Lord of the lies

Behind the Big Lie there's an expert in the art of lying. The Big Lie is the false idea that Joe Biden is not the legitimate president of the United States. And the 'Lord of the Lies' is Donald Trump, who has been pushing the idea.

Since Trump unquestionably lost the presidential elections on Nov. 3 of 2020, he has been lying. “The fact is we won the presidential election,” he said a few days later. “And we won it big.” The fact is, he lost it, big. Biden won 306 electoral votes against Trump's 232. Biden also beat him in the popular vote, 81 million votes to 74 million.

Trump never allows reality to affect his innumerable lies. When he started his presidency, he lied six times per day, according to a count kept by the Washington Post. But by the time he was in his fourth year in office he was lying 39 times per day. And at the end of his presidency he had issued 30,573 lies or false claims. It would be difficult to find a president or a politician who told more lies anywhere in the world.

The problem is that some of Trump's lies are very dangerous. Like when he says he won the presidential elections and there was a massive fraud in the ballot counts. That Big Lie profoundly affects the U.S. democratic system. One of the great reasons for pride in the U.S. democracy is that for more than two centuries there have been peaceful transfer of power from one president to another. Until Trump.

The attack on the Capitol in Washington on January 6 2021 was a serious threat to the transfer of power. Trump incited his supporters to march to Congress, where the election results were being certified. “We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore," he told them. And they did. More than 2,000 people fought their way into the Capitol, and five people died during or after the attack.

In the end, the system worked and Trump did not remain in the presidency. But he has never admitted publicly that he lost the elections. And he continues to lie.

Trump was “detached from reality” and had no real interest in “real facts,” former Attorney General William Barr told the congressional committee investigating the attack on the Capitol and Trump's involvement. Barr added that Trump embraced conspiracy theories – like the one about Dominion voting machines – that were “complete nonsense” and “crazy stuff.”

Even Trump's own daughter, Ivanka, admitted to the committee that her father had lost the election. “I respect Attorney General Barr. So I accepted what he said,” she testified. But Trump has not accepted it. And in his Web page he said daughter Ivanka “was not involved in studying the results of the elections.” Trump has no limits. Not even with his own family. He later published a 12-page letter, in response to the serious allegations aired by the congressional committee, insisting on the lie that he won the election.

“Lying is such a central characteristic of life,” Professor Paul Ekman wrote in his book, Telling Lies. It is possible – we will never know – Trump believes his own lies. But even so, he is repeating something that is not true and could have terrible consequences for the country. More than half of all Republicans believe the lie that Trump won the presidential elections, according to a Reuters poll. How sad, to believe someone who lies.

That Trump believes his own lies is not the most important thing. Congress members and lawyers are investigating whether there is something criminal in his actions and lies. “It’s absolutely clear that what President Trump was doing, what a number of people around him were doing, that they knew it was unlawful,” said Rep. Liz. Cheney, a Wyoming Republican. “They did it anyway.”

Cheney was referring to Trump's attempts to change the results of the elections. In one recording the then-president is heard leaning on a Georgia official to “find 11,780 votes” he needed to win the state. In the end, Trump lost Georgia, and many other states.

The Justice Department and Vice President Mike Pence also did not surrender to Trump's efforts to change the election results. The congressional hearings have made clear the enormous pressure Trump put on Pence to reject the official results. But he failed. “President Trump is wrong,” Pence declared earlier this year. “I had no right to overturn the election.”

Now it is up to the Justice Department to decide whether former president Trump will face criminal charges for his failed attempt to overturn the will of the majority of American voters. A candidacy in the 2024 presidential elections remains a possibility.

Meanwhile, the damage is done. Doubts are corrosive.

Latin American journalists like me are always well trained to cover someone who tells as many lies as Donald Trump. Sadly, our history is full of dictators and authoritarian leaders who lied incessantly to remain in power. And now the same curse has infiltrated the U.S. democratic system. All the credit goes to the Lord of the Lies.