TRUMP

90 ANATOMY OF A MONSTROSITY
4. BULLSHIT
“Give them the old Trump bullshit…” 346
—Donald J. Trump
“Oh, he lies a great deal… But it’s sheer exuberance, exaggeration. It’s
never about anything important.” 347
—Philip Johnson, architect
Donald Trump has always been set apart from others by his
willingness to engage in what has charitably been called “shameless—
and totally unsubstantiated—hyperbole.” 348 As he has said himself, he
frequently departs from the literal truth of the matter, for the sake of
successful promotion:
A little hyperbole never hurts… People want to believe
that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most
spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent
form of exaggeration — and a very effective form of promotion.
349
Because of this proclivity for that oxymoronic guff he calls “truthful
hyperbole,” Trump is frequently accused of being a serial liar. But this
is not quite right. For one thing, it misunderstands what lies and bullshit
are, and who Trump is. In On Bullshit, 350 the philosopher Harry
Frankfurt tells us that the difference between the liar and the bullshitter
is that the liar is deliberately trying to tell us something he knows
to be false. The bullshitter, on the other hand, simply does not care
whether what he says is true or false. He will say whatever is necessary
to persuade his audience. That means it will include a mixture of
truth and falsehood. The bullshitter may even end up saying a lot of