Just like Bill Clinton, sometimes Donald Trump lies just because he can. Never has that been more apparent than with the current flap over the well-known fact that Donald Trump used to pretend to be his own publicist. It’s such an absurd story, and Trump long ago came to public terms with the fact that he is, quite frankly, nuts.

He’s admitted in court that he sometimes played Miller/Barron with the press. The NY press in particular has known this for years. The voice on the tape is obviously him. This would probably have been a tempest in a teapot… but for the fact that Trump has lied about it, and sent spokesmen out to continue the lie, and further embarrassed himself by freaking out and hanging up on Washington Post reporters who asked him about it yesterday.

He’s now made this a much bigger story than it ever needed to be. And inevitably, he is going to have to one day admit (once again) that he was John Miller/John Barron. There’s just no way around it. There’s no way Trump can produce any evidence of Miller or Barron ever existing, and there’s too much evidence that they are in fact him. Knowing Trump, he’s probably going to backtrack in less than a week – I would guess less than 3 days.

When that day comes, then what? Obviously, Trump’s supporters will not care – the 40% of the Republican party that has stuck with him through thick and thin. But Trump is moving into the portion of the election where he needs more than those people to win. People who might not have been paying attention to Trump’s antics very closely thus far. They might have been willing to overlook this admittedly nutty behavior from Trump, but the vociferous claims that it was never him, that it was an impostor or con artist?

People might have been willing to overlook Trump’s behavior in the primary as “doing what needed to be done.” But starting off his general election with a bald faced lie about something so obvious? I can’t imagine this is going to play well with swing voters.