At times, the president's complete disregard for objective reality can get a bit mundane. It's so relentless and quotidian that sometimes we fail to appreciate it. But then Donald Trump, American president, will produce a falsehood so pure in form and dastardly in intention that we're instantly attuned, once again, to the grotesque spectacle of this historical moment.

So it was Wednesday evening, when the president explained why he was so eager to bring home the remains of Americans killed in the Korean War as part of his summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. This was surely an admirable goal, and a fine accomplishment from a meeting whose concrete results have otherwise been questioned. But it wasn't enough for Trump to simply savor this victory—he had to say something wildly untrue along with it:

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Trump claims, preposterously, that parents of Korean War veterans came up to him during the 2016 campaign and said, "when you can, we'd love our son to be brought back home -- you know, the remains."



The Korean War ended in 1953. pic.twitter.com/f4HEHZ22YM — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 13, 2018

This is truly a vintage Trumpian lie. As many have pointed out already, assuming the parents of a Korean War veteran were 18 when they were born, those parents would be a minimum of 101 years old today. More likely, they'd be at least 110. The idea that multiple 110-year-old people came up to Donald Trump on the campaign trail to ask him to bring home the remains of their son killed on North Korean soil 63 years prior is just absurd. It's a stirring story, a noble enough sentiment, and, in this case, completely nuts. The president is just saying things again.

In that way, this is a quintessential Trumpian lie: totally shameless, easily verifiable as false, and rooted in the notion that "many people"—who are never defined further, and who you'll never be able to find—are telling the president something that he just happens to agree with himself. How many times in this troubled period in our nation's history have we heard how "many people are saying" something about Donald Trump?

The possibly more worrying thing here is that there was not all that much to immediately gain from the lie, while the related issue was already sort of a victory for the president. It points to the lying being a truly pathological issue, an instinctive mode of operation for a dangerously impulsive man. It's not breaking any new ground to say it, but this is a problematic attribute for the leader of the world's most powerful country.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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