The imaginary and scary world of Donald Trump

Ashley Parker
| Washington Post

In Donald Trump’s imaginary world, Americans cannot venture out to buy a loaf of bread without being shot, robbed, or raped. Immigrants in a small Ohio town eat their neighbors’ cats and dogs. World War III and economic collapse are near. And children leave for school only to return at the end of the day having undergone sex-change surgery.

The former president’s imaginary world is a dark, dystopian place that Trump has depicted in his rallies, interviews, social media posts and debate appearances to paint an alarming picture of America under the Biden-Harris administration.

It’s a twisted, warped and sometimes absurd portrait of a nation where the insurgents who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, to deadly effect, were merely peaceful protesters, and where unlucky boaters face the unappealing choice between electrocution or a shark attack. His extreme cartoons also serve as another way for Trump to peddle lies and misinformation, using an alternate reality of his own making to create an often terrifying — and, he seems to hope — politically devastating landscape for his political opponents .

Trump, for example, regularly claims that Democrats favor abortion up until the day of birth — and in some cases even after birth.

Speaking at the Sept. 10 presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris in Philadelphia, Trump falsely claimed that Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, had said that “abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine.“

“He also says ‘execution after birth’ – execution, no more abortion because the child is born – that’s fine,“ Trump continued.

Walz didn’t actually say that, The Washington Post Fact Checker found, and “postnatal execution” — or infanticide — is illegal in all states. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2021, nearly all abortions—93.5 percent—occur at or before 13 weeks, and less than 1 percent were performed after 21 weeks.

World War III, too, is another certainty if Trump hadn’t been elected in November, the former president frequently claims. In July, before a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his private Mar-a-Lago club, Trump told reporters that only his election victory could prevent another global conflagration.

“If we win, it will be very simple. Everything will be resolved and very quickly,” said Trump. “If we don’t, you’re going to end up with major wars in the Middle East and maybe a third world war. You are closer to a World War III right now than at any time since World War II. You’ve never been this close because we have incompetent people running our country.”

And this month, shortly after news broke that former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney, a former Republican congresswoman from Wyoming, were planning to vote for Harris, Trump took to his Truth Social website to attack them. “I am the President of Peace and I alone will stop World War III!” he claimed.

“He’s not the same candidate he was in 2016 or 2020,” said Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist who took note of Trump’s “imaginary world” in a post on X this month. “It’s much more diminished and untethered.”

“The percentage of time he spends in the real world versus his dystopian world is decreasing. It just doesn’t speak to things that are true in this world that we all live in,” Rosenberg said.

“It’s true that economic hardship, border tragedies and two new wars have erupted under Vice President Kamala Harris, and four more years of her policies will only make the pain and suffering worse,” said Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary of the Trump campaign. , in a statement. “President Trump tells the hard truth about this reality and has an optimistic vision for the future to make America strong, safe and prosperous again by securing the border, cutting taxes, reducing inflation and restoring world peace to the way it was. during his first term.”

Asked to provide specific examples of all the claims Trump has made, Leavitt sent a list that in some cases, such as schools performing sex reassignment surgeries, provided no proof of the claims. In other cases — such as not being able to buy groceries without being attacked — Leavitt offered several examples of such crimes, but not the mass phenomena that justify Trump’s claim that “you can’t cross the street to get a loaf of bread; you get shot, you get robbed, you get raped.”

Among Trump’s supporters, some seem to accept his false claims as untouchable truths, while others say he sometimes exaggerates — but in doing so, accurately captures their fears about the real problems facing the nation.

“I don’t think he’s stretching the truth,” said Trump supporter Marelee Ernestberg, 59, as some of his most extreme lies emerged, including his baseless claim about Haitian migrants eating pets, which she called “an absolute truth” that it did not surprise her. “Trump is not a liar.”

Speaking at her first Trump rally in Las Vegas earlier this month, Ernestberg discussed Trump’s claim that children are being given gender reassignment surgeries in school and said she didn’t care about the list of fakes.

“Now, of course, everyone is exaggerating. … Trump is not perfect, and when I look at a candidate, I’m not looking for perfection. I will not marry the guy,” she said. “I’m not looking for a husband. I’m looking for someone to bring this country to a safer place.”

Immigration is another topic in store for Trump’s mock country. For example, the former president repeatedly references Hannibal Lecter, the fictional serial killer in “Silence of the Lambs,” as a way to conflate asylum-seeking migrants with people in mental institutions to suggest without evidence — but with dehumanizing language – that those crossing the US-Mexico border are asylum seekers.

“We have people being released into our country that we don’t want in our country,” Trump told a crowd in Wildwood, N.J., in May after referring to “the late and great Hannibal Lecter.”

Trump also regularly claims that the government puts undocumented immigrants in “fancy hotels.” In Manhattan, for example, the city has spent millions converting motels, office buildings and even some luxury hotels into housing for thousands of migrants, but the accommodations are shelter operations, not five-star opulence.

“You have soldiers now lying in the streets of various cities, all run by Democrats. They’re laying on the streets in front of hotels, in some cases luxury hotels, and you have illegal immigrants coming and living in those hotels and laughing at our soldiers as they walk through a luxury lobby,” Trump said in during an economic speech in New York this month. “Is there something wrong with this thinking? Is there something wrong with our country?”

And recently, Trump also began falsely claiming that a Venezuelan gang had overrun an apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado — prompting the local police department to release a video statement explaining that after they spoke with residents, they see a “different picture.” Yes, the police chief continued, some gang members live in the Aurora community, but “gang members have not taken over this complex.”

Trump, however, was undeterred.

“You saw in Aurora, Colorado, a group of very tough young thugs from Venezuela who took over large areas, including buildings,” Trump said in a podcast, despite a police statement to the contrary. “They take over buildings. They have their big guns. But they take over buildings. We will not let that happen.”

At the presidential debate, an agitated Trump repeated the baseless claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating the town’s pets.

“In Springfield, they eat the dogs,” Trump said. “The people who came in – eat the cats. They eat—they eat the pets of the people who live there.”

It is also a continuation of Trump’s perpetual lying and obfuscation; In Trump’s presidency alone, an analysis by The Post Fact Checker found that he has made more than 30,000 false or misleading claims — an average of about 21 untruths per day.

Another favorite Trump rant is that tourists come to the nation’s capital hoping to see the sights — and end up traveling home in body bags. Accepting his party’s nomination in Milwaukee in July, Trump blasted the nation’s capital, calling it “a horrible killing field.”

Crime in D.C. increased between 2022 and 2023, when all crimes increased by 26 percent — and violent crimes increased by 39 percent, according to the D.C. police. But so far this year, both crimes are down from 2023 numbers.

Recently, there have been several high-profile cases of out-of-towners killed while in DC — including a woman visiting the city for a concert and a professor visiting for a conference — but Trump’s rhetoric is deeply exaggerated.

“They leave Wisconsin, they go to see the Washington Monument, they end up getting stabbed, killed or shot,” Trump said in Milwaukee.

The former president also took advantage of sex reassignment surgery as another area in which to beautify.

“You can imagine being a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much. Go have a good day at school’ — and your son comes back with a brutal operation,” Trump said at a rally in Wisconsin this month.

Then, speaking in Arizona last Thursday, Trump wrote a similar fictional story.

“Can you imagine?” asked the former president. “Your kid goes to school and doesn’t even call you and change your kid’s gender.”

Many of Trump’s imaginary scenarios are not verified in real time, in part because he pitches them to adoring crowds or favorable news outlets. But at this month’s debate, the moderators were prepared for his fictional world.

After Trump made his claim about immigrants eating cats and dogs, ABC News’ David Muir chimed in: “You talked about Springfield, Ohio, and ABC News reached out to the city manager there. He told us that there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being hurt, injured or abused by people in the immigrant community.”

But Trump persisted.

“People on TV say my dog was taken and used for food!” Trump insisted, turning to the often imaginary world of television to support his own imagined fantasy.

– – –

Abbie Cheeseman in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

Piqueettrinque

The imaginary and scary world of Donald Trump

Recent Posts

Social Media

Advertisement