The Trumpian Inversion of Reality

How does half the country believe this president to be the opposite of who he is?

Imagine a modified version of the 1992 election between Bush and Clinton. In this version, the Democrats’ main case for Clinton was that he, unlike Bush, was a virtuous and chaste family man. They also believed that Bush was a major isolationist, unlike Clinton, who would keep the country safe with a suitably muscular foreign policy.

This would be a surprising situation.

It’s not surprising that partisans sometimes think their candidate is better than he really is. But it would be pretty shocking if the main reason given in support of some candidate was a complete and total inversion of the truth—as far from the truth as dark is from light. It would be a bit like if the main draw of Obama over Romney, in the eyes of voters, was that Obama was a faithful Mormon.

I consider the standard view of Trump among Republicans to be similarly surprising.

It is surprising, in other words, that what many believe to be some of his biggest draws are obvious defects—ways in which he is manifestly, flagrantly, and uncontroversially worse than other politicians. I can sort of get in the shoes of the Trump supporter who votes for him because they like his economic policy. What I cannot understand is the widespread view among Trump supporters that he possesses certain key virtues that other politicians lack.

For instance, a common claim among Trump supporters is that he tells it like it is. It is surprising that this is widely believed, given that Trump is such an audacious liar that his press secretaries consistently resort to pseudo-biblical interpretations of his words, where they’re supposed to be treated as inspired but not as literally true.

Take one example: he repeatedly said that he’d end the Ukraine war on day one. He said this 53 different times, each with complete sincerity. Then, when the war didn’t end, he claimed that he was speaking in jest. This is obviously bullshit. For example, here is one instance of him talking about ending the war on day one:

“And before I even arrive at the Oval Office, shortly after I win the presidency, I will have the disastrous war between Russia and Ukraine settled.” And: “So when I say ‘end it,’ I’m going to get a settlement very quickly. And I know both people, and you can get it very, very quickly. You can only do it through the presidency, but you control the money coming in, coming out. You can get that. I will have that settlement done within 24 hours.”

Anyone remotely familiar with the public record knew that he was not speaking in jest or metaphorically. And crucially, this is a lie unlike the lies of most politicians—almost legendary in its flagrancy. Trump obviously did not believe that he’d end the war on day one. And yet he said it, over and over again, showing about as much care for what was true as dogs do for laws against public defecation. Then, when his obvious and repeated lies turned out false, he lied again and denied ever sincerely claiming them.

The typical politician lies. But Trump evinces an almost complete disregard for truth in a way that is atypical. He says what he knows to be false 53 different times, and then lies about ever having said it. How, in light of this fact-pattern, do people think he’s some bold and noble truth teller? The mind boggles.

Or take the infamous Sharpiegate, an incident almost incomprehensible in its childlike disregard for what is true. It began when Trump falsely claimed that hurricane Dorian might hit Alabama. That was an error and had not been previously suggested by anyone. Then Trump doubled down on the claim. He quite literally took a map of Dorian’s expected impact and modified it by hand with a sharpie to show it potentially hitting Alabama. Then he bullied the NOAA into publicly releasing a statement agreeing with him so that he wouldn’t be publicly embarrassed by the wrong statement.

This is a staggering degree of dishonesty. After getting the claim wrong, he doctored the right map, by hand, and then browbeat his administration into confirming his earlier falsehood. The sheer degree of disregard—of not giving a shit about what is true—is almost comedic. Again, it is one thing to support Trump despite his dishonesty, but to praise him as a brave truth teller requires profound blindness concerning his character.

Or take, as another example, the claim that Trump is less corrupt than his opponents. The Republicans have repeatedly claimed that their opponents are corrupt. Hillary, Hunter, and even Joe are widely seen as corrupt deep state swamp creatures aiming for personal enrichment. And yet Trump is corrupt completely out in the open and no one seems to care.

He was gifted a private jet from Qatar. His son established a nightclub where for a large fee, you can pass on political ideas to the president. He’s made billions through crypto schemes, even as he’s supposed to regulate crypto. He’s made billions personally off selling merchandise which only has value because he’s the president—meaning that he is directly profiting off his position. As Richard Hanania notes “After a Chinese businessman pumped $75 million into crypto tokens backed by the Trump family, for example, the SEC stopped pursuing civil fraud charges against him.”

If the Trump corruption scandal is a tsunami, other administrations’ corruption scandals were tiny splashes. Nixon was impeached for Watergate—for wiretapping his political opponents. And yet Trump investigates his political opponents—and sues pollsters, and drops corruption charges in exchange for immigration cooperation—and no one cares. Hanania once again:

The Trump administration has other officials and their family members who are profiting off their roles in government. David Sacks invested in crypto firms and then became White House crypto czar. He claims to have divested from direct crypto holdings and crypto-focused companies, but still has stakes in firms related to the industry. Steve Witkoff’s son is involved in the Trump family crypto business.

Trump’s pardoned 16 different corrupt politicians. Many of them were his friends. Others were big Trump donors, including Elliott Broidy and Jared Kushner’s dad. It was bad when Joe pardoned Hunter, but it is much worse when Trump pardons a roving band of fraudsters because they paid him money.

There’s enough corruption in the Trump administration that it’s legitimately hard to keep track of. I mean that seriously—going over my old articles on corruption, I’d forgotten half the things he’s done. The same isn’t true of other presidents. Hillary only had a few major scandals. Trump has a hundred in a week.

To praise Trump for his lack of corruption is a bit like praising Cuomo for his respect for boundaries and the elderly. It’s such a preposterous claim that one saying it shows that they have packed their bags and left the real world.

Or take a recent canard that the Democrats, at high levels, are promoters of political violence. This charge has become rampant after Kirk’s murder, and many on the right have used it as a convenient excuse to ignore all moral constraints and be singularly dedicated to opposing the Democrats. And it is certainly true that a disturbingly large number of individual Democrats support political violence.

But support for violence among Democrats is like support for modalism among Christians; you’ll find it among the hoi polloi, but you won’t find it at the highest levels.

When it comes to statements from higher ups, the Democrats are obviously and uncontroversially better on messaging regarding political violence. In the wake of the Kirk shooting, a sizeable portion of serious figures in the Republican party made severely irresponsible public statements.

In contrast, the entire Democratic party rushed to denounce the violence. When Paul Pelosi’s skull was cracked with a hammer, Don Junior mocked him for it. When Melissa Hortman was shot and killed, Trump rushed to attack Tim Walz, and then much of the Republican party spent the next several weeks lying about the political motivations of the perpetrator. Trump has instructed crowds to beat up protestors on quite a number of occasions. In 2019, Trump said:

I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump—I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.

Trump said about Mark Milley “This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.” Imagine if Biden had said that about his political opponents. And as violent radicals stormed the Capitol, Trump sat around for hours doing nothing, not calling them off. Trump himself repeatedly mocked Paul Pelosi’s assault.

Trump’s current press secretary said “The Democrat Party’s main constituency are made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens and violent criminals.” Hillary Clinton said some Trump supporters were baskets of deplorables and never lived it down, but Leavitt can say the Democrats’ main constituency is criminals and terrorists and it barely even makes the news.

When you ask Republicans how Democrat higher-ups have contributed to violence, they generally say that they’ve done so by calling Trump Hitler. But they haven’t called him Hitler. They’ve sometimes expressed concerns (e.g. that Trump said that he wanted the kinds of generals Hitler had) but no Democrats have said that he’s currently a Hitleresque figure. They’ve also expressed concerns that he has fascist tendencies, but that is a far cry from calling for political violence, and it also happens to be true.

Trump HIMSELF has called his opponents fascists repeatedly! Steven Miller has too, and has called for Newsom to be locked up. Trump does more personally to stoke a violent political environment than all the high-ups in the Democratic party combined. Can you imagine that reaction if, for instance, Biden had Tweeted an AI video of him depositing shit on his political opponents??

I can understand being concerned about the rhetoric of some on the left. But what one cannot do—if they are to remain a serious person—is have such concerns without having any about Trump. He is more irresponsible in his rhetoric on the average Tuesday than all major Democrats are in a year.

It will, of course, be said that I am suffering from Trump derangement syndrome. That is always the dodge. But yes, I do believe that Trump is deranged—in terms of corruption, dishonesty, and policies that have left hundreds of thousands of children dying of disease. It’s not irrational to believe someone is deranged when they really are deranged. I also suffer from Stalin derangement syndrome. I think Stalin was deranged!

The core problem with Trump is he’s utterly thoughtless. He doesn’t think carefully about the people killed by his policies—and so destroys hugely lifesaving programs on a whim. He doesn’t spare a thought for the truth when he opens his mouth. And most of all, he doesn’t think about the delicate norms that have kept civilization afloat as he takes childlike swings at whomever gets in his way. Power-hungry buffoons have ruined flourishing societies before. They are perhaps even the primary way that liberal Democracies die.

Trump is the barbarian at the gates, the face of illiberalism, barbarism, and petty cruelty, and exactly the sort of man the founders feared. The fact that he also lies as easily as he breathes, is flagrantly corrupt, and stokes polarization and misconduct with each passing sentence merely overdetermines the case against him.