Abstract
Since the 18th century, the otherwise unremarkable village of Moncrabeau, in the Lot-et-Garonne, has staged on the first Sunday of August its Fête des Menteurs, or Festival of Liars. A 40-member Academy of Liars chooses 12 contestants and the event is open to fibbers worldwide. A recent winner, one Nicole Laporte, was crowned Queen of Liars for her persuasive tale about a visit there of Great Britain's monarch. HM, she tittle-tattled, had enjoyed a liaison with a local dove hunter.
As I holidayed in the area, reading this shrewd, amusing, timely tome, I wondered if President Donald Trump might be a fitting future contestant at the Fête des Menteurs? His preferred method of communication, tweeting, with its 140-character limit, facilitates unsupported assertions and lying by omission. And even aged 71, he retains a child-like love of self-boosting fables in which he is the shining hero, forever obliged to smite his “failing”, “loser” critics.
His guiding conceit is that America itself is failing and only he can make it great again. He (or one of his ghost writers – an ex-caddy of his, Dan Scavino, is described as his social media director) fashioned in 2011 a succinct, easy-to-remember tweet, sent out to his 216 followers (he now has more than 27million) saying: “It's easy to see why Americans are sick of career politicians and both parties.”
It's the lazy remark we make when we have no firm view about politics other than complaining that we're getting nothing out of our current system. Yet Peter Oborne and Tom Roberts tell us: “This is the message that would win Trump the presidency.”
Aside from using the modern device of Twitter is there anything new about lying to gain political office? It is said a former governor of Louisiana told voters he would build a bridge that would save them driving hundreds of motoring miles around a local bayou. When after his victory there was no sign of progress on the much-desired crossing an angry mob, some of them armed, descended on the governor's mansion. Asked by an alarmed aide what emollient message he might convey to them, the governor said: “Tell them I lied.” This episode is hailed by US political scholars as both an audacious fib and a rare example of unvarnished truth in US politics.
Oborne and Roberts find historical echoes of Trump in President Franklin D Roosevelt's “fireside chats” by radio to Americans. They also think The Donald might face a similar fate to the 1950s communist-hunting Senator Joe McCarthy, whose “crass, unkempt, strident and bullying manner” was fatally exposed by TV. Indeed with Trump's public approval ratings slipping below 40 per cent, this process might already be under way.
In life and on Twitter Trump displays an extraordinary capacity for two-faced duplicity – nasty abuse followed, or preceded, by slimy praise. He called Barack Obama a liar, describing the former president's US birth certificate as fraudulent. After winning the presidency, he said he'd had a good meeting with Obama and his “very nice family”.
He called the Democratic candidate for the presidency, Hillary Clinton, a crook, encouraging supporters to chant “lock her up” whenever she was mentioned publicly. Yet he'd invited the Clintons to his third marriage and tweeted in 2012: “Chelsea Clinton will be very successful in the world of politics. She's always been a great person – a winner. With parents like hers, she will be a major success.”
He calls the Huffington Post founder, Arianna Huffington, “unattractive both inside and out”, adding: “I fully understand why her former husband left her for a man – he made a good decision.”
When Bette Midler joked about his unusual hairdo, Trump whined on Twitter: “Bette Midler talks about my hair but I'm not allowed to talk about her ugly face and body.”
Invited in 2011 to appear on a national TV comedy show that would poke fun at him, Trump accepted with the proviso that his past six bankruptcies were not mentioned, nor should there be any suggestion that he was not as rich as he said he was. He did allow a joke – “What's the difference between a wet raccoon and Donald Trump's hair? A wet raccoon doesn't have $7billion” – but insisted the punch line figure be increased to $10billion.
How will his presidency end? Impeachment if proof emerges that he had Russia's help to win in 2016, or that he used his office for gross self-enrichment? Persuaded by his family not to seek re-election in 2020 to milk commercially his huge fame (the Trumps have set up a new hotel group catering for budget customers in states where he commanded big voter support)?
Or will his end resemble that of the gossip star Walter Winchell, (1897–1972) who wrote for 2,000 newspapers from “coast to coast” and broadcast “to all the ships at sea”? Winchell was the confidant of US presidents, so influential for a time that he is credited with presciently alerting the US to an attack from the west, resulting in the creation of a two-ocean navy. Yet Winchell was friendless when he died, his Arizona funeral attended by three non-relatives.
Or that of fabled news magnate William Randolph Hearst (1883–1951) who, when running for the governership of New York, ordered his newspaper to prepare two banner headlines for the front page: “Hearst for governor” and, in the event of him losing, “Fraud at polls”. Hearst lived to see his life and death mocked in Orson Welles's Citizen Kane, which he ordered his editors never to mention.
Americans in huge numbers believed them in their pomp – when they were far younger than Trump is now – but ultimately tired of their attention seeking.