Why Trump seems invulnerable to the flip-flop charge

Let's get this out of the way: Razzie-winning actor and presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump lies. A lot. He lies about little things, such as whether lots of Muslims in New Jersey celebrated after the World Trade Center collapsed. He lies about big things, such as how the global economy works. He lies about political things, such as whether House Speaker Paul Ryan or Florida Sen. Marco Rubio have recently called him.

Trump's relationship with the truth is like his relationship with his hairstylist: a long, drawn-out, complex negotiation, stacked upon layers of resentment and coloring, surrounded by lots of hot air.

Trump is such a teller of falsehoods that I fear it will drive The Washington Post's fact checker, Glenn Kessler, around the bend. As Kessler writes:

"The news media now faces the challenge of Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president. Trump makes Four-Pinocchio statements over and over again, even though fact checkers have demonstrated them to be false. He appears to care little about the facts; his staff does not even bother to respond to fact-checking inquiries."

Contrast Kessler with this tweet from ABC's Matthew Dowd:

"Many among media and GOP elites look at Trump like he is speaking in tongues, but his voters know exactly what he is saying."

How does Trump get away with this? I can't explain all of his lies, but having had little choice but to watch the man for the past 11 months, I have a working theory for Trump's invulnerability to one particular charge: the flip-flop.

I grew up in a political age in which one of the biggest risks for presidential potentials was to go on television and face the Sam Donaldsons or Tim Russerts of the media world just waiting to catch them in a flip-flop. The host would usually play two clips back to back that revealed an obvious flip-flop. The candidates would then try to squirm and wriggle their way out of the logical trap set for them. And I would eat popcorn.

This tactic does not work on Trump. It's not as though it hasn't been tried numerous times. It just doesn't work. And I have a three-part theory as to why.

1) Trump views all of his pre-campaign statements as Not Really Counting.

In his mind, he was an entertainer rather than a politician before, say, 2008. When asked to comment on his myriad misogynistic conversations, for example, Trump's response is: Hey, that doesn't count.

"I never anticipated running for office or being a politician, so I could have fun with Howard [Stern] on the radio and everyone would love it. People do love it," Trump said, sitting behind his Trump Tower desk piled with magazines featuring his face on the cover. "I could say whatever I wanted when I was an entrepreneur, a business guy."

If you think of yourself as an entertainer rather than a politician, it eliminates that whole shame problem that constrains most politicians from straying too far from the truth. Ordinary politicians such as Hillary Clinton get accused of parsing words a lot, but that's because they think that words matter and they genuinely do not want to get caught in a contradiction or a falsehood.

Trump doesn't care, because he thinks of his past public statements as nothing but marketing.

2) Trump can't hide his resentment when he gets a question he doesn't like or care about.

Most politicians put on a fake smile and try to parry questions they don't like. Trump's tone and his facial gestures make it clear when he thinks he's being asked a bogus question. And on those questions, Trump is perfectly happy to flip-flop within a single answer.

So, very often, the key to a Trump answer is not what he says but the tone in which he says it. There is a whole category of answers he has given in this campaign that have a tonal asterisk of "I'm answering this question but I think it's a stupid question so I don't really care what I say and I could change my mind at any time."

Trump's support for the Iraq war before the 2003 invasion can be explained away by this. BuzzFeed has done a tremendous job of showing that Trump did NOT oppose the war before it began. And he absolutely gave statements of nominal support. But if you listen to the interviews, it seems pretty clear that Trump has put zero thought into his answers and really does not care about the question. He did not want to talk about it. To him, therefore, those statements don't count.

3) Voters listen to Trump's tone as much as his words.

This goes to Dowd's point. It is pretty easy to tell when Trump is just saying something and not meaning it. To a majority of voters, this kind of shtick is off-putting. To supporters who despise the media, however, it's a strength and not a weakness.

Most politicians care about flip-flops because, even if they prevaricate and parse, they have a relationship with the truth. So they take great pains to project a certain demeanor with the media that can sometimes seem phony.

Trump's relationship with the truth is based more on a mixture of bemusement and contempt. Those sentiments, however, are on full display with his media interviews, and they do not seem phony at all. It's that tonal authenticity that inoculates Trump against many of the standard accusations that fell normal politicians.

In other words, neither policy coherence nor factual accuracy seem as important during this election cycle as whether one sounds emotionally genuine.

I don't know what this all means for the future of politics. But it's more than a little depressing.

Previously:
• 05/03/16: Confessions of a Luddite professor
• 03/29/16: The trouble with writing about Donald Trump
• 02/29/16: Nobody will admit to the real reason Donald Trump is winning