Water’s Wet, Sky's Blue, Trump Lies

Saturday was the day that Donald Trump said he was going to throw out the first pitch at the Yankees-Red Sox game, except the Yankees never invited him to do so.

That’s the reason Trump wasn’t in the Bronx on Saturday, instead holing up at his golf club in New Jersey. It was not, as CNN assignment editor Jason Hoffman tweeted, that the president “canceled because of his ‘strong focus on the China Virus, including scheduled meetings on Vaccines, our economy and much else.’”

Trump couldn’t have canceled on the Yankees because there was nothing to cancel. In Trump’s relationship with sports, this is nothing new. Recall 2017, when Stephen Curry said he wasn’t going to the White House, and then Trump said he was rescinding NBA champion Golden State’s invitation to meet him. It was nicely summed up by LeBron James tweeting, “U bum @StephenCurry30 already said he ain’t going! So therefore ain’t no invite.”

It’s easy to see how Hoffman’s error happened. Trump lies about so many things, with such frequency, it’s nearly impossible to keep up. Just in this case alone, he lied that he was invited to throw out a first pitch at Yankee Stadium, he lied that he was canceling because there was nothing to cancel, he lied about having a strong focus on a virus whose name he lied about in racist fashion, and he lied about having scheduled meetings.

This is all trivial stuff, and at this point it’s become routine, but it’s a good reminder that if Trump is willing to lie — and does lie — so egregiously and so often about things that don’t matter, he’s also going to lie constantly about things that do.

Free from having meetings, Trump added a “news conference” to his Saturday schedule, an opportunity for him to tell even more lies, because he never stops lying.