Alan Zendell, April 20, 2025

Have you ever heard an American president say, “I was wrong?” Kennedy never said it after badly mishandling our relationship with Cuba and committing troops on the ground in Vietnam. Johnson came close, acknowledging that his expansion of the Vietnam War left him unable to govern effectively and causing him to withdraw from the 1968 election. Nixon never admitted he was wrong, either about Vietnam or Watergate, asserting instead that if the president does something, that makes it legal. Ford never said he was wrong, but his brief stewardship of the Oval Office was as error-free as any president’s.

Carter never said he was wrong, despite freezing our economy with record high interest rates and inflation. Reagan, who ushered in the era of supply side economics never admitted that is was a fraud designed to enrich the wealthy even further, although he did accept responsibility for Iran Contra. Bush Senior never admitted he was out of touch with average Americans on the economy – he may not have even known until the 1992 election results. Bill Clinton never admitted he did anything wrong, despite testimony by police who witnessed his sexual peccadillos as Governor of Arkansas and the disclosures about Monica Lewinsky. Bush Junior never recanted declaring victory on that aircraft carrier, while dragging us into a twenty-year war with Iraq and Afghanistan, nor did he acknowledge that his family’s relationship with the Saudi royal family blinded him as to who was really guilty of nine-eleven.

Obama never admitted he was wrong to allow Russia to annex Crimea without taking a stronger stand against Putin, or that attempting to appear even-handed in the Middle East made him appear to diminish our support for Israel and offer legitimacy to Hamas. Joe Biden, despite having saved our post-COVID economy, hasn’t admitted perpetuating the lie that his physical and mental health were up to the job of another term as president, thus conceding a second term to Donald Trump.

The acclaimed winner of the “I’m never wrong” sweepstakes is Trump himself. Semantically, Trump is either always wrong or never wrong, a consequence of pathologically lying and regularly contradicting himself and impulsively changing direction on critical policies without forewarning or explanation. He demeans and slanders anyone who disagrees with him. He ignores advice and counsel from experts, unless they all support his views – but advisors who support everything he says and does simply enable his narcissistic need to always be right.

Our former presidents’ inability to acknowledge their errors have cost the lives of tens of thousands of American military personnel and trillions of dollars that could have been spent shoring up our factories and infrastructure, and providing health care and energy security for all of us. But no president, until now, has declared a no prisoners economic war on every nation we trade with. No president has ever sided with America’s enemy when they invaded one of our allies and systematically dismantled the fabric of their country. No president has deliberately and systematically dissed our allies while praising our adversaries. And no president has ever played a nonnegotiable hard-line game of chicken with the entire world.

When Trump admitted, shortly after he was inaugurated, that his promises about bringing prices down were lies, he claimed it was necessary to lie in the cause of getting elected, because in his view, he needed to be President to save us from our progressive, fair-minded natures. He’s still lying about tariffs not being a tax on all Americans, just as he’s still lying about who benefits from his tax cuts. He still lies about their sole motivation being the greatest upward transfer of wealth in America’s history, as he continues to push to make his 2017 tax cuts that mostly enriched billionaires permanent.

All this should be a warning, accompanied by clanging bells and flashing red lights. His narcissism and sociopathy make it impossible for Trump to ever admit he was wrong, because to him, winning and power are everything. To Trump, winning justifies his means no matter how much chaos and disruption they cause in the lives of all Americans. If you or I insist that we’re always right, we chalk it up to a lack of humility. With Trump however, doubling and tripling down against all opposition, threatening anyone who disagrees with him, weaponizing the courts and the federal justice system to effectively outlaw dissent – these things are not about lack of humility. They’re about a mentally ill man whose lust for power and wealth know no limits or boundaries.

With a president who believes humility is a sign of weakness, who intimidates everyone around him, lacks basic morality, and continually launches missiles of intimidation and bullying in every direction, every day brings the world closer to economic catastrophe and nuclear war.