WE KNEW HE WAS A LIAR WHEN WE HIRED HIM (profanity alert):

[S]uch dramatic theories miss the simplest explanation for Trump's lying: He's a real estate developer from New York City. Lying isn't a personal failure. It's a business model.

New York real estate, where Trump first learned the art of the con, is a line of work that's built on chicanery. Under state law, real estate developers have a de facto legal license to lie, and they use it with abandon. The marketing materials for a luxury condo might advertise top-flight amenities--on-site SoulCycle, say, or valet stroller parking--but buyers have no legal recourse after they move in and discover they have to haul their strollers up six flights like a tenement-dweller; as a matter of New York law, only the final sales contract is binding. And with land values so high and profit margins so slim, developers have every incentive to hype the sales pitch. "Real estate investors sell their product--and in the process, they promise it will have benefits that may not ever be realized," says Thomas Angotti, a professor of urban planning at Hunter College and author of New York For Sale. Or as one real estate broker and property manager in New York puts it: "Everybody in this business is a f[****]g liar."   [...]

Trump is well versed in the dark arts of the New York mega-developer. In 1979, he got the city to approve 20 extra stories for Trump Tower by creating a fourth-floor "public garden" that is almost never open. He also replaced the lone bench in the public lobby with kiosks selling paraphernalia from his presidential campaign and The Apprentice. (Last summer, after losing a series of administrative decisions by the city, Trump returned the bench.) His now-infamous habit of stiffing contractors is common among developers. Trump has also lied to preservationists, promising to preserve the Art Deco friezes from the façade of the Bonwit Teller department store building that he demolished to make way for Trump Tower. When he realized it would take two weeks to remove them undamaged, he instead jackhammered them to pieces.

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