Mick Clifford: The Donald living the lie in the Trump world

President Donald Trump signs an executive order relating to cryptocurrency in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. Picture: AP Photo/Ben Curtis

And so, the chaos begins. Last Monday Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 47th president of the United States. This role is still largely cast as leader of the free world. To that extent, the free world might want to hide under a rock for the next four years.

A hint of the pathology of Trump was evident in one of the flurry of executive orders he issued within hours of taking office. The headlines captured his orders on targeting illegal immigrants, removing state security from personnel he deems his enemies, and, particularly, pardoning the violent offenders from January 6. Another, lesser observed, order really sums up the man, his state of mind, and how he intends to use power.

The order is entitled ‘Ending The Weaponisation of the Federal Government’. Its preamble sets out what the order is about. “The American people have witnessed the previous administration engage in a systematic campaign against its perceived political opponents, weaponising the legal force of numerous Federal law enforcement agencies and the Intelligence Community against those perceived political opponents in the form of investigations, prosecutions, civil enforcement actions, and other related actions,” it reads. 

This is set out as an established fact and the basis for action to be taken, as if what was at issue was a natural disaster, or the outcome of a criminal trial. Quite obviously, Trump sees himself as the main ‘political opponent’ against whom the power of the state was directed.

The order goes on: “These actions appear oriented more toward inflicting political pain than toward pursuing actual justice or legitimate governmental objectives.  Many of these activities appear to be inconsistent with the Constitution and/or the laws of the United States, including those activities directed at parents protesting at school board meetings, Americans who spoke out against the previous administration’s actions, and other Americans who were simply exercising constitutionally protected rights.” 

The preamble reads like an extended Trump tweet. Except this isn’t a candidate or even a president letting off steam on social media. It’s the president using the power vested in him to direct government employees to take action in the interests of the country. The order goes on to direct that evidence must be found to show how this weaponisation has occurred which would go towards criminal prosecutions.

This is Trump world. There is no evidence of weaponisation of the Federal government. He was the subject of a number of criminal charges, all based on evidence. He was found guilty of one of those and is now a convicted felon. A special prosecutor’s report issued the week before his inauguration stated that he, in all likelihood, would have been convicted of offences related to his attempt to overturn the 2020 election if he hadn’t been re-elected last November. In other circumstances — in other democratic countries — he would now be facing the real possibility of a lengthy prison sentence. 

In Trump world, none of this was attributable to a functioning criminal justice system, but was instead used corruptly by the Biden administration to go after him. There is not a scintilla of objective evidence to back this up

In Trump world he has been, as he stated in his inaugural speech, “tested and challenged more than any president”.

All his perceived enemies, from Joe Biden to independent — and even Republican appointed — judges right down to the man who attempted to assassinate him, worked in tandem to stop him. “Those who wish to stop our cause have tried to take my freedom and indeed take my life”.

In Trump world, he is now president by divine intervention following the assassination attempt last July. ”I felt then and believe even more so now that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.” This coming from a person of deep religious faith would be eye opening. Trump has no religion yet in his world he now walks on water.

A different reality

The American historian Timothy Snyder has pointed out that Trump does not inhabit the world as most people do. “He inhabits a completely different mental world,” according to Snyder. “He inhabits it gracefully. He is not a traditional person where he has had to deal with life around him. Where he has been successful is as a character on television. He has not been a successful businessman but he has played a successful businessman on television.

“He understands not the rules of reality but the rules of fiction. So for him there is no such thing as lying because there is no such thing that is the truth.” 

This explains why in Trump world he has been persecuted, how he actually won the 2020 election despite the absence of any evidence, how his political comeback has been so unlikely it must be an act of God.

In this milieu, his every act is designed to make his fiction look better. There are no real world consequences for his actions. All that matters is that he retains the ratings among his base, his “numbers” in polling stay strong and his “enemies” must be defeated, as if everything was part of a TV game show.

So it is that January 6 was not an insurrection, but a “day of love” as he calls it. Those who violently attacked the seat of government and the police guarding it were not prosecuted by the criminal justice system but are “hostages”. On Monday evening Trump issued pardons to over 1500 people convicted of roles in the insurrection, some of whom are extremely violent offenders. Their convictions and sentences, he says, were “unfair”. A whole slew of judges thus must have acted in concert to hand down unfair sentences.

Snyder posits that in Trump world its “just my opinion and your opinion and as I’m the president and I have the media behind me it’s mine that matters.” 

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At his side last Monday were the biggest media influencers in the world, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos. They have all, in their own way, inferred they are perfectly happy to disseminate Trump’s fiction. And the overall theme of the Trump’s fiction is that he is a person of superhuman powers, the greatest ever to wear the mantle of president and he is leading his people out of perdition by taking on and defeating the dark state, the “radical left”, anybody who point out that this emperor really has no clothes.

There are people who live in their own world, usually attracting the label “Walter Mitty” after an acclaimed short story. Such individuals, for any number of reasons, are removed from life as we know it. Occasionally through history, megalomaniacal dictators, who can indulge their wildest fantasies, have fallen into this category. Trump, however, is the first leader of the world’s largest and — for now anyway — most powerful democracy to display such a personality. By his own account he is, “a very stable genius”.

Whether America and all it purports to represent can outlive this individual will be the story of the coming years. We all have an interest in hoping that it does.