Donald Trump a fine one to accuse others of lying

A little hyperbole never hurts.

- Donald Trump,

The Art of the Deal

To hear a man whose embellishments rate comparisons to P.T. Barnum complain that others aren't telling the truth is enough to make your head spin. But Donald Trump calling Ted Cruz a liar is characteristic of the barroom brawl being conducted to choose a Republican nominee for president.

Maybe it shouldn't be surprising that mutual respect has often been missing in action from the GOP presidential debates. After all, the trajectory of the worst rudeness on display traces back to 2009, when a South Carolina congressman screamed, "You lie!" at President Obama as he addressed a joint session of Congress.

Time magazine reported that Trump applied the words lie, lying, and liar to Cruz six times in 90 seconds during an appearance Monday. "He's a lying guy - a really lying guy," Trump said of the Texas senator. "Some people misrepresent. This guy is just a plain-out liar."

Noting that Marco Rubio had accused Cruz of spreading falsehoods about the Florida senator's positions on same-sex marriage, Planned Parenthood, and immigration, Trump said he felt freer to call out Cruz, whom he described as "the single biggest liar I've ever seen."

Trump brought up the caucuses in Iowa, where the Cruz campaign suggested that Ben Carson had quit the race when he had only gone home to Florida for a break. "They should disqualify him from winning Iowa," Trump said of Cruz. "I really mean it, because what he did was a fraud."

Trump's scorched-earth approach to politics leaves little room for his opponents to climb aboard the bandwagon should he actually win the nomination. Who is going to let bygones be bygones after an adversary has tried to destroy his credibility?

But Trump hasn't reserved the liar label for Cruz alone. In attacking Jeb Bush during Saturday's debate, he accused former President George W. Bush of lying about weapons of mass destruction to drum up support for the Iraq invasion. That led radio host Rush Limbaugh to speculate that Trump might be trying to attract votes from independents and Democrats in South Carolina's open primary.

Trump apparently assumes that his own truthfulness isn't an issue. But the fact-checking site PolitiFact found that he has told more than one fib worthy of its Lie of the Year award. Seventy-six percent of the Trump statements PolitiFact checked last year were rated "mostly false," "false," or "pants on fire" (its grade for the most outrageously false statements).

Magicians use sleight of hand to make audiences miss what should be clear. Some politicians accomplish the same feat.