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OPINION

‘Fact Checking His Delusions’: Trump’s Falsehoods May Not Be Lies Anymore, Critics Warn

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Suggesting there is an actual “method to the madness,” as the saying goes, in April The New York Times published “The Method Behind Trump’s Mistruths,” implying the falsehoods and lies Donald Trump tells almost if not daily are part of some coherent and intentional plan.

The Times’ Angelo Fichera offered explanations for why Trump lies with tremendous frequency. A few excerpts: “He grossly distorts his opponents’ records and proposals to make them sound unreasonable,” “He exaggerates and twists the facts to make his record sound better than it is,” “He relies on both well-worn and fresh claims of election rigging to suggest he can lose only if his opponents cheat,” and “He makes unverifiable claims about what the world would have been like had he secured a second term.”

Tuesday night, CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale, who started listening to or reading Trump’s every public statement during the 2016 election cycle, debunked 30 of the ex-president’s falsehoods and lies at his Wisconsin rally earlier that day. It took him just three minutes:

Barb McQuade, the well-known MSNBC/NBC News legal analyst, professor of law, and former U.S. Attorney responded to the CNN video: “The lies have become a tribal pose. Some Trump supporters believe his lies. Others don’t care. It is all about allegiance to the tribe over truth.”

Sarah Longwell, the executive director of the Republican Accountability Project and publisher of The Bulwark, earlier this year in The Atlantic wrote: “Trump Supporters Explain Why They Believe the Big Lie.”

READ MORE: Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Desperate Scramble to Stop Steve Bannon From Going to Prison

“For many of Trump’s voters, the belief that the election was stolen is not a fully formed thought. It’s more of an attitude, or a tribal pose,” she added.

John Stoehr, editor of the Editorial Board, said of Dale’s fact-checking, “What interesting here is Dan Dale isn’t just fact checking Trump’s lies. He’s fact checking his delusions. More of that would highlight his habitual incoherence.”

Trump’s public remarks, in interviews and on stage at rallies, do seem to have taken a turn. Some critics, like Stoehr, have pointed out that at times the criminally-convicted ex-president’s words aren’t just false, they don’t make sense.

Journalist Aaron Rupar, founder of Public Notice, has watched and recorded countless hours of Trump’s remarks.

In this clip from just a few weeks ago, he says Trump was “not coherent.”

This video from earlier this month got a lot of attention, with Trump talking about shark attacks, and electrocution from boats.

The Washington Post’s Philip Bump offered one reason why Trump might have injected sharks and electric-powered boats into a campaign speech, despite it being to a crowd in landlocked Nevada: Trump’s New York criminal trial was “centered on Stormy Daniels,” who “explained that one of their encounters overlapped with the Discovery Channel’s ‘Shark Week’ programming. As the two sat in Trump’s hotel room, he volunteered how much he hated sharks and wished they all would die.”

But that semi-logical divining still does not explain Trump’s “cognitive questions” – perhaps best exposed most recently by the author of a new book on Trump, “Apprentice in Wonderland.”

READ MORE: Republican Who Declared His State a ‘2nd Amendment Sanctuary’ Blocks Senate Bump Stock Ban

“Ramin Setoodeh, who interviewed Trump six times after he left office in 2021, told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that there were points during those sessions when Trump seemed to think he still had some presidential powers,” HuffPost reports.

Saying he is the “journalist who spent the most time” with Trump, post-election, Setoodeh notes, “Donald Trump had severe memory issues.”

And while the anecdotes are disturbing, Setoodeh’s summation is far worse: “there was some cognitive questions about where he was and what he was thinking and he would he would, from time to time become confused.”

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins told Setoodeh, “you talked about his memory, you wrote that, you know, on some days I have the feeling he has no idea who he’s even talking to that he actually forgot, or didn’t remember that the two of you had spoken at your first sit down interview.”

Setoodeh responded, “right.”

It’s not just telling the truth Trump has a problem with, it’s his actual speech.

On Tuesday Raw Story‘s Sarah K. Burris reported on several verbal stumbles Trump made during his Wisconsin rally.

Trump, she wrote, “struggled to remember ABC News host George Stephanopoulos’ name, making a couple of efforts to pronounce it: ‘George Stopalopodis … George Stopodiaiiee.’ ”

“Trump mispronounced citizenship by calling it ‘citizensip.’ ”

“‘Joe Biden is forming granting mass–thinkit,’ Trump meandered in a section of the speech, with an excerpt of the video quickly spreading online.”

Back in March, Salon‘s senior politics writer Chauncey DeVega wrote: “In a recent conversation with Dr. John Gartner, a prominent psychologist and contributor to the bestselling book ‘The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President,’ the former faculty member at Johns Hopkins University told me that based on Trump’s speech, memory, recall, and other behavior, he appears to be ‘hypomanic’ and cognitively deteriorating at a rapid rate.”

DeVega quotes Gartner saying, “in my opinion, Donald Trump is dangerously demented.”

“I had to speak out now because the 2024 election might turn on this issue of who is cognitively capable: Biden or Trump? It’s a major issue that will affect some people’s votes,” Gartner said. “Not enough people are sounding the alarm, that based on his behavior, and in my opinion, Donald Trump is dangerously demented. In fact, we are seeing the opposite among too many in the news media, the political leaders and among the public. There is also this focus on Biden’s gaffes or other things that are well within the normal limits of aging. By comparison, Trump appears to be showing gross signs of dementia. This is a tale of two brains. Biden’s brain is aging. Trump’s brain is dementing.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: Democrats Have One Way to Correct Corruption of Justices Thomas and Alito: Expert

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OPINION

‘Maoist’ ‘Soviet’ ‘Communist’: As Trumpism 2.0 Takes Shape, Experts Endeavor to Define It

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2 months ago

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May 5, 2025

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In the 105 days since Donald Trump began his second term as President, political observers and experts have been working to define and explain what Trumpism 2.0 is—and what it is not.

For some, the “not” is obvious. Critics suggest the United States is no longer a fully functioning democracy, but a nation sliding toward authoritarianism. Under Trump, they say, this is not a country growing stronger—or moving toward a brighter future.

That may explain the increasingly stark language used by his critics. One likened his recent televised Cabinet meeting to “something that frankly I would’ve expected out of North Korea.” Another said, “I didn’t sign up to live in the f—— Soviet Union,” in response to Trump’s claim that “a beautiful baby girl that’s 11 years old” doesn’t need 30 dolls or 250 pencils. “They can have three dolls or four dolls… they can have five” pencils. Others argue that Trumpism is now “primarily about the acquisition of power—power for its own sake.”

Political observers, experts, scholars, and critics are increasingly focused on signs of Trumpism’s extremism, authoritarianism, fascistic demagoguery, and even its apparent support for movements some say verge on fascism itself.

The current Trump administration “is supportive of a German political party that is the direct successor to National Socialism”—Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party—national security attorney Mark Zaid warned on Sunday. He appeared to be referring to Alternative for Germany (AfD), which German authorities have officially designated a “right-wing extremist endeavor.” Germany’s state media outlet, DW, recently published a video titled: “How much of a neo-Nazi party is the German AfD?”

READ MORE: ‘What Drunk on Power Looks Like’: Trump Goes on Attack in Wild Rants

The Atlantic’s James Surowiecki, author of “The Wisdom of Crowds,” on Monday pointed to a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Trump Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Surowiecki remarked: “Trump says he will set the prices for all imported goods. He tells us we’ll have 5 pencils and like it. Now we have the Treasury Secretary talking about preventing the ‘spiritual degradation of the working class.’ Trumpism is becoming perversely, farcically Maoist.”

Noah Smith, the former Bloomberg opinion columnist, made that “Soviet Union” remark, above, in response to Trump’s comments to NBC News “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker in an interview that aired on Sunday—the same comments that Surowiecki cited.

Those remarks—Trump defending his tariff war and the expected results, namely, higher prices and fewer available goods—appear to have hit a nerve.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, now a Professor of Political Science at Stanford, added: “This is just incredible — a billionaire telling working people they need to reduce their consumption. This is the opposite of the free market. Sounds a lot like communism to me. Soviet leaders also dictated to consumers their limited choices.”

He also noted: “Soviet communist leaders also dictated the consumption patterns of their citizens.”

“Enjoy MAGA Maoism,” remarked political writer and former congressional speechwriter Rotimi Adeoye, also commenting on Trump’s “dolls and pencils” utterance. And Adeoye pointed to his recent Washington Post piece:

“What we’re seeing is a kind of MAGA Maoism, remixed for the algorithm age. Like the Chinese Cultural Revolution, it glorifies physical labor as moral purification, only now the purification is from the supposed “wokeness” of desk work, filtered through TikTok, X and Twitch. It’s not about creating jobs. It’s about creating vibes: strong men doing hard things, reshared until they become ideology.”

Professor of Political Science Robert E. Kelly noted that “MAGA loves to call its opponents ‘communists,’ but this is literally a neo-Marxist critique of consumerism.”

“The Department of Central Planning and Child Rearing has figured out the optimal number of dolls and pencils each child should have to make beautiful Republic,” snarked Professor of Economics and Public Policy, Justin Wolfers.

And The Atlantic’s David Frum, quipped: “One serving per person, no second helpings, until we have won the great patriotic war against Chinese pencil exporters.”

Frum added: “Second-term Trump messages: ‘America’s over-indulged 11 year old girls own too many pencils.’ And also: ‘I’m not sure whether president needs to obey the Constitution.'”

READ MORE: ‘Absolutely No Clue’: Trump Roasted Over Unique Declaration of Independence Interpretation

CNN senior reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere on Sunday noted: “In the space of 48 hours, the President of the United States has tweeted an image of himself as the new pope, said he doesn’t know if he has to abide by the Constitution, cited multiple completely false statistics, and announced that he wants to reopen a prison closed in 1963.”

Trump’s comment about his duty to uphold the Constitution—”I don’t know“—drew tremendous anger.

“The thing is that he’s being honest here,” Surowiecki observed. “He doesn’t know, because he’s totally incurious, doesn’t care about policy other than tariffs, and doesn’t have any interest in or knowledge of American constitutional law.”

Then there is the latest theater of Trump’s tariff war: the film industry.

The President of the United States has decided that any film “produced” outside of the U.S. will also be subjected to his tariffs.

“The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death,” Trump claimed. “Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated. This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda! Therefore, I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands. WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”

Professor Wolfers sounded the alarm.

“Given that this White House leaks about everything,” Wolfers, who is frequently seen on cable news, wrote, “and there was no chatter about movie tariffs, it seems likely that policy reshaping the lives of millions of Americans was made by an old man sitting alone in a room with a remote in his left hand, aided by no expert advice.”

“The party of small government would like you to watch fewer foreign films,” he also snarked.

And calling it “a very dangerous escalation,” Wolfers noted: “Tariffs have not traditionally been applied to services, and the United States is a massive net exporter of services. We would be extremely vulnerable to any service-based retaliation.”

Self-described “Tech policy wonk” Michael Nelson, formerly of Georgetown University, labeled Trump’s film tariffs “Deranged. #EconomicSuicide.”

Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA), who made the “North Korea” comparison above, has repeatedly warned about what he sees as corruption in the Trump administration.

“It seems like ages ago that Donald Trump turned the South Lawn into a car showroom to boost the profits of Elon Musk’s sputtering Tesla business. But it was just over a month ago. That’s the kind of daily, open corruption that’s just another day in this administration,” Senator Warner wrote on Friday.

Earlier last week, he summed up his thoughts on the Trump administration: “Corruption in plain sight and tanking the economy. This is what the Trump administration has been all about.”

Some, like The New York Times’ conservative opinion writer David Brooks, say simply that Trumpism is all about power.

Trumpism, Brooks wrote, “is primarily about the acquisition of power — power for its own sake. It is a multifront assault to make the earth a playground for ruthless men, so of course any institutions that might restrain power must be weakened or destroyed. Trumpism is about ego, appetite and acquisitiveness and is driven by a primal aversion to the higher elements of the human spirit — learning, compassion, scientific wonder, the pursuit of justice.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: He Wanted Hulk Hogan to Run for Senate — Now Scott Jennings Thinks He May Meet That Bar

 

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He Wanted Hulk Hogan to Run for Senate — Now Scott Jennings Thinks He May Meet That Bar

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2 months ago

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May 2, 2025

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CNN opinion contributor Scott Jennings, who this week appeared onstage at a Trump rally, says he would be all in if President Donald Trump asked him to run for U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky seat. Jennings, a vocal Trump supporter, previously floated professional wrestler Hulk Hogan as a replacement for outgoing Senator Marco Rubio.

“If Marco Rubio does in fact become Secretary of State,” Jennings said on CNN last November, “we’re gonna need a new senator from the state of Florida. And we need someone with Rubio’s national security credentials. Now, there’s one Floridian who can do it. He stood up to the Russians and the Iranians in the 1980s when he defeated the Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkov, two of America’s most lethal foes. He is a real American. He fights for the rights of every man. He knows that courage is the thing that keeps us free. Ladies and gentlemen, I announce—Ron DeSantis, get on it—Hulk Hogan for U.S. Senate.”

Jennings has been called a “supervillain” and “cable TV’s ubiquitous MAGA Man of the Moment,” by The Daily Beast. His job on the cable TV network appears to be to start fights—and finish them—in defense of President Trump.

READ MORE: ‘What Drunk on Power Looks Like’: Trump Goes on Attack in Wild Rants

That favor may now be returned.

“If the president wants me, I’ll run,” Jennings reportedly has said, according to The Daily Beast. “If he wants somebody else, I’ll support that candidate.”

Jennings may be Trump’s latest choice to fill a congressional seat — or perhaps a job in the White House, as he and the President teased out on Friday:

Kentucky Republican political insiders say Jennings is a definite possibility to run for McConnell’s seat. The former Republican Leader is retiring and not running for re-election. Some note that Jennings’ website certainly looks like a political candidate’s. “Conservative Ideas. Middle America values. Fearless strategy,” it reads.

Critics are not amused.

“CNN is still standing by Scott Jennings,” wrote The Washington Post’s media reporter Jeremy Barr. “On the one hand, it’s great to have on-air contributors who are ‘close to the action.’ On the other hand, networks generally want them to maintain even an iota of distance to give their commentary more credibility.”

“Scott’s relationship with Trump has always been interesting,” Barr added. “He was once harshly critical of him and as recently as 2022 he said on CNN ‘We need a new nominee.’ But he tends to come back to Trump’s camp when he’s in power or about to be.”

READ MORE: Democrats Call for Hegseth’s Ouster After Trump Demotes National Security Advisor

Barr pointed to a piece he wrote last October: “How Scott Jennings became CNN’s go-to GOP pundit — and pugilist.”

“So his being a belligerent a-h— on CNN was all about angling for a job in the Trump administration,” wrote advocacy journalist Lauren Windsor. “Do better, @CNN.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Absolutely No Clue’: Trump Roasted Over Unique Declaration of Independence Interpretation

 

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OPINION

As US Economy Shrinks Trump Appears Unaware of Crisis: ‘This Is Biden’s Stock Market’

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2 months ago

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April 30, 2025

By

To mark his first 100 days in office — “100 Days of Greatness,” he called it — President Donald Trump threw himself a celebration rally in the swing state of Michigan on Tuesday, declaring he has returned America to a “golden age.”

“The arena was surrounded by banners that read, ‘Investing in America,’ ‘Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!,’ ‘The Golden Age,’ ‘Buy American, Hire American’ and ‘The American Dream is Back,'” The Guardian reported. “Trump’s supporters held signs with slogans such as: ‘Make America Great Again’ and ‘Golden Age of America.'”

On Wednesday, the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported that the American economy shrank in the first three months of 2025, the first time it has done so in nearly three years.

READ MORE: ‘Prices Go Up’: Economist Mocks Treasury Secretary’s ‘Empty Shelves’ Position

“Real gross domestic product (GDP) decreased at an annual rate of 0.3 percent in the first quarter of 2025 (January, February, and March), according to the advance estimate released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the fourth quarter of 2024, real GDP increased 2.4 percent.”

Economic experts had predicted 3% GDP growth for the first quarter, (some more, some less, but in that neighborhood) before Trump’s tariffs.

Economists and financial experts are pointing to President Donald Trump’s policies, including his tariff war, as the reason for the contraction.

“Real GDP down. Consumption down. Prices up. It’s very easy to criticize what is happening right in front of your eyes when you’re not in a woke cult,” observed Spencer Hakimian, founder and chief investment officer of the hedge fund Tolou Capital Management.

Hakimian pinned the blame for the economy contracting directly on Trump’s policies.

And pointing to the BEA’s numbers, Hakimian added, “Welcome to the recession.”

While the official “we are in a recession” declaration has not yet been made, some are doing so already, given the multiple forecasts predicting a recession, and some saying a recession is the current best possible outcome America (and possibly the global economy) will see this year.

Conservative commentator David Frum of The Atlantic responded to the economic news.

“Trump pushed the US economy into decline by his ignorance and malice, enabled and abetted by advisers who were variously obnoxious, stupid, cowardly, and/or crazy,” said Frum, a former George W. Bush speechwriter.

Despite the declarations of experts, President Trump quickly denied responsibility for any economic pain, and, appeared to not understand the issue.

Forty-three  minutes after the economic news — a contraction of gross domestic product — had been announced, Trump declared the “stock market” problem was not his but his predecessor’s.

“This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s,” the President claimed on Truth Social. “I didn’t take over until January 20th. Tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers. Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden ‘Overhang.’ This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!”

The issue is not the stock market—although the markets tanked upon news of an economic contraction—but the actual economy.

READ MORE: ‘Great Jobs of the Future’ Are Generations of Family Factory Work Says Commerce Secretary

“CEOs of major retail giants warned last week that prices would rise and shelves would soon fall empty if the president didn’t reverse course,” The Daily Beast reported Thursday. “The S&P 500 is down 8 percent since Trump’s inauguration—its worst run during a president’s first 100 days in office in more than 50 years. Some financial analysts worry the U.S. is heading toward recession.”

The President appears to be in denial.

During his first 100 days interview with ABC News, which aired Tuesday evening, senior national correspondent Terry Moran told Trump tourism is down.

Trump refused to believe him, despite the facts that prove this have been freely available for weeks.

Economist Justin Wolfers, a professor of economics and public policy, posted charts showing tourism “cratering,” along with video of Trump insisting tourism is up.

Despite all the economic data and expert predictions, despite what we now see as an economic contraction, and some say a looming recession, President Trump is steadfast in his position.

ABC’s Moran told the President, “with the economy, the number one issue for so many people, for just about everybody. It — it’s one of the main reasons that you’re back in this office. And now we have this trade war with China that — that Moody’s and other analysts say is gonna cost American families thousands of more dollars per year. And there is a lot of concern out there. People are worried, even some people who voted for you, sayin’, ‘I didn’t sign up for this.’ So how do you answer those concerns?”

“Well,” Trump replied, “they did sign up for it, actually.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Lying Again’: Hegseth Ripped for Ending ‘Woke Biden Initiative’ Trump Signed Into Law

 

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