C

BS has been interviewing potential voters in the so-called swing states about for whom they are going to vote for President. Virtually all Trump supporters said they were voting for him because “he tells it like it is.” Just exactly what they think is truthful about the  former President’s pronunciations is a mystery.

According to the Washington Post Fact Checker team, after putting aside opinion vs. fact, the analysts found that he made false or misleading claims totaling 30,573 during his presidency — or an average of 21 erroneous claims per day.

As his presidency went on, he increased his falsehoods. He averaged six false claims a day in year one of his presidency. By the end of year two there were 16 false claims per day, 22 false claims in year three, and 39 whoppers per day in year four.

He is on track for breaking his old records for lying.

In Donald’s world, the insurrectionists who stormed the capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were peaceful protestors, while immigrants crossing the border are all mentally disturbed, murderers, rapists and drug  mules.

We are supposed to believe that the father who is carrying his child on his shoulders through the Rio Grande where the pills would assuredly melt  and who couldn’t possible make any delivery since they were held up in Mexico and then in encampments, are drug dealers of the highest order.

To be sure, drugs are smuggled across the borders and into airports on planes and shipping containers on both coasts, with payoffs to drug “enforcement” officials, or are made in the local neighborhood “drug kitchen,” but it is ludicrous to suggest that these hapless people are dealers. Mr. Trump also maligns Haitians as pet eaters despite Republican office holders saying those charges are false.

He traffics in scare tactics. Repeatedly, he has told crowds at his rallies that their children are in danger of heading off to school and coming back a different gender. At campaign stops he claims that abortions are happening up to the day of delivery and after a birth.

He warns of World War III if he is not elected. He claims that he will stop all war and conflicts even before he is sworn in.

These newest incantations not only are false but bespeak a delusional sense of his own importance. The former president seems untethered from reality.

He paints a picture of the United States as a totally lawless place where people come to see the monuments in D.C and are gunned down or who can’t go out for a loaf of bread without being felled by a bullet. Ironically, it is precisely his kowtowing to the NRA by refusing to ban assault weapons and initiate reasonable background checks at gun shows etc. that has resulted in some very sick people out there with guns, including the young man who took a pot shot at him.

So, what are we to make of these supporters who maintain, against all evidence, that he “tells it the way it is”? What are we to make of the fact that “character” as important in the selection of a president came in fifth in a poll?

The only conclusion is that far too many people in the USA have become untethered from reality, too. The twilight zone is upon us.

Arlene Violet is an attorney and former Rhode Island Attorney General.