Trump biographer warns that president is deploying Soviet-style distraction tactics with his seemingly erratic tweets
Speaking about his recent op-ed in the Boston Globe, Donald Trump biographer Michael D'Antonio explained that the president has been trying to distract and deflect, much in the way Russia does.
CNN host Don Lemon noted in his opening commentary that Trump seems to contradict everything he's been told by his own intelligence people. Over and over, Sarah Huckabee Sanders tries to claim everyone simply misunderstood the president and pieces and parts he believes while others he does not. All Lemon could say is "What?"
"He doesn't want us talking about what happened in Helsinki," the Trump biographer explained. "This is all of a piece -- with him constantly throwing out a million notions."
Another thing he pointed out was that this plan is a typical strategy deployed by the Russians during the former Soviet Union.
"The Soviets did it, and then Putin started doing it," D'Antonio said. "Where you throw out conspiracy theories about everything, and it can be contradictory. That's the whole idea is to create so much confusion in people's minds that they can't grasp the truth and they stop believing that the press knows the truth."
Lemon noted that when it comes to Trump reading things off of a paper or teleprompter, it means he's being scripted by his handlers. When he tweets or he goes off the cuff, that is when he says what he truly believes.
"One hundred percent," New York Times columnist Frank Bruni said. "You're seeing Trump reigned in one moment and reverting to what he wants to do the next. And back and forth and back and forth. And that's why it's a contradiction because what he insists on believing which holds him harmless and everyone going after him are villains, that's what he believes."
D'Antonio wrote in The Globe on Trump's history of lying about being a high school baseball star, one of many stories D'Antonio uncovered when authoring his Trump biography.
"He lied for the same reason that he often says he had been the best high school ballplayer in New York State. (Records show he wasn’t)," D'Antonio wrote. "He thinks the deception helps him, and he doesn’t think lies matter. When his butler at Mar-a-Lago caught Trump telling a lie about how Walt Disney painted tiles in one of the resort’s rooms, Trump responded, 'Who cares?'"
D'Antonio said that the one thing people cannot do is stop holding him accountable for his lies.
"I don't think you can give up. This is the thing everyone's been debate, well, do we keep calling him out?" he continued. "He's not going to stop so you have to keep calling out each moment of this because no one else is standing up for the truth."
Lemon noted that most of the people that know him dont' believe the "fish stories," but that "the other network's viewers" fall for the lies. D'Antonio explained it's because the audience is extremely limited.
"And the vast number of Americans are earning a living, raising their kids, going out on dates and they're not focused on how many times this person lies. He was taught to do this by his family from a very young age," he explained.
All of the problem comes from Trump's father, according to D'Antonio. The senior Trump would "fix things" for his son and crate "false success."
"So he was taught, 'well, I'm going to go up to the military academy, I'm going to get in with those guys and then they're going to promote me,'" D'Antonio said. "And that's what happened. "
Watch their full discussion below: