  They say that only $40 billion has been actually purchased.  BUT… the letter of intent is for $110 billion.  That is the amount of the deal.  In this case, the media is lying about Trump’s lying.

Trump says they are rioting against sanctuary cities in California when anything defined as a riot is hard to find.  But, he does draw attention to the fact that there have been some protests and a number of California cities are fighting in court against Governor Jerry Brown’s statewide sanctuary law.

The difference between Trump’s lies and Obama’s lies is that Trump is not trying to deceive us.  He knows he is winging it.  It is just schtick.  Obama told lies that he wanted us to believe – and we did – and we were dramatically fooled by his lies.  Based on them, America bought into a healthcare law we did not want.  Trump seems to tell lies to get us to laugh and to have the press go off on tangents.

The left-wing media’s big mistake is that they believe that Trump supporters – or at least those who consider the alternative far worse – actually believe all his braggadocious bullsh*t.  It is in keeping with their arrogant narrative that we are stupid, gullible and deplorable.  No!  We can see when he lies.  We just think some of it is amusing and the rest is less important in what he accomplishes – much of which the press seems to be unaware or unwilling to report.

They report as if Trump supporters represent a narrow fringe group on the far-right edge of the political spectrum – and that the more conservative FOX News is some outlier D-battery television station on the periphery of the broadcast industry.  In that regard, I suggest that the media revisit that 47 percent popularity figure.  That’s essentially half the country.  And FOX commands the biggest cable news audience by far.  So, who is out of the mainstream?

This conflict between Trump’s personality and style versus his policies and accomplishments has been a key part of the national debate since he descended down that elevator in Trump Tower.  The left’s strategy to stoke outrage over the personality failed them in 2106.  It has failed them in opposing Trump’s policy agenda for the past two years.  It has failed them in bring down Trump’s popularity numbers.  It failed them in stopping Trump from putting a conservative majority on the Supreme Court.  And it is currently failing them in maintaining those tsunami-size wave predictions for the upcoming midterm election.

Neither Trump’s hyperbole nor the media’s madness over it seems to be fooling the people.  And that is a good thing.

So there ‘tis.