Example #897,246 of the White House trying to claim two opposite things are true at the same time. When former FBI Director James Comey testified in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Trump said he was lying about many things. Now suddenly he says his tweet about tapes kept him from lying.





“Quite the opposite,” Spicer said in an interview on Fox News, when asked if intimidation was Trump’s intention. “I think the President made it very clear that he wanted the truth to come out. He wanted everyone to be honest about this and he wanted to get to the bottom of it and I think he succeeded in doing that.” Rather than calling the tactic intimidation, Spicer went on to say that the President tweeted “Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” in order to force the former FBI director to tell the truth about their interactions. “The reality is that he wanted to make sure the truth came out and by talking about something like tapes it made people have to—made Comey in particular think to himself, ‘I’d better be honest, I’d better tell the truth about the circumstances regarding the situation,’” Spicer said.

But wait, Trump said he was lying when he testified. And now Trump himself says that he thinks that tweet kept him from lying too. Do they even listen to themselves at all? Do they even care that they are blatantly contradicting themselves? Of course not. As I keep saying, this is one of the absolutely bedrock parts of who Trump is. He will say anything — absolutely anything — if it suits his immediate purposes, and he will turn around five minutes later and say the exact opposite if those purposes require it. And he will make both claims with the same absolute certainty and the same feigned grievance that anyone would dare to question that he was telling the truth both times.

He is a pathological, professional liar. He does it instinctively, automatically, and without an iota of shame. Why? Because it works. He’s like a child who wants a toy or a candy bar in the store. He’s going to do whatever it takes to get it and he doesn’t care how it makes him look. And after decades of being rewarded for being a shameless liar, he’s absolutely convinced that he can get away with it and no one can stop him.