Trump Discovers the Costs of Undermining Truth

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https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/trump-fake-news/550568/

Trump Discovers the Costs of Undermining Truth

At the same time that the president sows doubt and confusion to undermine his adversaries, he finds those forces depriving him of credit he believes he deserves.

David A. Graham 1:41 PM ET Politics

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What the president doesn’t seem to realize, or if he realizes cannot help, is that his goals are at cross-purposes. Trump, a historically prolific liar, has managed to stir up doubt in case after case, but this has rendered him incapable of convincing people of the importance of his constructive accomplishments. It’s another example of how Trump, notwithstanding his real-estate career, is more adept at demolition than construction. Seeking to deprive others of objective facts, he has deprived himself of their benefits as well.

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A striking Associated Press story Monday anecdotally illustrates the fog of untruth that surrounds politics today.

“Where is the truth?” a truck driver in North Carolina wondered plaintively.

“It has made me take every story with a large grain, a block of salt,” a conservative activist said. “Not just from liberal sources. I’ve seen conservative ‘fake news.’”

An Oklahoma man told the AP that whenever Trump labels something fake news, “I just have started assuming … whatever he’s talking about must be true,” adding, “I feel like that attitude didn’t start until he took office.”

These quotes go a long way toward understanding why Trump can’t get the credit he craves on the economy. The president is correct that by most standards, the economy has improved over the course of his presidency. There are caveats: The stock market, which he repeatedly invokes, does not directly affect most Americans; it’s not clear that Trump’s policies deserve much credit for the positive indicators. Still, most presidents get at least some dividend from a strong economy, and Trump has not. In a Politico/Morning Consult poll released Tuesday, just a quarter of Americans gave Trump an ‘A’ for his handling of the economy—his highest score on a report card of issues, and yet still less than the 26 percent who gave him an ‘F’ for handling the economy.

This is despite Trump loudly boasting about it any place he can. Or is it because he loudly boasts about it all the time? There are several reasons why Trump might not be getting credit. Voters might credit Barack Obama for economic growth. They might detest Trump so much that they refuse to give him credit for anything. But one explanation has to be that the president has created an atmosphere of such confusion and cynicism that, like the Oklahoman who spoke to the AP, people doubt something simply because the president says it.

In a newly released report, the RAND Corporation addresses a phenomenon it calls “Truth Decay.” Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael D. Rich define it as “a set of four related trends: increasing disagreement about facts and analytical interpretations of facts and data; a blurring of the line between opinion and fact; an increase in the relative volume, and resulting influence, of opinion and personal experience over fact; and declining trust in formerly respected sources of factual information.” From their perspective, the current status quo is the result of a long-term trend, not the creation of any one individual. President Trump is simply its apotheosis. As his frustration this weekend shows, truth decay can be a potent weapon for a politician unconcerned with honesty, but it is a weapon that, once deployed, can hurt the man who wields it just as it does his foes.