During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised the moon. He promised he would not cut Social Security. He vowed to protect Medicare. He promised free in vitro fertilization. He disavowed the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and promised that he had “nothing” to do with it. He promised he would lower the cost of housing, groceries and other necessities. He promised cheaper eggs.
He promised, he promised and he promised.
But the president is not known for his honesty. Just the opposite: He is notorious for stiffing people and reneging on contracts. And true to form, almost none of the promises Trump made to the American people — the promises he made to win a second term in office — were truthful. Virtually all of them were a lie.
We know they are lies because his administration has, thus far, done the precise opposite of what he said he would do. Project 2025 is serving as the blueprint for his effort to unravel the federal administrative state and one of its architects, Russell Vought, leads the Office of Management and Budget.
Trump’s allies, specifically Elon Musk, are taking an ax to the offices that run the programs — such as Social Security — that the president said he would protect. And the Republican budget framework, which the White House supports, would require hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, which would harm millions of the president’s supporters.
Trump’s plan for large tariffs on the United States’ most important trading partners — Canada, Mexico and China — would raise the price of goods for most Americans. And it should be said that the cost of eggs is projected to rise to all-time highs. There is no free IVF, no serious plan to end taxes on tips, and no housing assistance for working Americans. At best, the president’s most prominent supporters have cultivated a fantasy that the so-called Department of Government Efficiency will distribute stimulus checks drawn from supposed savings to taxpayers.
I say “supposed” because those “savings” are vastly overstated.
Those of us in the business of professional political commentary are not so comfortable labeling lies as lies and liars, liars. To say that something is a lie is to make a claim about a person’s mental state, and that takes evidence we may not have. But while it’s true that we cannot peer into the psyches of politicians and public figures, we do have the help of past behavior. And Donald Trump’s past behavior tells us that he is a liar who will say whatever he needs to get a vote.
If he needs to tell voters worried about reproductive health that he will subsidize fertility treatments, then he’ll say it. And people will believe it. This week, The Washington Post ran an excellent profile of a young woman who voted for Trump because of that promise. She thought that he would deliver for her.
He didn’t, of course. Not only that, but he fired her. She was a federal worker.
Trump lied. Actively and without remorse. He misled the entire country. And in the alternate scenario in which he told the truth — where he was forthright and honest about his plans for the United States — there is a strong chance that he would have lost the election, given the staggering unpopularity of his current agenda.
Looking ahead, the fact that Trump lied about his plans makes it all the more likely that the public will push back with force as soon as it has the chance. If Trump won on pocketbook issues, then it is hard to imagine he’ll successfully weather the reaction that is certain to come if his actions cause a recession.
One last thought: The reality of Trump’s lies is that they worked. Enough voters believed him to put him over the edge. There is no doubt that we can blame some of this on an overall information environment that is saturated with propaganda, misinformation and, well, fake news.
What I Wrote
My column this week was on Elon Musk as an unofficial co-president and how that breaks the constitutional system. (It also included a quick refutation of the “unitary executive” theory.)
Trump may be working from an expansive theory of executive power, but in delegating so much of his authority to Musk — in creating a de facto co-president — he is both undermining that power and demonstrating Hamilton’s real insights about the importance of a singular executive.
Now Reading
Gabriel Sherman on the threats of political violence that have shaped Republican behavior in Congress, for Vanity Fair.
Senate and House Republicans know Trump will orchestrate the running of a primary challenger backed by Elon Musk’s unlimited resources if a member defies him. But this is not the whole story of Republican subservience to the president. In private, Republicans talk about their fear that Trump might incite his MAGA followers to commit political violence against them if they don’t rubber-stamp his actions.
Jack M. Balkin on Trump’s executive power grab, for his blog.
These actions seek not just radical changes in policy but also a fundamental change in the constitutional order. The president is triggering a constitutional moment in the purest Ackermanian tradition more clearly than at any time since the dawn of the Civil Rights Era.
Johann Neem on the state of the American Republic, for his Substack newsletter.
We are in frightening times. Even writing these words gives me significant pause because they enunciate clearly what we would all rather avoid saying out loud. It requires seeing what our eyes do not want to see, what they would rather refuse to see. We are no longer living under the protection of the Constitution. We may be subject to force — from the government or from extralegal actors — designed to silence us. Our lives, our families, our liberties, our property are subject to the arbitrary will of a man who has demonstrated his capacity for capricious and vengeful action.
Adam Serwer on the Trump administration’s effort to resegregate America, for The Atlantic.
For all the big talk about putting an end to “social engineering,” the Great Resegregation is itself a radical attempt to socially engineer America to be poorer, whiter, less equal, and less democratic. Much as the old Jim Crow measures kept many Southern white people impoverished and disenfranchised alongside the Black Southerners they targeted, the Great Resegregation will leave wealthy white elites with a firmer grip on power and the working classes with fewer opportunities and a weakened social safety net. The only people left with more will be those who already had more than they needed to begin with.
Moira Donegan on Andrea Dworkin, for The New York Review of Books.
When she was still alive, Dworkin was often criticized as hyperbolic and unnuanced. But Trump, with his hatred, vulgarity, and love of force, seems to offer up an awful confirmation that what she saw was really there all along. His politics confirm her analysis of everyday misogyny: he has a reverence for domination and sadism, a cruel and peevish enforcement of hierarchy, an egotism that feeds, with an almost erotic enthusiasm, on the pain and humiliation of others.
Photo of the Week
I’ve been in a real photographic rut for the past month, so here is a self-portrait (of sorts) from a few years ago. I took it at a car show.
Now Eating: Giant Beans With Spinach, Tomatoes and Feta
A wonderfully filling vegetarian main dish that can be made vegan if you omit the feta cheese. Be sure to serve with fresh bread! Recipe comes from New York Times Cooking.
Ingredients
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½ pound (about 1⅛ cups) dried Greek giant beans, giant lima beans or Christmas limas, washed and picked over
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1 ½ quarts water
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1 bay leaf
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1 onion, cut in half
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Salt to taste
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2 garlic cloves, crushed
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2 large bunches spinach, (1½ to 2 pounds), stemmed and washed
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3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
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1 leek, white and light green part only, chopped
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1 bunch scallions, trimmed and chopped
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½ cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
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½ cup chopped fresh dill
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1 28-ounce can chopped tomatoes, with juice, pulsed to a coarse purée in a food processor
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Freshly ground pepper
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4 ounces Greek feta cheese, crumbled (about ¾ cup)
Directions
Combine the beans, water, bay leaf, halved onion, and crushed garlic in a large saucepan and bring to a gentle boil. Reduce the heat and simmer 30 minutes. Add salt to taste and simmer another 30 minutes. The beans should be al dente: not yet soft but not hard either. Remove from the heat. Using tongs, remove and discard the onion, garlic and bay leaf. Place a strainer over a bowl and drain the beans. Taste the broth and adjust seasonings. Set aside.
While the beans are simmering, blanch the spinach in a large pot of salted boiling water for 20 seconds, or steam just until it wilts, abut 1 minute. Transfer to a bowl of cold water, then drain and squeeze out excess water. Chop coarsely.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Heat 1 tablespoon of the olive oil over medium heat in a large, heavy skillet and add the leek and the scallions. Add a pinch of salt and cook, stirring often, until the mixture is tender, 3 to 5 minutes. Transfer to an ovenproof casserole or baking dish, preferably earthenware. Stir in the spinach, parsley, dill, beans, half the tomato purée, 2 cups of the bean broth and half the feta. Season to taste with salt and pepper and stir in another tablespoon of olive oil. Place the remaining tomatoes over the top and sprinkle on the remaining feta. Drizzle on the remaining tablespoon of olive oil. Cover and place in the oven.
Bake 1 to 2 hours, checking the liquid every 20 minutes to make sure that the beans are submerged; add more bean broth if necessary. When they’re done, the beans will be creamy but intact.
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The post We Need to Talk About the Lying appeared first on New York Times.
