Donald Trump just stepped in it

| 9:05 pm EDT March 15, 2018
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Donald Trump lies so frequently, as documented by so many fact checkers, it’s more newsworthy when he occasionally tells the truth than it is when he’s caught lying. So it’s not surprising, and sadly maybe not even notable, that Trump has been caught having lied to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about trade during a meeting. What does stand out is that the source here is Trump’s own loose lips behind closed doors, representing a larger pattern.

Trump recently gave a speech at a private fundraiser in which he admitted that he flat out made things up about trade between Canada and the U.S. during his meeting with Trudeau, according to a Washington Post report (link). Now that this is becoming public, it obviously hurts U.S. credibility in the eyes of the world, one thing Trump is consistently good at screwing up. It also hurts Trump’s personal credibility in the eyes of those within the U.S. who don’t have strong political leanings and still aren’t quite sure what to make of him. More importantly, it tells us something about what’s going on in his head.

Two weeks ago, after China changed its laws to allow President Xi Jinping to serve for life, Donald Trump said during a private fundraiser that he hoped the United States would make the same kind of change (link). That remark also became public, and his people tried to write it off as a joke. Everyone makes a remark in private now and then without consciously thinking about the various ways in which those words might become public. But this is part of a pattern in which Trump keeps doing it with increasing frequency.

As Donald Trump continues to face the mounting pressure of a failed illegitimate presidency and worsening criminal scandals, he’s become more apt to reveal his own secrets during closed-door events. It’s as if he’s no longer capable of keeping his mouth shut about the awful things he wants to brag about. How long before he begins confessing about the Trump-Russia scandal during these kinds of fundraisers? How long before he begins blurting out these kinds of confessions in public?