Trump’s style of lying has the power to shape group identities in an increasingly polarized world.
Opinion By Eduardo Porter, March 11, 2025 5 min
President Donald Trump addresses a joint session of Congress on March 4. (Alex Brandon/AP)
How to make sense of Donald Trump’s avalanche of lies?
In his address to Congress last Tuesday, Trump inflated his polling numbers and vastly exaggerated inflation under his predecessor. He lied about the prevalence of Social Security fraud and about U.S. assistance to Ukraine. He lied about absenteeism in the federal bureaucracy and about an aid program in Myanmar.
Might he believe that there is no penalty for repeatedly lying, even if reality — polling numbers, inflation rates — can be so easily checked? In the framing of Gordon Tullock’s classic “The Economics of Politics,” Trump seems to have decided that misrepresenting the world carries more benefits than costs. Has the voting public become that gullible?
