Donald Trump Claimed To Have Received Two Phone Calls With Praise–Neither Really Happened

At one point during the campaign, Politico estimated that Donald Trump was making “roughly one misstatement every five minutes on average.” While more frequent than what might be customary, that still was while campaigning for political office, when a certain amount of dishonesty unfortunately is the norm. Now he is president and, while we all know that presidents do lie, hopefully they can maintain a higher standard. Today Donald Trump has been called out for making up two fictitious phone calls praising him.

One example was Donald Trump claiming that the head of the boy scouts called to praise him for his rather disastrous speech to the group, claiming it was the greatest speech that was ever made to them–sounding much more like Trump speech. AP checked and verified that no such call occurred:

 Faced with a firm denial from the Boy Scouts, the White House on Wednesday corrected President Donald Trump’s claim in an interview that the head of the youth group called him to heap praise on a politically aggressive speech Trump delivered at the Scouts’ national jamboree.

After the Boy Scouts issued a statement saying no such call happened, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed their take but said “multiple members of the Boy Scout leadership” approached Trump in person after the speech and “offered quite powerful compliments.”

“We are unaware of any such call,” the Boy Scouts responded in a statement. It specified that neither Boy Scout President Randall Stephenson nor Chief Scout Executive Mike Surbaugh placed such a call.

The Guardian noted this and a second example with Trump’s claim of a phone call from the president of Mexico:

On Monday, Trump claimed that Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, had given him “the ultimate compliment” by phoning to say fewer people were crossing the US-Mexico border…

Trump claimed on Monday: “The president of Mexico called me. They said their southern border … very few people are coming because they know they’re not going to get through our border, which is the ultimate compliment.”

Asked about the alleged call, Mexico’s foreign relations department said Peña Nieto “has not had any recent telephone communication with President Donald Trump”.

Even the conservative National Review responded, “The sheer brazenness of these things. The mindset that must be involved.”

Perhaps we should wonder about his mindset. The American Psychoanalytic Association recently issued a statement giving members permission to speculate about Trump’s mental health. Is he simply acting like a businessman who calls his properties the greatest, not understanding the difference between commercial real estate and governing? Or does his talk of two non-existent phone calls indicate more serious psychological or cognitive problems?

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