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The Dangers of Trump's Fact-Free Governance [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-02-01
It is well known that Trump lies at an unprecedented rate. During his first term in office The Washington Post identified over 30,000 lies or misleading statements. Continuing the practice, the current problem is that he makes decisions and pronouncements that are not supported by evidence but may have considerable impact on the lives of others.
A poignant example was that following the tragic collision between an Army Blackhawk helicopter and American Airlines commuter flight AA5677 Trump immediately, and sans evidence, blamed the crash on DEI policies. When challenged about absence of evidence, Trump puerilely quipped it was “common sense.” Alternately he accused the military pilot, and the FAA tower operator. According to the Post, his statements “reflected his instinct to immediately frame major events through his political or ideological lens.” Of course, he also went on to blamed both Obama and Biden for their policies.
It would be impossible to articulate all of the comments and actions Trump has taken that were counterfactual as almost every public utterance he makes contains false information. Consider that at the Laken Riley Act signing, he stated that the US had sent $50M of condoms to Hamas in Gaza that were used to make bombs. In a recent diatribe concerning the BRICS he announced he would place 100% tariffs on Brazil, Russia, China and Spain, the countries of the BRICS. The obvious problem is that the S stands for South Africa not Spain.
Regarding the terrorist attack in New Orleans on New Years Day, Trump immediately blamed on immigrants and open borders. The assailant and ISIS sympathizer, Shamsud Jin Jabbar, was born in Texas and had served in the U, S. Army. While Trump was not yet in office, he was constantly attempting to dominate the news cycle. Facts were irrelevant and he posted on Truth Social, "Our Country is a disaster, a laughing stock all over the World! This is what happens when you have OPEN BORDERS, with weak, ineffective, and virtually nonexistent leadership." Frankly, the laughing stock is Trump and his cronies.
After visiting the scene of the devastating Southern California fires, he claimed the military had gone in to turn on the water in Northern California. They didn’t and after routine maintenance the valves were reopened. Importantly, it had nothing to do with the fires. Trump also blamed Governor Newsom for failing to sign the “Water Restoration Declaration,” a legislation that does not exist. He repeatedly talked about Smelt, a small fish he thought was taking priority over humans. Following Trump’s lead, many “conservatives” attacked the firefighters for being too concerned with DEI and putting the public at risk.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that the US should take control of Greenland. Further he has stated that the people want to become Americans. That is not true, and a recent poll showed that 85 percent of Greenland’s population rejected perverse notion. Similarly, Trump has stated he has the right to take back the Panama Canal because they charge American ships more than other countries and the canal is controlled by the Chinese Government. Nearly every statement Trump has made publicly about the Panama Canal is fundamentally wrong.
Trump’s completely fabricated stories about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio eating thee pets of local (white) citizens became national news and required Governor DeWine to publicly comment. Trump’s intent was to again demonize immigrants, a constant theme of his. He falsely identified the Haitian workers as illegal immigrants when in fact they were both legal and specifically invited to that town and threatened their mass deportation. Even after the story had been thoroughly discredited, Trump had the audacity to repeat the claim during the nationally televised presidential debate last September.
During his opening comments at the signing of the Laken Riley Act Trump, stated he had won the 2024 election by “millions and millions” of votes. In actuality he won by less than three million votes. Voting in America is undoubtedly the most contentious of Trump’s fact-free universe, one that has constantly reverberating consequences. To this date, Trump has not conceded to 2020 election. In 2024 he eked out a plurality of 49.8 percent of the vote. Republicans frequently refer to Trump’s win as “a landslide.” Unfortunately, I have heard some Democrats, and many in the media use the same term. A lead of less than two percent of the ballots is hardly a landslide. Also omitted in the discussion is that over 89 million voters abstained (and at their peril). The comment “that the American people have spoken,” is simply specious. It is also worth noting that extensive voter suppression took place immediately before the 2024 election to the extent it probably swung the election (and the 2016 election).
During Trump’s first administration, while lying was endemic, his downplaying of severity and consequences of Covid-19 are directly attributable to hundreds of thousands of deaths. By February 2020 he was aware that Covid-19 could be transmitted human-to-human in an airborne mode. He told Bob Woodword, but not the American people. He announced that wearing masks was optional and made outrageous false statements such as “It will be gone by Easter.” (2020) “It’s just like the flu,” and many others. He was well aware that many of his MAGA followers took guidance from his temperament and behavior. That led to disastrous consequences as many rejected the vaccine that became available and subsequently died.
The additional topics are ad infinitum. Trump’s counterfactual thoughts on global climate change threaten human existence. He denied knowledge of Project 2025 yet is now implementing it. Withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) while banning the CDC from communicating with WHO is another global threat to humanity. Trump’s proclivity for threatening or imposing tariffs has long exposed his lack of understanding that it is the American consumer, not the foreign country, who pays the increased cost of goods.
There are those suggesting that many of the issues cited are merely distractions. Trump’s intent, it is claimed is to create chaos so that many nefarious actions go unnoticed. Michael Smerconish postulated that raising the DEI issue regarding the plane crash was a strategic move so that his completely unqualified nominees, Kash Patel/Tulsi Gabbard/RFK Jr. for the FBI, DNI, and Health and Human Services respectively, would slip under the public news radar. The timing is certainly suspicious. There is no doubt that chaos is the intent, and it is not for the benefit of the American people. Notably, as Trump sycophants, none of the nominees would say that Biden won the 2020 election.
Words have consequences and facts matter. We have a multitude of examples demonstrating that Trump does not function in our universe of consensus reality. Worse, he makes decisions that affect all of us based on his opinion, not facts. Maybe the original warning was uttered by White House adviser, Kellyanne Conway on January 22, 2017, following inauguration when she first told us about “alternative facts.” A major factor in the 2024 election was the perception that Joe Biden was mentally deficient. Psychology Today noted “over 70,000 health professionals even signed a petition, saying ‘Donald Trump manifests a serious mental illness that renders him psychologically incapable of competently discharging the duties of President of the United States.’” If you examine Trump’s statements on almost any subject, you can determine for yourself that many of his comments and actions are inconsistent with observable facts. It is America’s future in the balance and the danger of fact-free governance.
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