Mark Twain once famously wrote, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.”
Lately, it seems only the last kind is considered a crime and the first two are merely entertainment. A few days ago, Donald Trump got his lawsuit against pollster J. Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register transferred from federal court to Iowa State Court. The alleged offense is that leading up to the 2024 election, Selzer’s poll indicated Kamala Harris was ahead of Trump by a couple of points. This turned out to be wildly inaccurate with Trump ultimately winning by 13 points. Now, oddly, Trump is suing Selzer and the Register for “consumer fraud,” something generally reserved for things like defective toasters or credit card theft.
Trump says Selzer faked her numbers to give Democrats an advantage, claiming her poll was election interference even though he easily won Iowa. Pretty much everybody understands that election polls are guesses and they are right only about 60 percent of the time. So, what is Trump still so mad about? A win is a win, right?
It can’t be that Trump is offended by fraud. After all, he was found guilty of fraud, using his charity as his own personal bank account. Plus, he was found liable for a decade of business fraud, exaggerating his net worth on financial statements.
Trump can hardly be shocked if Selzer got her math wrong. Trump incredulously claimed unemployment was a 42% when he took office. He promised to reduce prescription drug prices by 600% or even 1500%. (That’s not even how percentages work.) Trump announced with a straight face that he has “ended inflation” and that now, groceries are cheaper and gasoline costs less than $2 a gallon.
Is it possible that Trump would have a problem if Selzer’s poll was a lie? While the Washington Post was still keeping track, it reported that during his first term, Trump made 30,572 lies or about 21 lies for every day in office. He claims he ended eight wars in eight months, yet while bragging about it, he couldn’t pronounce “Azerbaijan” or remember the name of Armenia—which he said, erroneously, had been at war with Cambodia, a country 4,000 miles away. Trump lied when he said Mexico would pay for the wall, that his inauguration crowd was the biggest ever, that there are riots in Portland, that windmills cause cancer, that water ruins magnets. And on and on. Journalist Thomas B. Edsall wrote, “Donald Trump can lay claim to the title of most prodigious liar in the history of the presidency.” Alair Townsend, a former budget director and deputy mayor of New York said, “I wouldn’t believe Donald Trump if his tongue were notarized.”
Is Donald Trump a compulsive liar? Of course. But what motivates Trump to lie? Tony Schwartz, Trump’s ghostwriter for The Art of the Deal wrote that Trump engages in what he calls “truthful hyperbole”. Schwartz explains, “It’s a way of saying ‘It’s a lie, but who cares?’”
Trump once said, “I play to people’s fantasies. People want to believe something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular.” So maybe Selzer’s crime isn’t that her poll lied or that she got her numbers wrong. Trump must have been offended that her mistake was so puny and so boring. She should have swung for the bleachers and claimed Harris was winning by 50 points. Now that would have been entertaining.