Commander in cheat: Why Trump’s lies are the foundation of his power

As predictably as the sun comes up in the morning, U.S. President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address was resplendent with lies.

It is time the whole world started talking about his lying as not just a character flaw, but as a toxic form of democratic cheating. Facts are the glue that holds society together and Trump is the liar who is tearing it apart.

Lying is both an expression of Trump’s power and how Trump gains power. To understand this relationship, think about the fact that Trump lies because he always gets away with it. And he lies because he has to: without lying, he could never win.

This point was made differently in the bestselling book by Rick Reilly, Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump. Reilly describes how everyone who plays golf with Trump knows that he cheats. He has been given the nickname “Pelé” after the Brazilian soccer superstar because of how regularly he or his caddies kick his golf ball to a better position.

Beyond the Western alliance: Australia’s uncertain horizon

As the Western alliance fractures under raw power politics, Australia faces a stark strategic choice.

Reilly gives some insight into why Trump cheats at golf, which helps to explain why Trump lies so egregiously in politics. The first reason I actually think is more about how Trump justifies to himself and others that he cheats: he believes everyone cheats at golf, therefore, he rationalises that to keep up with all the other cheaters, he has to cheat, too.

The other reason is more important and really far more simple: without cheating, Trump wouldn’t win. His narcissistic personality is such that he has to win. Therefore, his only option is to cheat. That is also the reason he lies as a form of cheating in politics. He has to lie because the truth would destroy him.

What truth am I talking about here? The first obvious truth is that Trump is completely unfit to be the President of the United States. His mind is completely addled to the point that he can’t string a sentence together. This has got worse with age, but he was never clever or articulate to begin with. He is corrupt. He is a coward. He is racist. He is a sexual predator. And there is increasing evidence coming from the Epstein files that he has abused children.

And of course, as above, Trump is pathologically dishonest. Trump is possibly the world’s worst candidate to be U.S. President, yet here we are.

Aside from his many personal inadequacies, inabilities and character defects, what other truths would destroy Trump? Let’s just name the big ones because there are many.

Despite what he says, minority race and religious groups, including Black people and immigrants, are not to blame for social and economic problems, including crime and wealth inequality.

Trump does not serve the economic interests of working-class Americans. The only people who benefit from a Trump presidency are billionaires, including Trump and his family. The American economy is not performing well under the Trump Administration, except if you are a billionaire.

Hitler’s Moscow to Trump’s Minneapolis: When power meets resistance

As federal force meets organised resistance, Minneapolis becomes a defining moment in Trump’s presidency.

These are not small lies that Trump is telling — lies he told throughout his two-hour lie-riddled State of the Union address. They are big, demonstrably false lies. They are so big, in fact, that they are the very foundation of the Trump presidency.

They are the equivalent of – as Trump says – saying you are the world’s best golfer, when in actual fact you haven’t ever played a game of golf where you won relying on your own skill, but instead you cheated and cheated and cheated again, then bragged about winning by cheating.

Once you understand how lies are not just a defect of the Trump movement, but are the foundation on which it is built, it does raise the question of how exactly it happened that Trump and his allies were able to not only get away with so much lying, but have been able to weaponise lies – to cheat – and win.

Because the thing is, Trump can lie and cheat all he likes at amateur golf. Yet, of course, Trump has never been crowned a PGA champion. Where you might be able to cheat on your own golf course, and get away with it because you’re too rich and powerful to be called out, you can’t cheat your way to sporting victory in a professional sport when there are officials, referees, umpires and unbreakable guardrails that make the sport actually work so that the best player wins.

American democracy, clearly, has weaker guardrails – weaker consequences and disincentives for cheating – than professional sport. One of the weakest and most ineffectual guardrails is the media. Major news networks now blatantly sit in the MAGA tent. This includes Fox News, which has always been there.

Increasingly, outlets like CBS are being taken over by Trump loyalists and censoring anyone who might criticise Trump, or in other words, call out his lies. He also has social media allies in Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, whose mega platforms are awash with MAGA lies.

Even amongst other news media outlets which are not in Trump’s pocket, there is a reticence – you may even call it a cowardliness – about calling Trump what he is: a liar. A little like the people who play amateur golf with Trump and just let him cheat because that’s what he does, mainstream journalists too often uncritically repeat Trump’s lies as if they are just a difference of opinion.

The braggart soldier returns: Trump on the grand stage of ego

Donald Trump is framed as a modern Pyrgopolynices, a braggart whose performative narcissism has moved from farce to real power, with consequences still unfolding.

In doing so, they are perpetuating Trump's lies to their mainstream audiences. They are not just failing to call out Trump’s cheating — they are his caddie kicking his ball.

That is how we are now at the point where Trump can spend two hours lying to the American people in the State of the Union Address and it would appear that this will not hurt Trump politically, it will not dent his support, it will not loosen his grip on power.

It is noteworthy that Massachusetts Representative Jim McGovern said after Trump’s speech that Trump is exceptional:

“If any other president had spun out of thin air such a grandiose, absurd lie about their economic record, it would have been a huge scandal”.

McGovern is right about that; lying was once a huge scandal. But when he went on to say that Trump lies because his strategy is “to flood the zone with so much BS that it’s impossible to keep up”, he misses the point.

When right-wing political commentator Steve Bannon said Trump’s Republicans flood the zone with shit, the first part of his sentence was: “The real opposition is the media”. The media never stopped to think why they might be the Trump movement’s opposition. It is, of course, because they have the power to call out his lies. It’s such a pity they haven’t done so.