Trump and the Ministry of Truth
On January 21st, 2017, the first full day of the Trump presidency, White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, told a big whopper.
“That was the largest audience to witness an inauguration, period,” Spicer proclaimed.
There was ample visual evidence that Spicer’s claim was false.
There are independent estimates that both of Barack Obama’s inaugurations had been much larger than Trump’s.
That was the first of many times that Trump would attempt (with great futility) to rewrite history.
Then, there was this business about the size of his victory over Hillary Clinton.
Despite Clinton winning the popular vote by more than three million, Trump refused to admit he hadn’t won by a landslide.
So, to convince America that he’d clobbered Hillary, he formed something called the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, with the sole purpose of rooting out the three million illegal aliens who’d sneaked into voting booths and tipped the popular vote in her direction.
That didn’t work, because hardly anybody except Trump believed that nonsense.
That commission was abruptly decommissioned.
These days, though, there’s far more at stake than the size of his inauguration, or the number of votes that led to his victory.
The truth about serious matters of state shouldn’t be folded, spindled or mutilated without there being real-world consequences.
Trump doesn’t seem to care about that.
He still makes stuff up when facts don’t suit him.
He claims he agrees that the Russians meddled in the 2016 election. Then he calls the investigation that uncovered that meddling a “witch hunt.”
Recently, even his fellow Republicans have begun questioning Trump’s proclivity to hollow out truth and infuse it with balderdash.
After Trump appeared at a news conference with Vladimir Putin, and he appeared to blame the investigation into Russian meddling as a bar to U.S. — Russia relations, more than the handiwork of the Russians — Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona called that an “Orwellian moment.”
“This is not a moment for spin, deflection, justification, circling the wagons, forgetting, moving along to the next news cycle or more of Orwell’s doublespeak,” said Flake.
Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four had been about that kind of thing.
In it there was a Ministry of Truth, that had the single goal of forcing people to believe the unbelievable against their own will.
Orwell wrote, “In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it.”
So, when Trump tweets about the prospects of Russian meddling in the upcoming midterm elections, “No president has been tougher on Putin than me, they will be pushing very hard for Democrats, they definitely don’t want Trump,” he’s really saying two and two make five.
Putin had said just the opposite when he was standing next to Trump during that news conference, and he was asked if he wanted Trump to win in 2016.
“Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S. — Russia relationship back to normal,” Putin replied.
Trump has become a one-man Ministry of Truth.
Last week, at a speech at a VFW convention, he announced, “Just remember: what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening. Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news.”
He’s signaling to the masses, that objective reality isn’t real.
That he’s the only holder of the truth.
And that anybody who disagrees with him, is engaging in “fake news.”
Or, as Orwell wrote in Chapter VII of Nineteen Eighty-Four, “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
Yet Orwell also states, “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”
Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter and anchor for Entertainment Tonight and 20-year TV news veteran. Email him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.