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It’s been a bad habit for a long time, but it’s getting worse: President Donald Trump can’t utter a single statement without lying about his accomplishments or revealing, all too plainly, that self-glorification is what he cares about the most.

Take his post on social media Thursday, affirming—as was clear a few days earlier—that he was going to let New START, the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the United States and Russia, expire this week with barely a shrug.

He wrote: “Rather than extend ‘NEW START’ (a badly negotiated deal … that, aside from everything else, is being grossly violated), we should have our Nuclear Experts work on a new, improved, and modernized Treaty that can last long into the future.”

First, though the treaty—which was signed in 2011—no longer addresses all the salient issues of today’s nuclear landscape, it was in fact a brilliantly negotiated accord in its day, mandating the deepest cuts and tightest on-site-inspection clauses in arms-control history.

The real problem with New START, in Trump’s eyes, was the same problem that compelled him to denounce the Iran nuclear deal as “the worst deal ever” before he tore it up in 2018; he hates them because they were both signed by his loathed and envied predecessor, Barack Obama.

Russian President Vladimir Putin—who has, in fact, abided by New START’s numerical limits—proposed that he and Trump extend the accord by one year, but Trump declined. (The treaty allowed for a one-time five-year extension, which Putin and Joe Biden signed back in 2021, perhaps another reason—since he loathes Biden at least as much as he despises  Obama—Trump would rather scuttle the whole deal.)

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Then, in this same social media post, for no reason at all (this is the bad habit that I cited at the start of this essay), Trump recites some fibs. For instance: “I completely rebuilt [our] Military in my First Term, including new and many refurbished nuclear weapons.”

This is untrue. Obama approved the development of new nuclear weapons for the entire “strategic Triad”: land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and bombers, as well as new warheads and cruise missiles. (Ironically, he agreed to this as a way of getting Senate hawks to ratify the New START treaty. He was also snookered into this compromise. He agreed to........

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