Everyone is familiar with Aesop’s Fable, “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” in which a bored shepherd boy repeatedly falsely cries “Wolf,” fooling his good neighbors into running to the aid of his flock. It seems we have a President who cries “wolf.”
For attention and power, President Trump’s political campaigns and propaganda have been punctuated with repeated, frightening lies about immigrants, calling them rapists, terrorists, invaders, and murderers. He falsely claimed they were replacing American workers, stealing their benefits, voting for Democrats, and even eating their neighbors’ dogs.
Responsible journalists have documented and analyzed his record as a serial liar. The Washington Post documented 30,573 false or misleading claims during his first presidential term, an average of 21 per day. The Los Angeles Times said during his first Presidential campaign that “Never in modern presidential politics has a major candidate made false statements as routinely as Trump has.
Historian Douglas Brinkley stated that U.S. presidents have occasionally “lied or misled the country,” but none were a “serial liar” like Trump. And New York University’s professor of psychology Donnel Stern, said, Trump “lies as a policy,” and “will say anything” to satisfy his supporters or himself. Stern, Donnel (May 9, 2019). “Constructivism in the Age of Trump: Truth, Lies, and Knowing the Difference.”
Trump illustrated Stern’s assessment when the president instructed his former press secretary Stephanie Grisham, “As long as you keep repeating something, it doesn’t matter what you say.” To this end, Trump continues to claim falsely that the 2020 election had been rigged and that he never lost.
And though Trump’s supporters know that the president likes to cry “Wolf,” they’ve excused his lies the way adults may indulge those of a child.
As in Aesop’s fable, the good neighbors’ tolerance for these lies eventually runs out, and it seems Trump’s supporters, too, may have reached the end of their tolerance for his manipulating lies.
That’s because in this case, the wolf has arrived at the doors of the American public. It has crept up on them in the form of rising inflation, grocery prices, housing costs, insurance rates, and the national debt. It has pounced in the form of tariffs that Trump falsely promised would be paid by foreign countries but have come at the expense of American businesses and consumers. This wolf has clawed at the social safety net, cut food stamps, and slashed Medicaid. It has skulked into American towns and cities in the form of masked ICE agents who racially profile, terrorize, arrest, and deport their neighbors without due process of the law. It has raided the Department of Education and left it a hollow shell.
And now just when Trump’s long-term supporters need the president to come running to their aid for a change, he has preposterously denied the wolf’s presence. “We have no inflation,” the president declared in his nationally televised “60 Minutes” interview. “Our groceries are down,” he lied. According to the president, the economic wolf is a “hoax.”
Further, the president similarly has denied the wolf at the door of our allies. After telling the monumental lie that he would end the war in Ukraine during his first 24 hours in office, the American President has instead reduced support for the victim of the Russian wolf’s attack that has killed the Ukrainian people, ravaged their lands, destroyed their infrastructure, kidnapped their children, and threatened the future of a democratic Europe. Perversely, Trump has instead secretly conspired with the Russian wolf to make future business deals with America, and to force Ukraine’s permanent subservience to the predator.
In other words, in an ironic twist to Aesop’s fable, the wolf now threatens the flock of the shepherd boy’s good neighbors. But instead of the shepherd boy shouting a warning and coming to their aid, he not only denies the wolf’s presence, but he colludes with the predator at the expense and peril of its innocent victims.
But now the American public has had enough. The President’s favorability poll numbers have sunk, even within his own political party, and Democrats recently swept November elections.
Consequently, for the first time in his political life, Trump has indirectly admitted the truth, (of course for his own political survival.) He’s bailed out farmers hurt by his tariffs with taxpayers’ money. He’s cut tariffs on some goods, like beef, coffee, tomatoes, and bananas, which amount to an admission of his lies about inflation, grocery prices, and the failure of his tariff policy.
His consideration of extending Obamacare subsidies admits to the high cost of healthcare that threatens to economically devour his constituents. He’s rehiring lawyers at the Department of Education to handle the backlog of discrimination complaints. Perhaps most importantly, he has been forced to face the truth that nobody, including his supporters, believes anything he says.
Thomas Cangelosi is a retired teacher residing in Avon.