The Washington Post

Opinion

Dana Milbank

As wreckage piles up, Trump and his aides retreat to fantasyland

Every remark spins a different strand of make-believe.

May 2, 2025

This week brought the grim news that the Trump administration’s policies had thrown the economy into reverse, turning the 2.4 percent annualized GDP growth of the last quarter of 2024 into a 0.3 percent contraction in the first quarter of 2025. It was the worst showing since the pandemic, ending nearly three years of steady expansion.

“Growth has simply vanished,” Chris Rupkey, chief economist at financial research firm Fwdbonds, wrote to clients. Though some of the reversal might have been caused by a surge in imports before President Donald Trump’s tariffs took effect, “there is simply no way for policy advisers to sugarcoat this,” he wrote.

Oh no?

Soon after the dismal GDP report, Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro marched out to the White House driveway and announced that the report “really should be very positive news for America” and was the best negative growth report “I have ever seen in my life.” The rosy adjectives flowed: “very, very good and quite encouraging … huge, literally off the charts ... good, strong news ... all things are good. So we felt really good about that number.”

He faced the CNBC camera and said the same thing. “We really like where we’re at now,” he asserted.

This absurdity became the official White House line. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt issued a statement saying that “the underlying numbers tell the real story of the strong momentum President Trump is delivering” and that Trump’s policies “are fueling an economic boom.”

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. And bust is boom. As the grave consequences of the administration’s policies become apparent, Trump and his lieutenants have retreated to a fantasyland.

At this week’s Cabinet meeting, Trump’s appointees went around the horn, as usual, with effusive praise for the genius of Dear Leader and shared reports of their fictional achievements. “President, your first 100 days has far exceeded that of any other presidency in this country ever, ever. Never seen anything like it,” gushed Attorney General Pam Bondi. She further disclosed that Trump’s efforts to interdict fentanyl have, in just 100 days, “saved — are you ready for this, media? — 258 million lives.”

Incredible! Trump has already saved 76 percent of the U.S. population from certain death.

Doug Burgum, secretary of the interior, piled on: “The thing that’s empowering this amazing group of people around this table — and you’ve probably assembled the greatest Cabinet ever — is that this time you’re not just courageous, you’re actually fearless.”

Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, praised Trump’s “very popular” idea of selling a “gold card” that allows foreigners to buy citizenship for $5 million: “I was out to dinner and someone came up and said, ‘Can I buy 10?’” (On the same day Lutnick offered this praise, a House committee killed the idea.)

While this was going on, Elon Musk, architect of Trump’s efforts to sabotage the federal workforce, took off his DOGE cap and replaced it with a Gulf of America cap, put the DOGE cap back on and ultimately adjusted the Gulf of America cap and placed it on his head on top of his DOGE cap. “They say I wear a lot of hats,” he informed the Cabinet. (Though maybe one fewer hat: Tesla began searching for a replacement for Musk because of its Musk-induced slump, according to a Wall Street Journal report Tesla denied.) Musk later invited reporters into the Roosevelt Room, where, The Post’s Matt Viser reports, he compared himself to the Buddha.

Trump began to address the Cabinet but was interrupted by a quacking ringtone from the phone of his chief quack, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who, according to the pool report, was “aggressively chewing gum.” Kennedy did his best this week to discourage uptake of the measles vaccine, saying on NewsNation that it “contains a lot of aborted fetus debris.” He also informed Dr. Phil that he is “bringing on somebody” to investigate chemtrails — conspiracy theorists imagine people are being poisoned by jet condensation trails — and would do “everything in my power” to fight the fictional menace.

Andrew Feinberg, from Britain’s Independent newspaper, asked Trump to explain why he took credit for a booming stock market but now claims the falling stock market is Joe Biden’s fault. Trump merely repeated that “this is Biden, and you could even say the next quarter is sort of Biden.” Unless the market goes up, naturally.

The president went on to explain that empty shelves caused by his trade war won’t be a bad thing: “You know, somebody said, ‘Oh, the shelves are going to be open.’ Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know? And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.”

With each remark, he spun a different strand of make-believe: that China “made a trillion dollars” a year because of the U.S. trade deficit; that he is rounding up “11,888 murderers,” illegal aliens all, who are “roaming” the streets; that jurists blocking his deportations are “rogue” and “radical-left, horrible judges”; and that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, whose Liberal Party triumphed by campaigning against Trump, was the candidate “that hated Trump, I think, the least.”

Trump was never much for telling the truth, of course. But as the situation worsens around him, his lies seem all the more absurd. He maintained this week that “gasoline’s down” in price (it’s flat) and that “tourism is way up” (it’s way down) that “eggs are down 87 percent” (he seems to make up a new percentage with each telling) and “groceries are down” (they’re up) and that DOGE has “found hundreds of billions of dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse” (even Musk’s own dubious and double-counted figures don’t say that).

Trump spent a good chunk of an interview with ABC News’s Terry Moran insisting that a White House photo of the hand of illegally deported migrant Kilmar Abrego García had not been doctored — even though it obviously had been altered to add the characters “MS13” to his tattooed knuckles.

“He had MS-13 on his knuckles, tattooed,” Trump maintained. “It says ‘M-S-1-3.’”

When Moran explained that the image was Photoshopped, Trump was enraged. “Hey, they’re giving you the big break of a lifetime. You know, you’re doing the interview. ... I picked you, Terry, but you’re not being very nice. He had MS-13 tattooed.” The interviewer tried to move on, but Trump kept returning to the topic, insisting Moran agree that the doctored image was real. “This is why people no longer believe the news, because it’s fake news,” Trump said.

Everybody in the administration seems to play the fantasyland game. Ed Martin, a right-wing extremist serving as acting U.S. attorney in D.C. (and Trump’s nominee to take on the job permanently), claimed under oath that he wasn’t aware of a pardoned Capitol riot defendant’s Nazi ideology when he praised the man. But recordings show Martin repeatedly defended him as a friend who was “slurred and smeared” by allegations of antisemitism.

Trump’s embattled defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, announced this week that he “proudly ENDED the ‘Women, Peace & Security’ (WPS) program” at the Pentagon, calling it “another woke divisive/social justice/Biden initiative” and a “UNITED NATIONS program pushed by feminists and left-wing activists.” In reality, the legislation was signed into law by Trump during his first term and championed in Congress by Kristi Noem, Marco Rubio and Michael Waltz, who all became senior Trump officials.

The in-over-his-head Hegseth, a former Fox News personality, took it upon himself this week to threaten on social media to attack Iran: “You will pay the CONSEQUENCE at the time and place of our choosing.” But why would the mullahs give Hegseth any credibility when his own colleagues don’t? They describe a paranoid man, more interested in doing workouts with the troops than developing the military budget.

“If you look at a pie chart of the secretary’s day, at this point 50 percent of it is probably a leak investigation,” Colin Carroll, recently fired from his job as a top Hegseth adviser, told podcaster Megyn Kelly.

Trump, asked by ABC’s Moran whether he has “100 percent confidence” in Hegseth, replied: “I don’t have 100 percent confidence in anything.”

This, at least, is true. A few weeks ago, Trump voiced confidence in Waltz, his national security adviser, calling him a “very good man who will continue to do a good job.” On Thursday, Trump demoted him.

It’s easy to see why Trump prefers his fantasies to the unpleasant reality his leadership has created. The administration aimed to reach 90 trade deals in 90 days, but after three weeks there are still no deals, only “sketches of deals,” as Trump adviser Kevin Hassett told CNN, echoing Trump’s “concept of a plan” on health care. Trump, for all his bravado, signed orders this week softening the impact of his auto tariffs.

The administration’s arrest of Wisconsin judge Hannah Dugan for allegedly aiding an illegal immigrant is such a stark affront to the rule of law that Paul Clement, the legendary conservative lawyer and solicitor general under George W. Bush, joined her defense team. And judges — even Republican-appointed ones — are increasingly losing confidence in the administration’s credibility.

On Thursday, a Trump-appointed judge in Texas ruled that Trump’s invocation of the wartime Alien Enemies Act to justify deportations was “unlawful,” saying the administration’s interpretation of the 1798 law was “contrary to the plain, ordinary meaning of the statute’s terms.”

After three children who are U.S. citizens were removed from the country on deportation flights with their mothers, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, also a Trump appointee, wrote that, despite the administration’s claims to the contrary, he had a “strong suspicion that the government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process” and against the father’s wishes. He wrote: “The government contends that this is all OK because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her. But the court doesn’t know that.”

In the Abrego García case, the administration has argued in court that it has no power to “facilitate” his return from a Salvadoran prison, as the Supreme Court has ordered. But Trump admitted this week that he could direct El Salvador to return him.

Other courts this week extended the administration’s losing streak, blocking it from firing most of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau staff, from giving DOGE access to private Social Security data and from detaining a Columbia University student for participating in pro-Palestinian protests.

Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, ordered the administration to restore funds to Radio Free Europe, saying the executive has no “constitutional power” to refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress. (For good measure, he also said the attacks on the courts from people “both inside and outside government” reflect a “fundamental misunderstanding” of the judiciary’s constitutional role.)

Yet the administration continues to block hundreds of billions of dollars in funds Congress appropriated, for medical research, security, infrastructure, disaster relief, farm assistance and more.

Trump is now weighing further assaults on the rule of law. Asked about suspending habeas corpus for illegal migrants, Leavitt said “the president is open to all remedies.” The administration has also left open the possibility of invoking the Insurrection Act to repel an alleged “invasion” at the border — even though Trump border czar Tom Homan this week certified that we now have “the most secure border in the history of this nation.”

An analysis by the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service found that the government-slashing efforts made by DOGE, claimed to be saving $160 billion, are also costing taxpayers an extra $135 billion this year in lost productivity and the like. The Wall Street Journal editorial page, though supporting the effort, says it “has been so frenetic it isn’t clear what it is achieving.”

But the destruction and the distortion go on: More than 100 lawyers have left the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. The Environmental Protection Agency is canceling 781 grants. The dismantling of AmeriCorps is provoking protests from red states. DOGE has reportedly gained access to nuclear secrets. The Postal Service is helping track down illegal immigrants. The FBI, distracted from crime fighting, is on a manhunt for insider leaks.

And Trump keeps slipping in the polls. Rather than adjust his ways, however, Trump called for pollsters for the New York Times, ABC News, The Post and Fox News to be “investigated for ELECTION FRAUD” because they are “Negative Criminals” and “THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE” who “loose [sic] a lot of credibility” when elections are held.

“The Polls from the Fake News are, like the News itself, FAKE!” Trump posted this week. “We are doing GREAT, better than ever before.”

Now the White House is moving to build an infrastructure to institutionalize such fantasies.

It had already restructured White House briefings to elevate right-wing influencers. This week, it started a feature on whitehouse.gov modeled after the Drudge Report to link people to MAGA-friendly views. It also launched separate briefings with Leavitt for right-wing outlets and commentators.

Among the first participants, as the Bulwark’s Will Sommer notes, were a MAGA personality who last year thought the moon had disappeared, a QAnon conspiracy theorist who likened face masks to condoms (he opposes both) and another conspiracy theorist who was briefly banned from X after posting an image of a toddler being tortured. Former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer also joined the questioners this week.

The topics discussed included: whether Trump would abolish the IRS (“a definitive goal for sure,” Leavitt said), the possibility that British citizens will be granted asylum because free speech supposedly isn’t allowed in that country, and a bogus allegation that Greenland has a “strategy to cozy up to communist China.”

“My Uber drivers finally speak English again, so thank you for that,” the lead-off questioner at one briefing began, attributing this to deportations.

“Congratulations on 100 incredible days,” began the first questioner at another briefing. She asked what Trump would be doing to “keep his approval rating historically high.”

Easy. Just deport all the pollsters — and Photoshop their knuckles.

By Dana Milbank

Dana Milbank is an opinion columnist for The Washington Post. He covers the White House, Congress and campaigns -- along with occasional essays about his misadventures in nature. He is a New York Times bestselling author and has written five books on politics, most recently "Fools on the Hill."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/05/02/trump-fantasy-lies/