To BuzzFeed, which is keeping “A Running List Of All Of President Trump’s Lies,” it was a lie. BuzzFeed News reported that Trump “lied about voter fraud at a reception with congressional leaders” and again “lied about voter fraud on ABC News.”

In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016

“Clearly, he thinks it is true,” wrote one person in a letter to the Times this week, “So it’s not a lie; it’s a delusion.”

But even a delusion—one that involves blindly turning away from all evidence to the contrary—can be considered its own kind of lie. That’s what David Corn, the author of The Lies of George W. Bush, told The Atlantic in 2007: “What Bush does is that he displays a kind of willful disregard for the truth, which is the moral equivalent of lying,” Corn said, referring to then-president George W. Bush. “He doesn’t do any due diligence with the facts. Even if you believed something was true [at] the time you said it, it becomes a lie when you don’t act on new information—or correct yourself when you’ve been proven wrong.”

Corn’s description fits with Trump’s insistence on voter fraud, and with his disposition generally. Trump likes to call out others for being wrong—he relishes “wrong!” as one of the many insults he lobs in tweets—but he is not one to acknowledge his own mistakes.

"@aaronrupe33: @realDonaldTrump no ones scared of you donald" You are very wrong! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 24, 2013



He also routinely criticizes people by calling them liars. He bestowed the nickname “Lyin Ted” on his one-time political opponent Ted Cruz. And Trump has cultivated an image of brusqueness that his supporters sometimes equate with honesty—taking the idea that he isn’t afraid to say what he thinks as proof that what he says is necessarily true.

If Obama was willing to lie about ObamaCare then what else has he lied to us about… — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 30, 2013

Tweets are instructive here, both because of how they illustrate Trump’s style and as a reminder that Trump’s presidency is taking place in a media environment unlike any that preceded it. Obama is known for his social media proficiency, but Twitter was still brand new when he was first inaugurated.

No president in history has lied to the American people more than President Obama - in fact, it is not even close! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 8, 2014

And though Trump is known to be a devoted consumer of print newspapers and cable news, people are increasingly turning to the mobile internet for information. Trump has said he sees his Twitter account as a megaphone directly to the people, and he doesn’t hesitate to scream into it. For those who pay attention to Trump’s tweeting, there’s an entire flood of people calling him a liar in his mentions—a feed that can be considered its own micro-media environment, and one that has a massive audience.