This Weekend's Split Screen Fight to Define Reality
Trump's Fantasy Crashes Into Cold Facts. When Will It Catch Up to Him? [3 min read]
NOTE: I’ll be covering a lot of this in tomorrow’s LIVESTREAM at 2:00 pm EDT with social psychologist/pollster Lauren Goldstein…make sure to subscribe and come join and chat with us!
Donald Trump knows a thing or two about myth making. His entire life is a conman’s fast-talking fantasy of fabulism. Here’s my attempt to summarize his career track in my recent Newsweek article:
He took an initial $413 million (in 2018 dollars) inheritance from his father and invested it in a string of doomed enterprises. He was such a bad businessman that he went bankrupt six times. By 2021, Trump would have actually been worth more if he had never touched his dad's money and just let it ride in the stock market.
But like Musk, Trump's one clear talent is that he is a fantastic hype man for his own story. On the verge of financial ruin, he was saved by re-selling his myth via The Apprentice. And then Trump did it again two decades later, when in 2024 he was in real danger of getting wiped out by almost $500 million in legal penalties. He was pulled out of the danger zone by the meme stock-like explosion of Truth Social.
He knows that he has to project success, dominance, adulation, and above all, wealth at all times…no matter what the underlying truth is, or how obvious the artifice is. It is the only way to keep the con going.
That’s why his first public act in 2017 was to send the hapless Sean Spicer in front of cameras to claim that there were historic crowds at his inauguration, a lie so obviously hollow that he had to send Kellyanne Conway slinking out a few minutes later to describe the newfound discovery of “alternative facts.”
That’s why the runup to Trump’s big military parade—ostensibly to celebrate the 250th birthday of the US army but actually just to make Trump look powerful—was a Potemkin village speech at Fort Bragg that Leni Riefenstahl couldn’t have designed better.
Look at how Military.com described it:
Internal 82nd Airborne Division communications reviewed by Military.com reveal a tightly orchestrated effort to curate the optics of Trump's recent visit, including handpicking soldiers for the audience based on political leanings and physical appearance. The troops ultimately selected to be behind Trump and visible to the cameras were almost exclusively male. One unit-level message bluntly said "no fat soldiers."
Service officials declined to comment when asked about the extent to which troops were screened, whether soldiers displaying partisan cheers on television -- a violation of long-standing Pentagon rules -- would be disciplined or if soldiers who objected to participating in the event, citing disagreements with the administration, would be disciplined or admonished in any way.
No, there’s nothing creepy at all about selecting square-jawed white fanboys to scream behind you as you trash your enemies and promote your military parade. And of course, there was the parade itself: a desultory affair where tanks rumbled down increasingly potholed streets, to tiny crowds that left early (not that that stopped White House spokesman Steven Cheung from laughably claiming that 250,000 people showed up).
But nothing could stop the contrast to the millions — 5 million at least, possibly double that — who showed up around the country to protest him in the “No Kings” demonstrations. Nothing, that is, except for the collective media yawn. As veteran journalist
put it:One of the largest protests in American history occurred over the weekend, and it was overwhelmingly peaceful. The national news media covered the “No Kings” rallies and marches dutifully, but not particularly loudly. The protests were mostly useful to the media as visuals – big crowds, clever signs, cute costumes. What was disappointing to me was how quickly the “No Kings” protest story went away. By Sunday, it was barely mentioned on the homepages of many major news websites. Where were the “follow” stories about what 2,000 protests in 50 states might mean for Trump's public support and whether the resistance is gaining traction? What about a story on the non-confrontational tactics of the protest organizers? Maybe those are coming soon, but I haven’t seen them yet.
And yet, this kind of contrast is happening more often, and more starkly. The fantasy is crashing into reality. Trump’s lifelong strategy has been to sprint ahead of it, double down on the inventions, distract, dance, create new outrages to divert attention, and overall try to brazen his way through. And too often, it’s worked.
But as his tariffs collide with economic reality—and his fantasy of winning trade negotiations against competitors (China) and friends (European nations) spirals out; as prices rise and the economy begins to slow (both have happened in the past two weeks); as his tales of easy wins in global conflicts in Iran, Gaza, and Ukraine become more transparently empty; as his deportation push gets smacked down by more courts and exposed as spit-and-sealing-wax performance cruelty; as the truth about his Medicaid cuts to pay for billionaire tax cuts becomes unavoidable…the big question remains.
Is now the time, finally, when it will all catch up to him?