For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. — Romans 12:3 (NIV)

Have you ever spent time with someone who is constantly boasting and bragging about themselves? It’s distasteful, wearying, and obnoxious.

According to himself, the president has done an incredible job handling Corona Virus (gives himself an A+); he has done an incredible job on the stock market; he’s done an incredible job of building the wall; he’s been incredible at calling up heads of states and having perfect phone calls; it’s been incredible what he’s done for the black community and the Hispanic community, and the military (don’t forget the military!); his administration “has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country” (direct quote from his speech before the U.N. in 2018); he is the only one standing between the American Dream and total anarchy (even he said that was an egotistical statement); and he is very good at predicting what will happen… (Most of these statements were taken from one very rambling speech at the Council for National Policy Meeting on August 21, 2020 in Arlington Virginia. You can read it here…)

“People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular,” Trump wrote in The Art of the Deal. “I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration, and a very effective form of promotion.” Jill Colvin wrote “The Art of the Boast: Trump’s a Master in October of 2019, and found more than 1200 mentions of the words biggest, best, and smartest in his Twitter feed.

This way of looking at exaggeration and “truthful hyperbole” might be fine if one is a Celebrity Apprentice Reality TV star, but it looks less well on the President of the United States.

And that’s not an exaggeration…