“Of course there are people who have become so practiced in evasion, euphemism, circumlocution, and all the forms of lying that they would not know how to tell the truth if an occasion favoring truth-telling should arise.”
—Mary McCarthy
One admires Mary McCarthy’s use of “practiced” in the passage above since it turns lying, habitual daily lying into the kind of thing one does at Juilliard. “Raise your elbow, tuck that chin, press harder on the A string!” Technique first, then virtuosity. Moreover the great ones make it look easy.
Donald Trump practices evasion and he first engaged in evasion studies with a private tutor named Roy Cohn. If your mentor is Roy Cohn you learn in lesson one there is no truth. Here’s lesson one:
“My scare value is high. My arena is controversy. My tough front is my biggest asset.” (Roy Cohn )
After lesson one Trump added conspiracy theory to controversy. Obama is a Kenyan terrorist. The “deep state” is preventing him from doing his best work.
Lesson Two: “I bring out the worst in my enemies and that’s how I get them to defeat themselves.” (Roy Cohn)
Think of Hillary Clinton who called Trump’s voters “deplorables” and you’ve got the picture. Trump studied with the master. I’ll argue that Hillary, by rising to the bait, lost Michigan. It turns out “when they go low we go high” is exactly the right approach when opposing Trump.
Lesson Three: “I don’t want to know what the law is, I want to know who the judge is.” (Roy Cohn)
No one works harder than Donald Trump to remove or sideline those who will likely find him guilty.
Trump’s critics think he willfully tells untruths but this isn’t the case. He simply has no truth, only the score bequeathed him by Maestro Cohn.
Planet of the Blind 