The Man Who Started the Fire: Donald Trump has made untruth great again

LET US BEGIN with a standing ovation. Truly. Because it takes a special kind of man—a magnificent kind of man—to convince half a nation that the greatest threats to their freedom are immigrants, vaccines, and the deep state, while he himself dismantles every institution that was keeping them free. That is not politics. That is performance art of the highest order.

And Donald J Trump is its undisputed Picasso.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Isn’t this a bit much? Surely, the man is just a politician doing politician things?” And to that, I say, bless your heart. Because Trump is not merely a politician. A politician lies occasionally. Trump has elevated lying into a lifestyle brand. He has made untruth great again. When a man can stand in front of a crowd, say something demonstrably false, watch fact-checkers fall off their chairs in exhaustion, and then win an election—you have to tip your hat. It’s breathtaking, really. Like watching someone set a house on fire and sell tickets to the flames.

Let’s talk about democracy, that quaint little concept the Americans exported to the world, like Coca-Cola and blue jeans. Trump’s relationship with democracy is roughly the same as his relationship with his tax returns—he’d rather you didn’t look too closely. The January 6insurrection was not a ‘tourist visit’. When tourists visit the Capitol, they take selfies in the Rotunda. They don’t smash windows and hunt for the vice president. But here we are, in a world where that event has been rebranded as a ‘protest’ by the very man who lit the match and then professed ignorance of fire.

The world has noticed. America’s allies, those boring, reliable Europeans who believe in multilateralism, NATO, and the occasional strongly worded resolution, have been watching with the kind of horror you reserve for a relative who shows up drunk to a funeral.

When Trump calls NATO “obsolete”, Putin doesn’t need an army. He just needs popcorn.

Trump’s foreign policy is essentially this: alienate your friends, flatter your enemies, and call it a deal. The man pulled out of the Paris climate agreement, the Iran nuclear seal, and WHO: all in one term. He approached global cooperation the way he approaches marriages: with great enthusiasm at the start, and a spectacular exit when things get complicated.

And climate change! Oh, the poetry of a man who lives at sea level in Mar-a-Lago telling the world that global warming is a Chinese hoax. Future generations, if they are not underwater, will study this era with the kind of bewilderment archaeologists reserve for civilisations that worshipped the sun but forgot to invent the umbrella.

But let’s be fair. Let’s be generous. Because Trump does have a talent—a genuine, dazzling talent— for finding the worst possible moment to say the worst possible thing. He called neo-Nazis “very fine people.” He suggested injecting disinfectant during a pandemic. He classified his own classified documents. He is a one-man stress test for the English language and the American constitution, and both are showing signs of fatigue.

The real threat though is not Trump, the man. It’s Trump, the mirror. He didn’t create the anger, the fear, the tribalism, the contempt for expertise that defines his movement. He simply walked into a room full of it and said, “Hello, I’m your candidate.” The danger is a democracy that can be demagogued so easily, a media ecosystem that rewards outrage over accuracy, and a population so polarised that shared facts have become a luxury item.

Abroad, the Trump effect is equally corrosive. Every autocrat took note. If the leader of the free world can call the press “the enemy of the people,” can undermine elections he loses, can treat the law as a suggestion, then why can’t they? Trump didn’t just damage American credibility. He handed a permission slip to every strongman on the planet. He has attacked the papacy; threatened to open a strait that was never closed; and created an alternate universe for himself.

So, yes, applaud the showmanship. But do not mistake endurance for virtue. Do not mistake noise for leadership.

Because the world—fragile, warming, fractured—needs rather more than a stable genius.

It needs actual stability.

And that, I’m afraid, is where this magnificent dolt falls just a little short.