I MAY WELL BE MISQUOTING (after all, it’s almost 50 years ago), but my editorial mentor Larry Givens at the Society of Automotive Engineers cited his father believing “Sono tutti bugiardi,” “They’re all liars.”
At the time, Richard Nixon’s downfall over Watergate was still fresh in people’s minds, and agreement with the bugiardi sentiment was widespread.
And, one way or another, there’s still a whole lot of lying going on. Today’s political scene has only confirmed the tutti of this. Alas, even Biden’s diminished abilities seem to have prompted less than complete forthrightness. But beginning in 2016, Trump has set an astounding standard in promoting lies, outright, redoubled, and well nigh confirmed in what seems to be a retelling of history.
What follows, here in Parts 1 and 2 today and tomorrow, is intended as a ridicule of Trump deceits, collected from previous comments here at SimanaitisSays and prompted by particularly egregious recent examples.
Trump, 1980. Image by Don Hogan Charles/The New York Times.
Examples of Er… Architectural Envy. Some 30 years ago, Trump lied about the size of his NYC apartment—by almost threefold. Indeed, his arithmetic then transformed Trump Tower’s 58 floors into 68 as well as the dimensions of his other NYC properties.
Image by Yuliva Parshina-Kottas. Sources: N.Y. Attorney General’s Office, N.Y.C. Building Department, Trump Organization via The New York Times.
Geez, talk about architectural envy.
Remember the 2017 Inauguration Count? We could have predicted Trump exaggerating anything to his benefit. He and stooge-of-the-moment Sean Spicer lied outrageously about crowd size at the National Mall. One would think this hardly worth the lies. But….
Above, the 2017 Inauguration. Below, the 2017 Washington, D.C. Women’s March. Each image at the time of peak density. Images from CNN.
That era even generated a new definition for “falsehoods,” namely Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts.”
The Price of Truth. In “Trump Overcounts Yet Again,” I observed, “For a guy with such genius (self-professed), Donald Trump sure can’t count. As reported February 16, 2024 in Voice of America, The New York Times, and just about everywhere else but Fox Entertainment, ‘Donald Trump must pay $354.9 million in penalties for fraudulently overstating his net worth to dupe lenders,’ this particular quote from VoA.”
Image by Flavio Pessoa Satanna for The Washington Post.
Alas, we know what Trump did to Voice of America for its telling the truth.
How like a Queens mobster.
Tomorrow in Part 2, we examine his most blatant lie, the 2020 election loss. From this evolved Trump’s increasing divergences from reality, including a missive many of us recently received from the Social Security Administration. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2025
