Lying and denial go hand in hand. Every time a lie is told, a denial must be concocted to protect the lie by denying that it is a lie. What Donald Trump realized decades ago when he was pursuing fame in the New York tabloids is that his denials did not need facts or evidence to back them up. Protecting his lies needed repetition, first of the lie, then of the denial, then of attacks on his accusers.
It’s been written that Trump learned this from his mentor, Roy Cohn, who was a criminal attorney in both senses of the words. But Trump didn’t need to learn how to lie and protect his lies from Roy Cohn. His own father taught him a master class in lying with his racist practice of either refusing to rent apartments to Black people or “steering” them into substandard dwellings and charging them more rent than he charged White people.
