My late Irish grandmother felt that if her grandsons were to grow up to be gentlemen, she had to engrain manners and morals in them. Elbows off the table, always hold the door open for a lady, do not speak with your mouth full, say please and thank you, and make sure you address your elders with respect were just some of the lessons learned that formed our lifelong deportments.

We were also instructed on the importance of being genuine. Say what you mean and mean what you say was also one of grandma’s favorites.

Contrary to those benchmarks of dignified behavior and unimpeachable honesty are the actions of the 45th president. Donald John Trump exhibits a crassness and predilection toward prevaricating, which are counter traits to that of a leader worthy of emulating.

Case and point, the events of these past weeks depict a president who is not only of dubious veracity, but shows a misogynistic and despicable objectification of the female gender. Recently, the New York Times compiled a list of the proven falsehoods uttered by Donald Trump over the past year. Once scrutinized the incidents of his consistent lying depicts a man seemingly unable to tell the truth either through habit or pathology.

Also, Trump’s recent excoriation of television news anchor Mika Brzezinski through his obsessive tweeting is typical of his pattern of impetuous callousness.

If the Donald was still a New York real estate developer, his recklessness would not matter much. However, as the president of our country he needs to adapt a dignified persona. American kids need to be able to look up to their president. And the American president needs to be respected by the leaders of other countries that he will inevitably deal with. Currently, Trump falls short of both those marks.

Donald Trump has had one job in his life until he was elected president. He worked for his Dad Fred Trump in the real estate business and then succeeded him upon his demise. The Trump Organization is a private corporation, thus its operators do not have to answer to a board of directors. Decisions could be made unilaterally and impetuously. Lying and deceit could be used as a technique in an unfettered manner and was. Therefore, standpoints were transactional in nature not built upon hard principles of character and moral resolve.

On the contrary, a president must answer to a congress, a judiciary, and most importantly the American people. He is constitutionally constrained on what dictums he can present, as he found out with his original travel ban executive order. The order was stayed by two circuit courts and eventually scrutinized by the Supreme Court. Temporarily, in a greatly watered down form, the travel ban is being imposed until the Supremes can review the case in October.

In relation, the demonization of immigrants by the Donald throughout his campaign and since his election is indeed a puzzlement. It has been documented that Trump has availed himself of illegal immigrant labor in the demolition of buildings in real estate projects in New York City. A lawsuit was filed on behalf of the workers who were shortchanged in their earnings.

Also, Trump has used illegal workers in his resort in Florida. Hispanic activist organizations have offered the proof.

So, to chastise employers for employing illegal immigrants and to repeatedly claim they are ruining America when Trump himself did so is a glaring falsehood. Stop your fibbing Donny boy!

The nagging question in regard to Trump is whether or not he believes his lies are truths when he utters them. Thus, meaning he is a pathological liar. Or, perhaps he is merely a habitual liar who is so comfortable lying that being truthful is alien to him.

The New York Times compiled a list of all the lies either spoken or twittered by the president since his ascension to office. By their count, the newspaper verified 99 canards in the first six months of his presidency. Many of these falsehoods are trivial in nature, while others have political significance.

Seemingly compelled by vanity, Trump has claimed to have made the cover of Time Magazine 14 or 15 times. In reality, it was 11 times. Additionally, Trump had a fake Time cover with his image produced and mounted on a wall in Trump Tower. He claimed it was genuine to many a visitor for some unexplained reason. Along the same line, Trump claimed that his inaugural crowd size was the largest in history. He had his press secretary Sean Spicer defend this whopper repeatedly in the pressroom. Even though the park police confirmed that his crowds were less in size than Presidents’ Barak Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. Also, Trump stated, “Between 3 million and 5 million illegal votes caused me to lose the popular vote.” The secretaries of states have reported that nationwide only about 200 hundred thousand questionable votes were cast and most of those related to not up to date voter rolls.

Vanity plays aside, the prevarications about affairs of our government are much more disturbing. In reference to the F-35 C Stealth Multirole Fighter Jet, which has been plagued with cost overruns, Trump said the following: “I cut millions of dollars off one particular plane, hundreds of millions in a short period of time. It wasn’t like I spent, like, weeks, hours, less than hours, and many, many hundreds of millions of dollars. And the plane’s going to be better.” The cuts had already been worked out with the manufacturers before Trump got involved. All he did was sign off when he got in office, the changes were 6 months in the making before the Donald took the oath. Trump followed that embellishment with this one. “I already saved 700 million when I got involved in the negotiation on the F-35.”

Internationally, some of his lies are endangering our foreign relationships. For instance, Trump said: “NATO, obsolete, because it doesn’t cover terrorism. They fixed that.” Since the 1980s, NATO has passed joint resolutions and deployed NATO forces to assist in the fight against terrorism. As a matter of fact, NATO enacted the “an attack against one is an attack against all” clause in the charter when the United States was attacked on 9/11.

Nonetheless upsetting is Trump’s misogynistic rants against the female gender. Liberal biased MSNBC news anchor Mika Brezezinski has long critiqued President Trump’s politics and his character. Instead of creating a discourse against her political charges, Trump as usual chose the low road. “I heard poorly rated Morning Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!” On another occasion, Trump said Brezezinski was “very insecure,” “a neurotic and not very bright mess,” and “gone wild with hate.” Some appropriate manners are in order here, especially from a sitting president.

Trump famously attacked then Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly by insinuating she was bleeding out of certain parts of her body, in response to a cutting question posed to him in a debate. Further, Trump has assailed women for what he perceived as physical shortcomings. In regard to former news publisher Arianna Huffington he said, “Arianna Huffington is unattractive both inside and out. I fully understand why her former husband left her for a man-he made a good decision.”

A gentleman and certainly not a president should ever say anything like those cruel aspersions to a lady of any kind. And a good man and certainly not a president should lie with such frequency and ease. A president should be someone that the children of America can look up to. He or she should be a person of dignity and good moral character. He or she should seek political discourse and not react to criticism like an insolent adolescent.

Too bad my sainted grandmother is not around anymore. Donald Trump could use a few lessons in civility and morality.