The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.
Ten years ago this week, Donald Trump rode down an elevator, surrounded by make-believe supporters who had been paid to cheer him, and delivered a rambling speech declaring his candidacy for president. It was dark. The United States, he bellowed, had “become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems.” The nation was “getting weaker.” It was no longer great. Its leaders were “stupid,” “losers,” “morally corrupt,” and “selling this country down the drain.” Mexico was sending “rapists” across the border to the United States. Unemployment was 21 percent. (Actually, it was 5.3 percent.) The US nuclear arsenal “doesn’t work.” (It did.) He laid it on thick: “We’ve got nothing…We’re dying…We’re becoming a third-world country…Sadly, the American dream is dead.”
Ever since then, Trump has been running a disinformation campaign of doom and gloom, depicting the United States as a disastrous hellscape—that is, whenever it serves his perverted political purposes. In his first inaugural address, he characterized the nation as being racked with “American carnage.” During the 2020 contest, he accused Joe Biden of plotting with radicals, antifa, and communists to literally destroy America.
His 2024 presidential endeavor was more a propaganda operation than a political campaign. He claimed Haitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs, Venezuelan criminal migrants had taken control of towns across the Midwest, schools were performing gender transition operations on children without informing parents, and Biden and Vice President Harris were purposefully importing millions of undocumented people (and using a phone app that told cartel heads where to drop off these migrants). He spewed outrageous and outlandish lies to support an unfounded narrative: America was apocalyptic.
Trump is not facing an election now, but he is continuing to use scare tactics to skew reality.
This was both madness and method. The goal of disinformation is to shape perceptions. If Trump could convince voters that they were imperiled by mobs of barbarous pet-eating brown people and that Biden and Harris were in cahoots with savages and marauders, then they’d have little choice but to vote for him. He was selling a fictitious script to incite fear and loathing, believing that would win him support.
Trump is not facing an election now, but he is continuing to use scare tactics to skew reality. Since he returned to the White House, he has cited phony emergencies to abuse presidential power, falsely claiming that the entry of undocumented people into the United States amounts to an invasion waged by a foreign power and that trade deficits threaten the survival of the nation. And in response to the protests in Los Angeles against his cruel mass deportation effort, he has turned his disinformation campaign up to 11.
Trump says these demonstrations—which have been mostly peaceful, with some yielding limited violent actions—are an insurrection. He and his aides have maintained that Los Angeles is under siege by a vast horde of criminal migrants. In front of troops at Fort Bragg, Trump declared that California Gov. Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass are “incompetent” and that “they paid troublemakers, agitators, and insurrectionists” to “aid the occupation of the city by criminal invaders.” He has also said the protests have caused “a lot of death.” And that LA would have been “obliterated,” had he not sent in National Guard troops. His top aides have chimed in. Attorney General Pam Bondi exclaimed, “California is burning.” Stephen Miller, Trump’s minister of malice, tweeted, “Los Angeles is occupied territory.”
In Trump’s telling, he’s the strongman rescuing a great American metropolis from annihilation. In reality, he is exacerbating conflict triggered by his own destructive policy.
None of this is remotely true. The inciter-in-chief was lying to the troops. Yet Trump cult propagandists at Fox and other right-wing media outlets have strived to bolster Trump’s deceit with hysterical coverage of the few violent acts that have occurred in a 1-square-mile area of downtown Los Angeles. (The city encompasses 502 square miles.) Yet again, Trump is cynically concocting a bogus and dangerous tale that demonizes Americans for political advantage. In his telling, he’s the strongman rescuing a great American metropolis from annihilation. In reality, he is exacerbating conflict triggered by his own destructive policy.
Countering disinformation is difficult, especially in a time of media fragmentation. Trump’s supporters and Fox viewers tend to believe whatever he says. One photograph of three burning driverless taxis goes a long way with his devotees. Fact-checking and reporting by other media outlets mean little to them. And it is tough to fight disinformation one falsehood at a time. Litigating phony assertions can draw them more attention. By the time you’ve challenged one piece of disinformation, another—or many more—emerges.
A more effective response to disinformation is to characterize specific sources of bad information as untrustworthy and not to be believed. But the media lost this fight with Trump years ago, in the early stages of his political career, when it was largely reluctant to brand him a perpetual liar. Since then, it has been playing catch-up with his never-ending stream of falsehoods and hokum, as the stakes get higher. And into this present crisis, when he is spreading lies to justify using military forces against domestic political opposition.
As Trump turned his last political campaign into a disinformation op, he has done the same with his second presidency. He seeks to convince Americans that both an invasion and an insurrection are underway and that the existence of the nation is at risk—and that he must respond with militaristic and autocratic tactics. (On Thursday, a federal judge in California ruled Trump did not have the legal authority to assume control of California National Guard troops and order them to Los Angeles. Hours later, an appeals court stayed the judge’s order and set a hearing on the matter for June 17.)
Here was a brazen attack on the constitutional order. It was practically a declaration of civil war against the people of LA and California.
This is a perilous moment. It was disturbing to see federal agents on Thursday forcibly remove and assault Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) when he tried to interrupt Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, while she was conducting a press conference in Los Angeles. More troubling was what she said moments before that episode:
We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.
Liberate the city? Engaging in classic red-baiting, Noem was proclaiming that Trump intended to use federalized National Guard troops and Marines to overthrow the elected leaders of Los Angeles and California because he objected to their policies and political stances. The federal government does not have the authority to do this. Here was a brazen attack on the constitutional order. It was practically a declaration of civil war against the people of LA and California. Call it authoritarianism. Call it fascism. It is not American democracy. Ultimately, Trump’s disinformation operation is aimed at undermining, if not crushing, our diverse and messy democracy. He seeks to burn the village so he can seize power to supposedly save it. And the most potent ammunition for his war on America is lies.
This post has been syndicated from Mother Jones, where it was published under this address.