ABSTRACT
On May 1, 2018, a team from The Washington Post claimed that “President Donald Trump has made 3,001 false or misleading claims, according to The Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president. Trump makes use of repetition of false statements/characterizations, whatever the origins of the non-factual statements. Trump’s pre-presidential reputation as a deal maker certainly had the whiff of PT Barnum about it, but for three decades the Trump name was on hotels and towers, and for more than ten years viewers far beyond Manhattan saw him as the boss in the penthouse who got things done and didn’t stand for whiners and losers on a manicured “reality” television show. Some analysts of the Trump era have identified the Steve Bannon conception of the Deep State as motivating orders and actions from this administration that undermine the reasonable reliance on the institutions of the government by the governed.
