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When Donald Trump told the world last week that he’d been indicted by federal prosecutors, the former president appeared to be executing a carefully crafted public relations strategy. The Republican was breaking the news on his own terms, at a time of his choosing, with the precise message he wanted Americans to hear.
There was, however, one glaring problem: Trump apparently couldn’t think of a credible defense. He instead told several obvious lies, mischaracterized federal law, and generally struggled to say anything that might persuade anyone who wasn’t already in his corner.
Last night, he did it again. As a New York Times fact-check piece summarized:
Hours after pleading not guilty in a federal court in Miami to charges related to his handling of classified documents, former President Donald J. Trump defended his conduct on Tuesday with a string of familiar falsehoods. Appearing at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., Mr. Trump drew misleading comparisons to other political figures, misconstrued the classification process and leveled inaccurate attacks at officials.
To be sure, there were several notable angles to the Republican’s remarks. He felt sorry for himself. He presented himself as a victim. He vowed retribution. As my MSNBC colleague Hayes Brown explained well, he pretended he’s not responsible for creating this mess.
But all the while, Trump also lied uncontrollably — about the Presidential Records Act, about his presidential predecessors, about President Joe Biden’s records, about Hillary Clinton’s emails, and even about specific elements of his indictment.
To be sure, this wasn’t exactly surprising. The former president is a prolific liar, and the fact that he peddled transparent nonsense during a speech no doubt seems like a classic example of a dog-bites-man story.
But the broader context matters. This scandal has been ongoing since early last year, and Trump and his team have known about the possibility of this indictment for weeks, if not months. Once prosecutors alerted the former president and his team to the charges, they had ample time to come up with their strongest arguments and present their most compelling defense to the public.
What Trump made clear last night — what he keeps making clear as the legal process unfolds — is that he simply can’t come up with anything real. The rhetorical quiver has no reality-based arrows.
If the Republican were innocent — if, as he declared last night, he hadn’t done “anything wrong” — the truth would be good enough. The fact that Trump isn’t telling the truth should be of interest to those who keep going out on limbs to defend him in the face of multiple felony counts.
As for the coming weeks, this dynamic is all but certain to get worse.
About a year ago, Trump headlined a rally and made an offhand, unscripted comment that was more important than he probably intended. Offering a peek into his approach to reality, the Republican told his followers, “If you say it enough and keep saying it, they’ll start to believe you.”
A few days later, Trump reiterated the thought, declaring, “If you say it long enough, hard enough, often enough, people will start to believe it.”
As we discussed soon after, it was a handy encapsulation that summarized the former president’s approach to reality: People will believe lies just so long as those peddling the lies are relentless in promoting the falsehoods. Through repetition and rhetorical brute force, many can be made to believe nonsense. Facts can be brought to heel through shock-and-awe assaults.
Billy Bush, to whom Trump bragged about sexual assault during the infamous “Access Hollywood” recording, wrote a 2017 piece for The New York Times in which he recalled talking to Trump about how he inflated the ratings of his reality television show. “People will just believe you,” the future president told Bush. “You just tell them and they believe you.”
Trump’s business isn’t politics, it’s alternate reality manufacturing — and he’s the chief engineer.