Simon Hawkins

Left: President Trump, "I saw Obama was in Michigan and the place was empty" Right: Obama, El-Sayed and Benson walk onto stage and the full house crowd erupts in joy My view: Trump’s claim that Obama’s Michigan event was empty is instantly undone by the scene beside it: Obama, El-Sayed and Benson stepping onto a stage before a packed crowd, greeted with cheers. A president should be able to face a rival’s popularity without inventing a story to erase it. Trump’s response is to sneer, distort and insist that what people can plainly see did not happen. That is not strength; it is the behaviour of someone who cannot tolerate being outshone. There is a reason he keeps trying to turn public life into a contest over who can command the biggest crowd. He needs constant proof that he is admired, feared and winning. When reality challenges that image, he reaches for a lie. The damage goes beyond one false boast. Every time he asks people to distrust their own eyes, he chips away at the basic honesty a democracy depends on. He shows no respect for the public, no generosity towards his opponents and no sense of the dignity the office of the President of the United States should carry. This is a president who mistakes cruelty for strength and dishonesty for politics. The crowd in Michigan tells its own story. Trump’s lie reveals him, and it is a tragedy for democracy that our institutions in the western world don't have a mechanism to address and correct politicians who lie so utterly shamelessly.