Trumpeting Trump

Last week’s “opinion piece” drew a mostly positive response. I was a little surprised, though pleased, that we didn’t get into the debate about whether or not climate change is real. I was pleased because that wasn’t the purpose of the piece. Last Fryday was about people’s propensity to present opinions as facts—and, in the example I used, a media organisation’s totally irresponsible endorsement of that.
But, this week I want to turn to another type of opinion. In fact, I don’t know if it is an opinion. I don’t know what it is. All I know is that President Donald Trump has perfected it and the nagging question I have is does he believe it?
Let me explain. The man who coined the phrase “fake news” is the world’s greatest exponent of it. But when he expresses it, what is it? When he says that his inauguration attracted a bigger crowd than Obama’s is he expressing his opinion, is he saying he believes it to be a fact, or is it a deliberate distortion?  I hope, ironically, it is the latter; if it was either of the former it would be absolute confirmation that we have a president who is delusional.
Not that I am saying he isn’t.
Of course, Trump is no stranger to hype and to self-promotion. Everything in his world is the “greatest ever” or “the best ever”. An example is his golf courses.
I am reading a book at the moment called Commander in Cheat in which the author, a Sports Digest journalist, recounts the way in which President Trump cheats at golf. It is a long book. An early example of Trump cheating the writer gives is Trump proclaiming that he (Trump) has “won” 18 club championships. Apparently, even a seasoned professional would find it hard to claim that, let alone substantiate it. Yet Trump does. How?
Well, one of the ways is that every time he opens a new course, he tries to be the first player on it, thus scoring the course’s lowest score and therefore the championship even if it is only for a matter of minutes. On at least two occasions he has claimed a course championship without even playing on the course; on one occasion he was playing on a course 80 miles away in another state, but because he achieved a lower score on the day than the championship winner on the first course, Trump claimed the championship and was given it!
On the second occasion, Trump claimed a championship without playing in the tournament because he said he had previously beaten the tournament winner three times and was “a better player". Again, he was given it.
And then he often describes his Trump courses as “the best in the world” or “the best ever”. Notwithstanding they can’t all be the best in the world, Augusta, Pebble Beach and St Andrews are not among them, and only one Trump course hosts a regular PGA event and only two are in Golf Magazine's Top 100.
And then there are the well-documented cases of the Secret Service going ahead and not so secretly improving the lie of Trump's balls; therefore giving a lie to the lie of Trump's lies.
The book goes on, but I will not. Suffice to say that the central premise of the book is that you can tell a lot about the man by the way he plays golf.
As I said, this book about how Trump cheats at golf is a big book
In Trump’s perverse world he would probably want to capitalise on that, trumpeting:
“I am the world’s greatest ever golf cheat. The best ever. It’s true. Yes, it is.”