Trump’s own version of reality continues to confound political actors and observers

Eight years ago this month, Donald Trump announced that he had personally laid to rest the controversy about President Obama’s country of origin. He gave himself credit for clearing up any questions that may have arisen because of something, he claimed, Hillary Clinton had said years earlier.

Those familiar with the facts were stunned. They knew the so-called birther conspiracy had been hatched by various Obama opponents to suggest he was ineligible to be president because he had been born not in the U.S. but in Kenya or some other country. It had been kept alive and promoted for years by a variety of Obama critics, including, most prominently, Donald Trump.

It could even be said that Trump had facilitated his transition from TV reality show star (The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice) to bona fide political candidate by exploiting the birther myth.

What Trump was actually announcing in September 2016 was a decision to stop talking about a non-issue he himself had helped sustain for years. But in finally renouncing one falsehood, he insisted on substituting another — casting himself as a hero of the tale.

Nearly a decade after Trump began running for president we should all be accustomed to his reliance on falsehoods.

But back in 2016, the birther flip-flop seemed to deserve special recognition. It was not just blatant, it was preposterous.

Or so we thought. Surely it would diminish the man even in the eyes of his admirers. And it may have done so, in some cases. But it did not alter his trajectory. He stunned the world a few weeks later by winning the Electoral College vote for president.

It was said in the early Trump years that the media took him literally but not seriously. It’s hard to deny that many of us