\n<\/p>\n
Donald Trump<\/strong> is very good at highlighting problems that don\u2019t exist, like public schools providing gender-affirming surgery without consent. Look, any time Trump starts talking about \u201cthe transgender thing,\u201d you can expect it\u2019ll be bad. But a riff at a recent Moms for Liberty event was particularly ugly\u2014as well as divorced from reality. \u201cThink of it; your kid goes to school, and he comes home a few days later with an operation,\u201d Trump said. \u201cThe school decides what\u2019s going to happen with your child.\u201d<\/p>\n The supposition here is that kids are routinely getting gender-affirming surgeries at schools, in which\u2014I guess?\u2014doctors are lurking around to perform them. Or maybe it\u2019s that school buses are being rerouted to hospitals? Either scenario is unhinged, and as CNN noted<\/a>, \u201cTrump\u2019s own presidential campaign could not provide a single example of this ever happening.\u201d Nevertheless, Trump repeated the lie this past weekend, saying<\/a>, \u201cCan you imagine you\u2019re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, Jimmy, I love you so much. Go have a good day in school and your son comes back with a brutal operation.\u201d<\/p>\n There is no world in which kids are going under the knife at school, except, apparently, in Trump\u2019s post-truth world. It\u2019s a dark and scary place filled with problems that don\u2019t exist, albeit with potentially terrifying solutions. And what\u2019s really<\/em> scary is that if Trump can convince enough Americans that they actually inhabit this place we\u2019ll call Earth Two, he could return to the White House.<\/p>\n Since entering the political scene in 2015, Trump has uttered a dizzying stream of lies. In the four years of his presidency alone, he made more than 30,000 false and misleading claims<\/a>, according to The Washington Post,<\/em> and hasn\u2019t stopped lying about his 2020 loss as we approach the 2024 election. \u201cTrump\u2019s lying is most exceptional in its relentlessness, a never-ending avalanche of wrongness that can bury even the most devoted fact-checkers,\u201d one of them, CNN\u2019s Daniel Dale,<\/strong> wrote<\/a> last week. Somehow the guy who mused about purchasing Greenland<\/a> sounds even more disconnected from reality as he runs for president again, frequently bringing up<\/a> fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter and seeming to mix up<\/a> asylum-seekers and people who have been in mental institutions, or asylums.<\/p>\n Of course, Trump has been demonizing migrants since launching his 2016 campaign, when he suggested that<\/a> Mexico is \u201csending people that have lots of problems, and they\u2019re bringing those problems with us. They\u2019re bringing drugs. They\u2019re bringing crime. They\u2019re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.\u201d<\/p>\n His dangerous rhetoric has continued, with Trump telling<\/a> Time<\/em> in April that there will be \u201cas many as 20 million\u201d undocumented immigrants in the United States by the time Joe Biden<\/strong> is out of office, with \u201cmany of them from jails, many of them from prisons, many of them from mental institutions.\u201d (Pew estimated<\/a>, as of 2022, that there are around 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the US. Though estimates vary, there are not believed to be 20 million\u2014never mind 25 or 30 million, as Trump ally Marco Rubio<\/strong> has suggested, according to PolitFact<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Beyond Trump inflating the numbers, the scale of such a deportation plan even affecting 11 million people, as the Washington Post<\/em>\u2019s Philip Bump<\/strong> noted<\/a>, is \u201cincomprehensible.\u201d Meanwhile, Trump torpedoed<\/a> a bipartisan bill earlier this year to actually address immigration reform.<\/p>\n On Earth One, where we all live, border crossings are way down. Citing US Customs and Border Protection statistics, USA Today<\/em> reported<\/a> last month that the number of migrant apprehensions along the southern border \u201cplunged in July from a year ago, to the lowest level of the Biden era.\u201d Similarly, as the US produces and exports<\/a> \u201cthe most crude oil out of any country, at any time,\u201d Trump portrays the Biden administration as opposed to drilling\u2014to the point that he will be required to be a \u201cdictator\u201d on day one to get the job done. As Trump said<\/a> in December, \u201cI want to close the border, and I want to drill, drill, drill.\u201d Trump, however, dismisses<\/a> the very real problem of climate change.<\/p>\n Facts are, of course, irrelevant on Earth Two, where Trump is taking fear-mongering<\/a> over immigration to a new level. He recently claimed<\/a> at a Fox News town hall that \u201cVenezuelans are taking over the whole town\u201d of Aurora, Colorado. But the AP reports<\/a> that police in the Denver suburb \u201csay a Venezuela street gang with a small presence in the city has not taken over a rundown apartment complex\u2014yet the allegation continues to gain steam among conservatives.\u201d (Snopes has more<\/a> on how a viral video has fueled rumors on the right.)<\/p>\n As Trump took over the GOP, Republicans moved with him to Earth Two, focusing on non-existent problems that they could then \u201csolve.\u201d Earlier this year, Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson<\/strong> touted<\/a> legislation aimed at stopping something that is already illegal in America: noncitizens voting<\/a> in federal elections. Despite voter fraud being extremely rare, Republicans have become laser-focused on it under the guise of\u00a0 \u201celection integrity,\u201d presumably to pass legislation to make it harder to vote. This shouldn\u2019t come as a surprise since Republicans demonstrated on January 6, 2021 that they wouldn\u2019t hesitate to disenfranchise voters<\/a> based on election lies.<\/p>\n The trick of Trump\u2019s unreality is that if enough people believe it, it ceases to matter if it\u2019s true or not. According to a 2023 CBS survey<\/a>, Trump voters trust him more than their own friends and family, conservative media, or even religious leaders. So Trump seems to believe (probably rightly) that he can create his own truth\u2014that if enough of Trump\u2019s people occupy Earth Two it doesn\u2019t much matter what actually is happening on Earth One.<\/p>\n The problem for the rest of us on Earth One is that Trump appears willing to shred the Constitution to address non-existent issues like widespread voter fraud. On Sunday, Trump posted<\/a> on Truth Social, \u201cWHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again \u2026 Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.\u201d<\/p>\n As Axios\u2019s Alex Thompson<\/strong> explained<\/a>, \u201cTrump is now proposing two of the largest-ever federal arrests of people living in America, including U.S. citizens, if he\u2019s re-elected.\u201d So there\u2019s the proposed mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, which Trump warned<\/a> this past week \u201cwill be a bloody story\u201d if he\u2019s elected, along with jailing people over baseless election fraud claims. This is the stuff of autocrats, and it\u2019s up to the American people to decide if they want to give Trump the power to actually become one.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n