Just when I think former President Trump has run out of self-admiring bilge, he opens his mouth again, spouting more.

Back in April at a rally in Selma, North Carolina, the man who wrote the book on all-occasion mendacity boasted, “I’ve got to be the cleanest, I think I’m the most honest human being, perhaps, that God has ever created.”

Strip that statement of hyperbole and it’s still a fat lie. Is he so blinded by narcissism that he thinks such statements could ever win him converts to his mission to make America great again?   (Which really only means his mission to glorify himself, ultimately — think Rushmore, think dubbing himself “your favorite president.”)

Trump went on to crow that he’d been investigated more than “Billy the Kid, Jesse James and Al Capone combined” and found innocent across the board.

I’ll bet my boots Trump doesn’t know squat about the history of those men, considering what he imagines was President Andrew Jackson’s anger over the senselessness of the Civil War (in fact, his favorite president died 16 years before it began), the existence of airports in 18th century America (yes, you read that right), the start of the Great Depression in 1928, etc.

As Sean Wilentz of The Washington Post rightly tells it, “Trump knows practically nothing about American history, cares even less and displays his ignorance breezily.”

Just the sort of unlettered blowhard we want to see striding the world stage again in 2024.

William LaRochelle, Lewiston

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