Why Trump’s admission that he made stuff up to Justin Trudeau is particularly bad

In a fundraising speech Wednesday, President Trump admitted once and for all that he just makes stuff up. The man who has racked up more than 2,000 false and misleading claims as president said he insisted to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that United States runs a trade deficit with Canada — despite having “no idea” whether that was the case. (Surprise! It’s not.)

“I said, ‘Wrong, Justin, you do.’ I didn’t even know,” Trump said. “I had no idea. I just said, ‘You’re wrong.’ You know why? Because we’re so stupid.”

None of this is hugely surprising. Trump utters way too many falsehoods for it to be a coincidence. And we’ve seen over and over again — particularly most recently in meetings with lawmakers about guns and immigration — that Trump simply doesn’t do his homework beforehand. He generally doesn’t seem to have even a cursory understanding of what Congress is up to or about the underlying policies.

But the fact that Trump would make up this particular fact is especially remarkable and ominous.

The first reason is that this is perhaps the one issue Trump has focused on for decades: trade.

The second reason is that it was a rather pointless invention.

The final part of this is what it says about Trump’s brand of diplomacy.

What happens if Trump takes this approach — or the one from the meetings on guns and immigration — to his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un?

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