👉After Trump’s 99-minute address to Congress in March 2025, Jimmy Kimmel opened by noting it was longer than The Lion King— “and had twice as much lyin’ in it.”
He added that Trump told so many falsehoods that “three fact checkers died adding it up.”
In the best of times, most Americans take the word of politicians with a certain amount of healthy skepticism.
We aren’t living in the best of times.
We are, as the pundits have said, living in a post-truth world.
And I’m convinced that it’s not an accident; I think it’s part of a relentlessly executed plan.
Keeping a population uninformed or misinformed is a core, recurring feature of authoritarian rule.
Because control over what people know shapes what they believe is possible, legitimate, or worth resisting.
Monopolizing media — state control or ownership of TV, radio, and press so that only approved narratives circulate.
Flooding the zone — producing so much contradictory, low-quality information that people give up trying to distinguish truth from fiction and disengage or default to trusting the regime.
Isolating the population — restricting outside news, foreign press, and internet access so alternative narratives can’t compete.
Repetition of simple narratives — repeating a small set of slogans or claims until they feel self-evidently true, regardless of accuracy.
Discrediting independent sources — branding journalists, academics, and critics as enemies, traitors, or liars to preempt scrutiny.
Manufacturing uncertainty — rather than always denying facts outright, seeding enough doubt that people conclude “no one really knows” and stop acting on any version of events.
Otherwise known as the “Firehose of Falsehood” Theory — holds that bombarding people with a high volume of rapid, contradictory lies is more effective at disorienting and paralyzing them than telling one consistent lie, since it overwhelms people’s ability to fact-check and leaves them uncertain what to believe or act on.
David Brooks writes that,
“Lying has become the language of the state.”
Claimed he “inherited the worst inflation in the history of our country” — false; inflation was 3.0% when he took office in January 2025, and climbed to 3.8% by April 2026 on his own watch.
Claimed inflation was around 1.6% in the months before the Iran war — the actual rate was 2.4%.
Claimed his tax bill was the largest tax cut in American history — in reality, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office scored it as adding roughly $3.4 trillion to the national debt over a decade, and the Tax Foundation found that the tariffs he imposed in the same period offset much of the relief for ordinary households.
Claimed drug prices had dropped “300 to 600 percent” under his “most favored nation” policy — a reduction greater than 100% is mathematically impossible.
Claimed the U.S. has “$19.2 trillion” in domestic investment from “one year” of his presidency — a figure no independent analysis supports.
Claimed gas was as low as $1.99 a gallon in some states — AAA’s average was $2.82, with the cheapest state (Oklahoma) at $2.31.
Claimed factory construction was “up 41%” under him — FactCheck.org found it has actually declined on his watch; the surge he credits himself with occurred under Biden.
Said his bill didn’t touch Medicaid — independent analyses project it will cut Medicaid spending by over $900 billion and leave roughly 10 million more people uninsured, about 7.5 million of them from Medicaid and CHIP cuts alone.
2025 was the worst year for job creation since 2020 — and the slowest outside a recession since 2003. Initially reported at 584,000 jobs added, the total was later revised down to roughly 181,000, down from 2+ million in each of 2023 and 2024.
Claimed immigrants under Biden “poured in by the millions... from prisons, from mental institutions” and were “murderers” — no evidence supports this. A National Institute of Justice study of Texas arrest records found undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born citizens for violent and drug crimes, and one-quarter the rate for property crimes.
Claimed federal deployments to D.C., Chicago, Memphis, and Minneapolis caused local crime to plummet — crime statisticians note those cities’ declines began years before the deployments and simply continued existing trends.
Claimed Washington, D.C. had gone a stretch with zero murders — police data showed killings continued.
Claimed the June 2025 U.S. and Israeli strikes “totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear sites — both the IAEA and U.S. intelligence assessments said the program was damaged and set back, but not destroyed; Iran’s enriched-uranium stockpile remains unaccounted for.
Claimed to have ended multiple foreign conflicts — fighting resumed in some cases after his declared ceasefires.
Claimed Iran was on the verge of ICBMs that could hit the U.S. “soon” — U.S. intelligence puts viable ICBM capability nearly a decade away.
Claimed the war with Iran was effectively over — a CNN tally found he made some version of this claim at least 38 times, and the conflict continued.
Claimed the ballroom construction “won’t interfere with the current building” and would be “near it but not touching it” — the entire East Wing, including the East Colonnade, was demolished. A federal judge remarked that calling the demolition a mere “alteration” would require “a brazen reading of the English language.”
Claimed the ballroom would cost around $200 million, paid entirely by private donors “at no cost to taxpayers” — internal contractor documents show the price has climbed to $600 million, with more than half expected to come from taxpayers.
Claimed the project didn’t require congressional approval — a federal judge halted construction, finding no statute gives the president authority to build it.
Awarded the work through a no-bid contract worth up to $500 million, routed through the Executive Residence — an office exempt from the competitive-bidding rules that normally govern federal projects.
Blamed “vandalism” for the pool’s peeling paint and returning algae just weeks after a roughly $14 million repainting, claiming people used “chemicals” to sabotage the work and committed “very serious crimes.”
Accused ABC reporter Jonathan Karl of “trying to rip the rubber off the surface” — video showed Karl lifting an already-peeling flap of paint, not damaging intact material.
A three-time Olympian, David Hearn, was arrested for touching the peeling paint and denied damaging anything; experts say the failure likely reflects a polyurea application problem rather than sabotage, though the administration maintains its vandalism claim.
The repainting itself was done through a no-bid contract awarded to a firm with no prior federal work that Trump said had handled pools at one of his golf clubs.
The board’s December 2025 vote renaming it the “Trump-Kennedy Center” was treated as settled — but only Congress has the authority to rename it. A federal judge ruled the renaming unlawful, and crews scraped Trump’s name off the building in June 2026.
Continued claiming he won the 2020 election — disproven by recounts, audits, and dozens of failed court challenges.
(A general pattern fact-checkers note: many of these aren’t one-off errors but claims repeated for months even after being corrected, particularly on inflation, crime statistics, and Iran.)
Let’s be clear:
If we don’t trust our government, we don’t trust democracy.
56% of us don’t trust the president.
86% don’t trust Congress.
61% don’t trust the Supreme Court.
70% of us think the country’s headed in the wrong direction.
Okay, we’ve made a lot of mistakes, but to me, one thing those numbers say is that we’ve been electing the wrong people for way too long.
Here is the 👉 Instagram video 👈 companion to this article
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.