Will Trump's "war on facts" eventually catch up with him?

[spidermike007]

It would appear to many of us that Trump is utterly desperate to control the narrative regardless of the facts, and regardless of where the economy is. Many economists warned that there will be consequences for his reckless and indecisive tariffs, and now that they're coming home to roost he just can't seem to wrap his mind around the actual reality his chaos has caused, and possible failure of his policies. 

 

Mr. Trump’s war on facts reached new heights on Friday when he angrily fired the Labor Department official in charge of compiling statistics on employment in America because he did not like the latest jobs report showing that the economy isn’t doing as well as he claims it is. Mr. Trump declared that her numbers were “phony.” His proof? It was “my opinion.” And the story he told supposedly proving she was politically biased? It had no basis in fact itself.

 

Both Democrats and Republicans criticized the move, including Mr. Trump’s labor statistics chief in his first term, William W. Beach, who wrote on social media that it was “totally groundless” and “sets a dangerous precedent.”

 

Mr. Trump has never been especially wedded to facts, routinely making up his own numbers, repeating falsehoods and conspiracy theories even after they are debunked and denigrating the very concept of independent fact-checking. But his efforts since reclaiming the White House to make the rest of government adopt his versions of the truth have gone further than in his first term and increasingly remind scholars of the way authoritarian leaders in other countries have sought to control information.

 

“Democracy can’t realistically exist without reliable epistemic infrastructure,” said Michael Patrick Lynch, author of the recently published “On Truth in Politics” and a professor at the University of Connecticut.

“Anti-democratic, authoritarian leaders know this,” he said. “That is why they will seize every opportunity to control sources of information. 

 

His fast-and-loose approach to numbers and facts finally caught up with him last year when he was found liable for fraud in a civil case in which a judge found that he used his annual financial statements to defraud lenders and ordered him to pay what has now exceeded $500 million with interest. Mr. Trump has appealed the ruling.

 

Mr. Trump and his allies assailed the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office for projecting that his tax and spending legislation would add trillions of dollars to the national debt and offered his own numbers instead.

 

“I predict we will do 3, 4, or even 5 times the amount they purposefully ‘allotted’ to us,” he said, referring to growth expected to be stimulated by tax cuts, which he insisted would “cost us no money.” Mr. Trump called the budget office “Democrat inspired and ‘controlled,’” even though it is nonpartisan and Republicans have majorities in both chambers of Congress.

 

“It’s a post-factual world that Trump is looking for, and he’s got these sycophants working for him that don’t challenge him on facts,” said Barbara Comstock, a former Republican congresswoman from Virginia.

But firing the messenger, she said, will not make the economy any better. “The reality is the economy is worse, and he can’t keep saying it’s better,” she said. “Joe Biden learned that; people still experience the experience they have, no matter how much” you tell them otherwise.

 

Partial excerpts from a NY Times article by Peter Baker. 

[WayWokeWhiteGuy]

tRump’s MAGA fascist cult does not care how many lies he tells.

[jts-khorat]

The USA has a big economy and a system with many checks and balances.

 

The economy is already for decades in the process of failing (debt load). Eroding all checks and balances takes time.

 

But when the system fails, it will be sudden, catastrophic and likely unfixable by political means (a bit like the USSR, only worse, as a more complex system).

 

Will this all catch up with Trump personally? As much as one hopes, not all bad people get their deserved comeuppance, he might simply be too old and frail to get caught out in time.