Trump 2.0: Even more off the chain?

Why does President Donald Trump lie so much? Because people believe him.

So says Billy Bush on his own rehabilitation mission after losing his sweet NBC Today show co-host job in the Access Hollywood tape fiasco with Trump in late 2016.

Appearing on HBO's "Real Time" on Friday, Bush recalled how Trump would exaggerate ratings of his "Celebrity Apprentice" shows when they faltered later in the show's run.

"He'd been saying it's No. 1 forever, and finally I'd had enough," Bush recalled to "Real Time" host Bill Maher last Friday. "I told him, 'Wait a minute, you haven't been No. 1 for like five years -- not in any category, not in any demo.' He goes, 'Did you see last Thursday? Last Thursday, 18-49, the last five minutes.' "

But later, when the cameras were turned off, Bush said, Trump was more candid. "Billy, look," Trump said, "you just tell them and they believe it. That's it: You just tell them and they believe. They just do."

Right. They just do.

Or as P. T. Barnum is said to have said, despite a lack of evidence, "There's a sucker born every minute."

This is the sort of cynical attitude that is seldom expressed openly by politicians.

Bush's story sounds not only credible but highly likely, if you've been following our president's breathtakingly cavalier attitude toward inconvenient facts. Among other tallies that have kept fact-checkers busy, the Washington Post reports that his average of 4.9 false or misleading statements per day has soared up to an average of six a day.

Yet, just two nights before Bush's interview, the president achieved a new level of arrogance about the topic. He boasted in a private fundraising speech that he made up information in a meeting with the leader of our nation's closest ally, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

In a dispute over whether the U.S. has a trade deficit with Canada, according to audio obtained by the Post, Trump boasted about making up information to insist that we do -- even though, as he confessed in the fundraiser speech, he really didn't know.

Actually it was less of a confession than a boast.

"I said, 'Wrong, Justin, you do.' I didn't even know ... I had no idea. I just said, 'You're wrong.' "

When caught in the lie, Trump did what Trump does: Repeats the lie, louder, stronger and more stridently.

After the lie was reported, Trump tweeted his insistence that we do have a trade deficit with Canada. Yet, as PolitiFact reports:

"In 2017, the United States had a $23.2 billion deficit with Canada in goods. In other words, the United States in 2017 bought more goods from Canada than Canada bought from the United States.

"However, the United States had a $25.9 billion surplus with Canada in services -- and that was enough to overcome that deficit and turn the overall balance of trade into a $2.8 billion surplus for the United States in 2017. The same pattern occurred in 2016."

What makes this particular Trump lie so breathtaking is his nod-nod-wink-wink candor about the little scam, even at the expense of embarrassing an important ally. Why did he do it? Because he can.

Just so. We have become accustomed to audacious, unsupported Trump claims, such as the notion that his inauguration drew record crowds, despite photographic evidence to the contrary.

Yet what makes Trump's trade claim audacious enough to be ominous is its timing. It comes at a time when the president is reported to be feeling a new level of comfort with his job and more confidence in his instincts than in his own in-house experts.

For example, his legal advisers urged him to avoid provoking or even mentioning the name of special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating the Trump campaign's Russia contacts.

But his decision over the weekend to ignore that advice in a Twitter tweetstorm, wrote The New York Times' Maggie Haberman, "was the decision of a president who ultimately trusts only his own instincts and now believes he has settled into the job enough to rely on them rather than the people who advise him."

Welcome to Trump 2.0: Trump off the chain. He thinks he knows the ropes and he's cleaning house, doing things in his own special way and getting rid of people who want to say something to him besides "yes."

Sure, we should not assume that all of his decisions are going to be wrong. But, considering the recent turbulence in his White House personnel (including the departure of close adviser Hope Hicks, who acknowledged telling "white lies" on her boss' behalf), it brings little comfort to know that he would rather rely on his instincts than on more experienced experts.

On the bright side, he offers plenty to keep journalists busy. And fact-checkers.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)