Forget betting on ball games or boxing matches or horses.
The new game in town is Donald Trump and his lies.
Last week, people bet on how many times Trump would lie in his Oval Office address and won $276,424, according to Buzzfeed News.
Bookmaker.eu asked people to wager on the president’s truthfulness, offering odds of -145 for more than 3.5 lies and +115 for less than 3.5 lies.
For gambling novices, BuzzFeed explained that meant if someone bet $145 dollars that Trump would lie at least four times, they would win $100. The betting site used the Washington Post’s Fact Checker as the arbiter of truth and lies.
Honestly, it was bettors’ easy pickings. The president’s nine-minute speech was literally littered with falsehoods, and the first misleading statement came in the very first sentence when he warned of a “security crisis “at the southern border” – even though the number of people caught trying to cross illegally is near a 20-year low.
Just moments later he said border agents “encounter thousands” of illegal immigrants trying to enter the country every day. Never mind that his administration says the daily average for 2018 was in the hundreds.
Things went downhill from there. Thus, some betters won big.
Odds consultant John Lester told BuzzFeed that the betting site will lose $276,424, with 92 percent of bettors correctly wagering Trump would lie a lot.
“It’s a bad day for truthiness and Bookmaker,” Lester told BuzzFeed. “We knew we were in trouble early with this one.”
We all have known our country was in trouble “with this one,” meaning Donald Trump, for some time.
In all seriousness, what has the presidency of our country come to that we now are wagering on how many times Trump will tell what he must know is a provable lie during the course of a national address that he must know will be heavily scrutinized?
Money maker for shutdown?
Perhaps furloughed federal workers can make up for their lost pay with similar betting opportunities on things like Trump’s bizarre so-called “impromptu” news conferences on the White House lawn and driveway as he moves to and from the oval office and a waiting SUV or helicopter.
Take Thursday, for example, as he paused to make jaws drop en route to his photo-op on the southern border.
That show-stopper prompted this headline on a column by CNN’s Chris Cillizza: “29 outrageous lines from Donald Trump’s wild, impromptu news conference on the White House lawn.”
For instance, would you have made odds on Trump saying: “I’m a professional at technology.”
Hmmm. Does he hack emails?
Then there was this one: “When during the campaign I would say, ‘Mexico’s going to pay for it,’ obviously I never said this and I never meant they’re going to write out a check.”
Oh, let us number the times. It would be like guessing the number of marbles in the jar.
And this: “And I find China, frankly, in many ways, to be far more honorable than Cryin’ Chuck and Nancy. I really do.”
Cillizza, in his column, characterizes this best: “This is a stunning statement. China, a nation that a) has a long record of human rights abuses b) manipulates currency and c) is no friend to the United States, is more honorable in Trump’s estimation than the top-ranking elected officials of the opposition party in the United States. Sit with that for a second. And then think of how China, once seeing that comment, will seek to use it to their advantage. Not good.”
So who’s gonna pay up?
Then there are the Donald’s tweets.
Just Wednesday, he announced via Twitter that he has ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency not to send funding to California to assist in the aftermath of deadly wildfires.
You might recall that he not too long ago suggested California foresters “rake” the forests to avoid fires. Then out of the blue this week came this: “Billions of dollars are sent to the State of California for Forest fires that, with proper Forest Management, would never happen,” our president wrote. “Unless they get their act together, which is unlikely, I have ordered FEMA to send no more money. It is a disgraceful situation in lives & money!”
In hindsight, it likely was just a trial balloon on his newest evil plan to fund THE WALL.
Now we learn he’s eyeing a possible diversion of $13.9 billion intended for all disaster relief to fund his pet project.
To borrow from another Tweeter whose handle is TeaPainUSA, envision this MAGA scene:
Trump: “What are we gonna build?”
Crowd: “A wall!”
Trump: “And who’s gonna pay for it?”
Crowd: “Disaster victims!”
Hey, we have to find some humor in all this somewhere.
David Frum, a former speech writer for President George W. Bush and a frequent political talk show guest, tweeted this imitation of Trump after Trump’s busy week with diversions and walk-backs – and after seeing Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s outrage that the president might be angling to fund a border wall by pulling from Florida disaster recovery money.
Frum wrote: “When I said I would make America great again, obviously I did not literally mean ‘America.'”
Laughter should hurt our sides, not our hearts.