I am normally against fat shaming people. Ultimately, in a real sense no one should care that much. Obviously, body issues play a lot in our own lives and goodness knows many of us have enough self-esteem issues to worry about. However, I enjoy playing amateur psychologist. What does this whopper mean?

Trump’s behavior reminds me of a golfer I played against in high school. No one keeps their own score in competitive golf. So, I kept his. On the first hole he dribbled it a few feet in front of the tee box, snap hooked the next one out of bounds, and then proceeded to dribble it up the fairway in an agonizingly slow pace. He was lying about six by the green. He chilly dipped his chip, then dribbled it on the green. He finished with a three putt which put him at 11 by my count.

When I asked him what he got he told me a five. That was a non-starter, so we kept bartering up. I think we settled on a nine. Something inside told me to just accept an approximation. He was in no danger of beating me and his team would be in dire trouble if they actually used his score. This was my day. He would throw out a number as if it were a negotiation. We’d haggle for a few minutes until we settled on a score that loosely resembled what he had actually done.

There are tales from the golf course involving Trump that sound equally infuriating. On one occasion he browbeat someone and bulldozed a fellow player into accepting that their ball on the green was actually Trump’s and their ball had in fact gone in the water. The reverse was the real truth but I can imagine the emotional fatigue.

Most of us that play golf accept a certain amount of cheating. We are fond of saying that the USGA rules are really just a suggestion. We allow bumping to improve the lie. We allow one mulligan per round. We allow two shots off the first tee. Putts within a certain distance of the hole are considered good. Most people that play golf are familiar with this kind of setup.  Others of us omit strokes every now and then. As long as this practice is occasional and not routine our playing partners don’t seem to mind. Golf can be a great allegory for life.

This is the same as the height and weight. What we know is that neither of those numbers are anywhere close to accurate. Trump is somewhere between 6’0” and 6’1”. There have been enough people that have met him that we know the 6’3” isn’t accurate.  The estimation by most that have met him is that Trump is likely closer to 300 pounds. That would throw him into the obese category and would make his frequent insults of other people (say Chris Christie) to be hilariously hypocritical. Yet, this is the golf thing all over again. If I ambush you with a slew of whoppers in one sitting you will become mentally and psychologically exhausted before the round (or activity) is through.

No one is really fooled by any of it. No one really believes that all of these people came up with tears in their eyes to beg him for anything. Yet, he has millions defending each of these things. They rationalize it in their mind somehow. Meanwhile, the rest of us have to make a calculation of which lies we will contest and which ones we will just let go. After all, what is the difference between an 8 and 10 on the scorecard at the end of the round?