Perspective from the 19^th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

Utah Senator Mitt Romney put it best yesterday when he said this:

“He just makes it up.  And he is able to spew enough disinformation that the Chinese must be smiling.”

Of course, Romney was talking about Donald Trump. 

And the farther we go along the presidential campaign trail the more difficult it is to believe anything Trump says – especially the lies that spew – yes, literally, spew — from his mouth all the time.

In the Washington Post, columnist Kathleen Parker put it this way:

“Lying, for Trump, is so reflexive that he needn’t bestir his fourth-grade vocabulary to seize headlines and malign those he finds inconvenient to his purposes.”

In general, Parker added this:

“…politicians every day try to score points with key constituencies:  Voters, party leaders, influencers and media figures.  A decision to lie is a simple math equation:  I am likely to score enough points with this lie that it will outweigh any consequences it might have from voters/donors/the media.

“Through numerous interviews with political pundits, pollsters, politicians and public figures, one author has learned that lies are mostly manufactured for a candidate’s base, whose members are willing to accept anything that affirms what they already believe.

“For the Republican base, which readily embraced Trump’s earlier birther lie that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, it takes little to persuade them that Harris would steal money to support illegal migrants.”

For my part, beyond Parker’s points, which are good ones, I think at least two things are true about Trump:  First, he is old and getting older by the minute, so senility may be setting in, or perhaps dementia; and, second, he must sit in a room somewhere with close allies and share perspectives about how to make stuff up in order to garner headlines, regardless of the facts.

In this connection, for some reason I happened to think of all the comedy writers for the Seinfeld TV show, now off the air, who regaled everyone with stories about how they sat around  in a room together and brainstormed stuff for Seinfeld and other actors to say.

Of course, what sycophants do for Trump is not comedy.  It is something far worse that threatens the America we know.

Consider this list of made-up stuff from Trump that were included in a column yesterday by Washington Post writer Dana Milbank the appeared under this headline:  TRUMP UPGRADES HIS CON TO CATEGORY 5.

• He absurdly alleged that after Hurricane Helene, the previous storm, Vice President Kamala Harris “didn’t send anything or anyone at all … as men, women and children drowned,” and he claimed that the Biden Administration confiscated relief supplies others tried to send.

• Trump falsely claimed that there are “over 13,000 illegal alien convicted murderers roaming free in our country … that were released from jail from all over the world,” particularly in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  Illegal immigrants, he said, “have equipment that our military doesn’t have” and are “taking over apartment buildings” in Colorado.

It’s all part of a “mass migrant invasion of murderers and child predators and gang members, terrorists, drug dealers and thugs.” He told the audience that if “this crazy, incompetent” Harris wins, “this same group is going to meet in Caracas, Venezuela, because it’ll be much safer than your particular state.”

• He proposed the ludicrous idea that public schools are changing children’s genders.  “Your child goes to school, and they take your child.  It was a ‘he’ and comes back as a ‘she.’  And they do this, and they do it, and often without parental consent.”

• He announced, falsely, that “I’m the only president in 78 years that didn’t start a war.”  Twenty-seven minutes later, he repeated himself: “I’m proud to be the first president in decades who started no new wars.”  Four minutes more elapsed, and he did it again: “I had no wars. I had no anything.  We had no terrorists.  We had no terror attacks.”  The fact is that he had all of the above.)

• He informed his supporters that he could be on a beach, with the “sun beaming down on this beautiful body in a bathing suit.”  And, of course, he boasted about his crowd size at his “beautiful” rallies:  “We never have an empty seat — never have.”
  
  

In summary, Milbank said, “This stuff was typical of Trump’s recent speeches, which have become darker, less coherent and almost entirely fictitious.  Peter Baker and several New York Times colleagues published a computer analysis showing that Trump’s rally speeches have gotten longer and show attributes that ‘some experts consider a sign of advancing age,’ can be an ‘indicator of cognitive change,’ and ‘could reflect what experts call disinhibition.’”

I am not sure what “disinhibition” means, but I suspect it is something along these lines:  Trump has no funnel for the truth.  He says whatever comes into his mind and, if he criticizes others in doing so (John McCain, Kamala Harris, Tim Walz), so much the better.

I also just looked up the word.  Here is the definition:

“A temporary loss of inhibition caused by an outside stimulus.”

As I said, that’s Trump.

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A footnote:  On “my” golf course the other day, players were told we were playing “preferred lies.”  I couldn’t believe it.  Were we going to be playing in a tournament held by Donald Trump.  No.  “Preferred lies” is a term meaning that, given weather and course conditions, you can “lift, clean, and replace” your golf ball before hitting it.  But, still, “preferred lies” sounds like Trump doesn’t it?