Sanders was forced to admit that those fantasy “phone calls” of Trump’s were not real, actual, happened in real life phone calls, but phantasmagoria from his distracted brain.

Has President Trump told you about the time the head of the Boy Scouts called to say his was the best speech ever delivered to the more than century-old organization? What about when the president of Mexico picked up the telephone to let him know that his tough enforcement efforts at the border were paying off handsomely?

The anecdotes, both of which Mr. Trump told over the last week, were similar in that they appeared to be efforts to showcase broad support for the president when his White House has been mired in turmoil. But they also had another thing in common, the White House conceded on Wednesday: Neither was true.

Of course they weren’t. It’s become child’s play to recognize his boastful lies. He provides fresh examples every day on Twitter, so we’d be pretty dense if we hadn’t picked up the pattern by now.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, confirmed at her daily briefing what the Boy Scouts and the Mexican government had already asserted publicly, which is that neither phone call that Mr. Trump referred to had occurred.

But they weren’t lies, she wants you to understand. Lots of people did like his Boy Scouts rant, and he has actually spoken to Peña Nieto, so they weren’t lies, just slight exaggerations about specifics like time, place, medium, content, upshot, and the like.

The nonexistent phone calls added to questions about Mr. Trump’s credibility and that of his White House, already in doubt given shifting explanations on matters large and small, including the size of the crowd at Mr. Trump’s inauguration and his involvement in drafting a statement about why his son Donald J. Trump Jr. had met with a Kremlin-connected lawyer during the campaign. The calls appeared to be the latest evidence that the president, who prefers impromptu storytelling to a fact-checked script, is willing to shade or even manufacture events to suit his preferred narrative — even when the story is easily disprovable and of little consequence.

Ok here’s a conundrum: is that more because he’s a self-serving liar, or because he’s stupid? Serious question. That impromptu storytelling thing is a big favorite with people who aren’t all that sharp. It goes with having no interesting thoughts or analyses. Trump’s head is pretty empty. It does have a lot of clutter in the form of slogans and prejudices, but there isn’t much more than that. Who knows whether or not he even realizes it when he’s making shit up?

“He’s been lying his whole life, almost reflexively, and it’s almost as if he finds it more satisfying and easier than to speak with precision,” said Michael D’Antonio, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who later wrote a biography of Mr. Trump, “The Truth About Trump.” “When he was a kid, he lied about whether he hit a home run or not, and when he was a young man, he lied about how tall Trump Tower is — how many floors it is and the actual floors in feet — and he lied about which beautiful women were interested in him.”

Narcissism & dishonesty=a bad recipe.