Even by the Olympian standards of Washington, D.C., Donald Trump is an exceptionally dishonest man. Among other things, we now know that well into his forties, he masqueraded as his own publicist in order to brag about himself over the phone to reporters. But it's what he has said without cover of an alias that's most concerning, for at times his statements have transcended dishonesty to demonstrate a wholesale detachment from reality.
Trump was a birther, for example, and that is only the first of several distinctions disqualifying him from any office of trust. We know, and always knew, that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, because two newspapers there reported it at the time. Besides, it always looked more likely than not that his mother’s citizenship rendered the question of his birthplace moot.
So why would Trump go on record as a birther? And why would he have said that the investigators he sent to Hawaii "can't believe what they're finding," when they couldn't have been finding anything? The claims brought him no money, and no attention that any serious person would want. Why would a sane person, even if — especially if — he were an egotist, want his name to be associated with dirt and stupidity? If the motive was racism, why not just suggestively question the Americanness of Obama's upbringing or "heritage"? Why pursue the hopeless topic of citizenship? To gain the support of large numbers of the simple-minded, in a bid to jump-start a broader coalition? One wouldn’t expect things to work that way, and in fact they didn’t: Trump began his run last year polling at one to two percent.