There may be maybe nobody on this planet higher at stretching and bending the reality to suit his narrative than Donald Trump. That is the person, in any case, whose first time period in workplace gave us the phrase “various info.”
However these days, Trump’s reality contortions have reached a breaking level, a lot in order that even he appears to battle to maintain his story straight.
Nowhere is that this extra apparent than on the problem of tariffs. Throughout a Cupboard assembly Wednesday, Trump had a mask-slip moment when he acknowledged that his commerce conflict would probably enhance product costs in the US. “Perhaps the kids could have two dolls as a substitute of 30 dolls. So perhaps the 2 dolls will value a pair bucks greater than they might usually,” Trump mentioned.
Say what you need about Marie Antoinette, however a minimum of “allow them to eat cake” was snappy.
However simply as he gave the impression to be proudly owning the influence tariffs could have in driving prices upward—exactly the other of his Make America Affordable Again promise—Trump tried in charge the flagging financial numbers on former President Joe Biden. “That is Biden’s Inventory Market, not Trump’s,” he wrote on Reality Social.
It was the literal flip aspect of a January 2024 post during which Trump boasted, “THIS IS THE TRUMP STOCK MARKET,” because the market soared to file highs underneath Biden. For these maintaining observe at residence: This implies it is the “Trump inventory market” when Biden’s president and the financial system’s rising and the “Biden inventory market” when Trump’s president and it is tanking. Nonetheless with us? Nice.
Trump’s outburst on Wednesday got here after the Commerce Department announced that the US GDP shrunk 0.3% throughout Trump’s first three months in workplace. That dip, the Bureau of Economic Analysis wrote, “primarily mirrored a rise in imports.” In actual fact, the primary quarter for 2025 noticed the biggest import surge for the reason that pandemic, as firms scrambled to usher in foreign-made items earlier than Trump’s tariffs set in. In contrast, over the last three months of Biden’s presidency, GDP grew 2.4%.
In his put up on Reality Social, Trump tried to say that after tariffs are in place and corporations deliver manufacturing to the US, the state of the US financial system will flip round. However economists, who predicted the scenario would solely worsen by the tip of the 12 months, aren’t shopping for it.
Neither, it seems, are voters.
Trump’s doublespeak is so apparent that simply 37% of US adults now approve of his dealing with of the financial system, in response to a current Reuters/Ipsos ballot. Trump has sought to form this to suit his narrative of utter triumph too, writing on Reality Social this week, “The Polls from the Faux Information are, just like the Information itself, FAKE! We’re doing GREAT, higher than ever earlier than.”
It’s, frankly, getting just a little determined. Trump is shedding his grip on the story he’s all the time managed greatest—his personal. His blended messages on tariffs, contradictory financial claims, and more and more apparent makes an attempt to deflect blame have created narrative whiplash. This blatant mythmaking within the face of all proof on the contrary is, in fact, ripped from the authoritarian playbook. Is it any marvel that, in response to one new poll, greater than half of all People now view him as a “harmful dictator?”
