From Daily Kos: Donald Trump’s 10 most pathetically predictable broken promises
By JOHN PERR
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Republican Donald Trump presented a unique conundrum for the public and pundits alike. Simply put, Trump lied at a rate never before seen in modern American politics. No candidate in the 21st century, from either party, even came close.
Writing in The Atlantic that September, Salena Zito offered this warning about Trump’s whoppers: “The press takes him literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.” Zito’s formula became a helpful shorthand for what political scientist Brendan Nyhan (“Don’t Assume Donald Trump’s Supporters Believe All His Words”) explained in June 2016. As Nyhan noted at the time, polling and previous research suggested that many Trump supporters simply "discounted" many of his most self-evidently impossible proposals. "In this way," Nyhan explained, "a voter who prefers a more modest move rightward might rationally prefer [party] R even though R's position is further from the voter than a more moderate party on the left."