It's almost quaint now to point out that the President of the United States has just completed a new lie. There is such a constant drumbeat of obvious untruths coming out of this administration that any one note seems inconsequential. But every lie matters, even on issues that, for now, are dormant. Take healthcare, for example, on which Republicans once again failed this week after the Graham-Cassidy Repeal and Go Fuck Yourself Bill was yanked off the Senate floor because it didn't have the votes.

Naturally, President Trump declared yesterday that it did have the votes, if it wasn't for that one senator in the hospital. NBC4 San Diego has the scoop:

"We have the votes for health care. We have one senator that's in the hospital. He can't vote because he's in the hospital," he told reporters. White House aides later said the hospitalized lawmaker Trump was talking about was Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., who turns 80 in December. That came as news to Cochran.

"Thanks for the well-wishes," he tweeted. "I'm not hospitalized, but am recuperating at home in Mississippi and look forward to returning to work soon." Cochran's aides said he was being treated for a urological issue and could return to Washington if a vote was planned. Trump later said the senator was "home recovering."

This is such an obvious lie that it serves only to reinforce the notion that Trump does not believe in truth. He believes he can mold reality however he wants, so long as he can get enough people to believe it. Cochran was never the deciding vote. It was Republicans John McCain, Rand Paul, Susan Collins who all announced they would oppose the bill. Lisa Murkowski, who opposed previous versions, had not yet declared her position. With three Republican "nays" and all Democrats in opposition, the bill was dead. Cochran and his medical status had nothing to do with it.

That didn't stop Trump from simply saying, over and over again, that "we have the votes."

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So they have the votes, but they can't do it "until January or February"? That seems odd, and it also ignores that after September 30, Republicans will need 60 votes—rather than the 50 they don't have now—to pass a healthcare bill. The president clarified:

We know we have the votes, but we can't go longer than Friday. What we're going to do is, we will do the block grants. We will do the healthcare. We will get a longer process going for the couple of people that did want to see more process, even though they're a yes vote.

So here Trump admitted McCain and Murkowski were against the process, then falsely said they were "yes" votes. Then he said he would meet with Democrats to try to work out a reform plan, which almost certainly would not include "block grants" or look anything like the reprehensible bill that was just thrown out with the Capitol trash. This is a tangle of untruths, contradictions, and delusional thinking.

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Then again, this is the same president who has promised on healthcare:

(The Republican plans were projected to throw between 23 and 32 million Americans off insurance.)

(Like previous versions, Graham-Cassidy undermined protections for preexisting conditions and abandoned annual and lifetime caps on how much insurance companies could pay for coverage.)

That there would be "no cuts...to Medicaid."

(All the plans cut Medicaid drastically, including the House bill that would have savaged it to the tune of $880 billion.)

That there will be lower costs.

(Graham-Cassidy could have raised premiums by as much as 15-20 percent, while multiple editions grappled with the possibility of soaring deductibles.)

This has capped off quite a week for the president in the reality department. After his chosen candidate was trounced by 10 points in the runoff for the Republican nomination to replace Jeff Sessions in the senate, Trump deleted his tweets in support of Luther Strange in an apparent attempt to act like none of it ever happened. I suppose if my guy lost to an unhinged theocrat like Roy Moore, I might do the same.

Everyone will be "beautifully covered."

And then Trump got to tax reform, the next big legislative initiative for Republicans that is sure to go as swimmingly as healthcare. Trump kicked things off by declaring Republicans have a tax reform bill on the table. There is no bill. There's only a framework that lays out in painstaking detail what tax cuts the rich and corporations can expect, but offers little in definite plans for the poor and middle class. Still, despite the vague stipulations, Trump has staked out another untruth for himself:

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Pres. Trump on his tax reform plan: "I am doing the right thing, and it's not good for me. Believe me." https://t.co/S0z2T0wO2y pic.twitter.com/59oGyq362E — CBS News (@CBSNews) September 27, 2017

There's nothing more convincing than saying "believe me" after a claim, especially when we cannot verify the claim because the president refuses to release his tax returns. As it stands, we don't know how much money his tax plan will save him. We do know it will help him, though, which still makes this unbelievable.

First, the framework so far would cut the highest tax rate—which Trump, who's "really rich," must surely be paying—from 39.5 percent to 35 percent. (Republicans have head-faked towards the possibility of introducing a higher tax bracket than that, but have offered no specifics. Don't hold your breath.) But more than that, Republicans have also proposed a tax cut for so-called "pass-through" businesses, in which owners pay taxes on their companies as individuals. The Trump Organization owns 500 pass-through businesses.

Surely, based on the president's record, we can trust him on this. On to tax reform!

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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