Trump appears delusional -- but the modern-day GOP led the way
Donald Trump has taken the Republican tradition of lying to daring new heights. But he had a lot to work with
CONOR LYNCH
12.09.2017•6:00 AM
Donald Trump’s tenuous relationship with the truth has always been somewhat of a mystery, and it has often been difficult to tell whether the president is truly delusional or simply the biggest con man on the planet.
Since he announced his presidential candidacy more than two years ago, Trump has peddled conspiracy theories and falsehoods to the public like a false prophet selling hope, displaying an almost pathological disregard for the truth. As a result, many critics have assumed that he is a liar who deliberately and knowingly deceives the public. Others have contemplated whether he truly believes some of the nonsense that come out of his mouth, thus challenging the notion that he is consciously lying.
Both of these scenarios are disturbing in their own way — and, of course, they are not mutually exclusive. Trump may be a true believer one day and a liar the next; a credulous crackpot in one tweet, and a con artist in another.
Last week, however, the New York Times and the Washington Post published separate articles that suggest the president actually believes in his own BS most of the time, and that he has come to live in his own warped version of reality (call it “Trumptopia”). The coinciding reports, published on the same day, both portray the president as an increasingly deranged man who decides what is true and what is false (i.e., “fake news”), regardless of the evidence. According to both articles, the president has even come to question certain things that he had previously acknowledged as true, including the "Access Hollywood" tape in which he is heard bragging to Billy Bush about sexually assaulting women. “We don’t think that was my voice,” Trump reportedly said to a Republican senator in January — a claim he has repeated in private since.
“Mr. Trump’s falsehoods about the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape are part of his lifelong habit of attempting to create and sell his own version of reality,” the New York Times reporters write. “Advisers say he continues to privately harbor a handful of conspiracy theories that have no grounding in fact.”
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https://www.salon.com/2017/12/09/trump-appears-delusional-but-the-modern-day-gop-led-the-way/
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He probably became a skilled liar very early in life.
And the second grand delusion he was taught was his own self-importance.
The first was that there really is a Santa Claus. 
