Earlier this week, Trump claimed that Chinese trade officials called him and conceded that it was time to make a deal because they've been "hurt very badly," but that call never took place.
We already know this and yet White House officials who spoke to CNN have confirmed that Trump was just making shit up because he wanted to see the market go up.
Though Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin insisted there had been "communication," aides privately conceded the phone calls Trump described didn't happen they way he said they did.
Instead, two officials said Trump was eager to project optimism that might boost markets, and conflated comments from China's vice premier with direct communication from the Chinese. [...]
Trump, sources say, is searching for an accomplishment to run on in 2020 -- and realizing time is running short to fulfill some of the key promises he made to voters in 2016.
I think we can expect to see a lot more of this over the next year.
Trump does not have much of a record to run on (at least not a record of good things) but that won't stop him from making up things to run on. It's exceedingly easy for me to imagine Trump running an almost entirely fictitious campaign based on things he never actually did or accomplished.
I mean, that wouldn't necessarily be all that different from his 2016 campaign, but he's going to have to reach deeper and find the most absurd lies to run on in 2020.
The next election could be a referendum on reality itself, not policy, but I say that knowing that almost every presidential election becomes a referendum on reality because Republican policy and ideology does not comport with reality.