The greatest trick Donald Trump ever pulled

The former president as honest.

The single most telling moment of Donald Trump’s presidency came in July 2018 when he spoke to to a VFW gathering in Kansas City.

“Stick with us,” Trump told the crowd. “Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news. … What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”

The idea behind the rhetoric was simple — and scary: The only person to listen to (on everything) was Trump. Everything else — and everyone one else — was to be dismissed as either untrue or larded with some sort of secret intent or agenda.

Simply put: Trump wanted to establish himself as the sole source of news (and truth) for his supporters.

It seemed an outlandish ask in the moment. After all, Trump — whether you like or hate him — had established a record as a proven liar, someone who adjusted (and sometimes created) “facts” to work for his own purposes.

He was the last person in the world that you would think that people would put their trust in — solely.

Well, reader, I am here to tell you that that is exactly what has happened.

Witness this response — among Republican primary voters — in an new CBS new poll to the question of who tells them the truth:

It’s stunning, right? Donald Trump — he of the 30,573 false and misleading claims during his presidency — is MORE trusted by Republican voters to tell the truth than their own friends and family!

And, maybe even more stunning, Donald Trump is regarded as 30 points more trustworthy than religious leaders in the eyes of Republican primary voters. 30 points!

But, wait, there’s more! Look at this finding among voters who say that honesty is very important in choosing a candidate:

Now, a little bit of this is influenced by the fact that, in the broader CBS News poll, Trump is running away with the nomination. (Trump is at 62% with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2nd place at 16%.) So, when he is that far ahead, he’s likely to lead on a lot of attribute questions.

But, still!

The idea of Donald Trump as honest broker is something I never thought I would see. And it is the single greatest trick he has ever pulled on the Republican electorate.

(Trump’s previous greatest trick: Convincing lower middle class white voters that he, a son of privilege whose brand is built on luxury, is, somehow, their voice.)

I have avoided all of the talk — prevalent on Twitter and the left — that the best way to understand Trumpism is to think of it as a cult built around a single strong leader.

I’ve always felt like that was reductive — and unhelpful. But, data points like these make me reconsider that line of thinking.

How else do you explain the belief that Donald Trump is the person Republicans most trust to tell them the truth?

This is, after all, a man who admitted in his “Art of the Deal” memoir that he, uh, exaggerates, all the time.

“People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular,” he wrote at the time. “I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration, and a very effective form of promotion.”

There is no evidence anywhere in his public life — and certainly not during his life in politics — that he is a truth teller or, really, even cares about the truth.

While we’re at it, another data point jumped out at me from the weekend — from a New Yorker profile of DeSantis’ campaign. It’s this:

Even before its official launch, the campaign and its allies were conducting polls and focus groups to test various anti-Trump messages. Across several months, the source familiar with the campaign said that it consistently struggled to find a message critical of Trump that resonated with rank-and-file Republican voters. Even attaching Trump’s name to an otherwise effective message had a tendency to invert the results, this source said. If a moderator said that the covid lockdowns destroyed small businesses and facilitated the largest upward wealth transfer in modern American history, seventy per cent of the Republicans surveyed would agree. But, if the moderator said that Trump’s covid lockdowns destroyed small businesses and facilitated the largest upward wealth transfer in modern American history, the source said, seventy per cent would disagree.

Solely by attaching Trump’s name to a policy literally flipped the results. Again, nothing changed but adding Trump’s name.

What else should we call that sort of blind loyalty to a singular figure?

Yes, there have been politicians in the last who have inspired considerable loyalty. There was a level of veneration of Barack Obama, for instance, that was remarkable.

But it didn’t even come close to approximating what we are seeing in this data for Trump. If this sort of stuff doesn’t make you worried for 2024 (and beyond), you aren’t paying attention.