Does Trump Exaggerate or Lie?
When Donald Trump campaigned this last time for the U.S. presidency, he bragged that if he won reelection he would “end the Ukraine war on day one.” How many people who voted for him believed that? It was like him saying if president he’d build a wall on our southern border and “Mexico will pay for it.”
It was so much of the same bluster he has become known for. Or did any of his supporters think he said this Ukraine remark in jest or that he was purposely exaggerating?
For Trump’s first 100-days of his current presidency, agreed to an interview by Time magazine’s senior political correspondent Eric Cortellessa and editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs. Margaret Harmann of New York magazine published some of the interview today. She relates that the two journalists posed to Trump, “You said you would end the war in Ukraine on day one.”
Trump Sometimes Lies and then Says He Was Only Joking
Trump answered, “Well, I said that figuratively, and I said that as an exaggeration, because to make a point, and you know, it gets, of course, by the fake news [unintelligible]. Obviously, people know that when I said that, it was said in jest, but it was also said that it will be ended.”
This is not an ethical way to act. And I would say it reveals that Donald Trump is an untrustworthy person. Harmann prefaces this quote by Trump by saying, “It turns out Trump just likes to kid around about a war that’s killed tens of thousands of people.”
Trump Should Read Proverbs 26.19
Moreover, the Bible compares this practice to being like a “maniac.” I’ve blogged multiple times about him doing this and then mentioned the biblical proverb about it, which is, “Like maniac who shoots deadly firebrands and arrows, so is one who deceives a neighbor and says, ‘I am only joking!'” (Proverbs 26.19 NRSV).
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