Policy is Easy!
Just lie about it.
Via the AP: Trump claims a win on immigration after a call with Mexico’s president. But she suggests no change.
President-elect Donald Trump declared a win on stopping illegal immigration through Mexico on Wednesday after talking with that country’s leader. But Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum suggested Mexico was already doing its part and had no interest in closing its borders.
The two spoke just days after Trump threatened to impose sweeping new tariffs on Canada and Mexico as part of his effort to crack down on illegal immigration and drugs.
Trump said Sheinbaum “agreed to stop Migration through Mexico.” Sheinbaum indicated separately on social media that she told Trump that Mexico is already “taking care of” migrant caravans, calling it an “excellent conversation.”
So, of course, anyone who knows a scintilla about policy knows that Sheinbaum both did not, and could not, promise to “stop Migration [sic.] though Mexico.”
On the one hand, maybe all this means that Trump is going to pretend to do stuff and then act like he was successful. This would not surprising, given his general approach to life.
On the other, this is a dangerous approach to governing because it will only further deepen the already exiting disconnect between national perceptions and actual reality. We are already in a precarious space where we, as a country barely have a shared reality. And a shift from a lack of shared agreements on what is real to the active promotion of the unreal is not healthy for us in the least.
Further, this is all too similar to the way Putin governs. It becomes impossible for people to know what is truly real, so they just don’t even try. Along those lines I recommend this 2014 piece from The Atlantic: “Russia and the Menace of Unreality.”
In today’s Russia, by contrast, the idea of truth is irrelevant. On Russian ‘news’ broadcasts, the borders between fact and fiction have become utterly blurred.
[…]
The point of this new propaganda is not to persuade anyone, but to keep the viewer hooked and distracted—to disrupt Western narratives rather than provide a counternarrative. It is the perfect genre for conspiracy theories, which are all over Russian TV.
[…]
But insisting on the lie, the Kremlin intimidates others by showing that it is in control of defining ‘reality.’ This is why it’s so important for Moscow to do away with truth. If nothing is true, then anything is possible.
We are not at the level of state-controlled media using actors to promote fake stories (as noted in the linked piece). Still, the idea that the “news” might be an outlet to “keep the view hooked and distracted” is quite recognizable, as is the blurring of fact and fiction. We have watched mainstream news outlets like Fox News promote the big lie about the 2020 election. We have seen ongoing attempts to downplay, if not excuse, January 6th. Outlets like Newsmax and OAN very much promote a Trump-based “reality.” In regard to the story at the heart of this post, the NY Post (which has been a huge purveyor of pro-Trumpist propaganda) has a headline the uncritically accepts Trump’s version, “Trump says Mexico’s president has ‘agreed to stop’ migrants crossing into US through her country: ‘Very productive conversation!’ “
Part of what helped us get Trump 2.0 (and even Trump 1.0) is the widespread assertion that “all politicians lie,” so Trump really isn’t that different from any other politician. This has opened a massive rationalization gateway.
I would note that a significant amount of the “reporting” on this matter (along with a lot of the reporting on Trump’s nominations) have just been slicing and dicing of Trump’s Truth Social posts. The media is lazily just parroting what Trump has posted as if they actually talked to him and did reporting on the subject. If a reader is just skimming, they might not even notice that basically the “news” is recycling Trump press releases. And while this is not unusual in the grand scheme of things, the fact that Trump is not trying to hew to the truth means that the news media is just parroting untruth and unreality, laundering it through their word processors so as to get something posted to the internet as fast as the can.
Side bet: Scheinbaum has a recording of this call and Trump does not. No world leader will have an off the record conversation with Trump because no world leader will trust him to represent it correctly.
The other, perhaps even more important part is the disappearance of media outlets that (1) care about the truth, (2) are perceived by the general public as reliable, and (3) reach the general public. Without the ones that satisfy (2) and (3) but not (1), Trump doesn’t win a second term.
On migration through Mexico.
There are lots of undocumented crossings at the border with Guatemala and Belize in the south. But there are also people who enter Mexico formally, either by ground, sea, or air. Not that many, but a considerable amount.
The latter group is not monitored nor restricted inside the country. This is 100% normal practice in most countries. Few control movements of people within the country (and those that do tend to be authoritarian or totalitarian dictatorships, like the USSR which had such controls).
So if Venezuelans, Ukrainians, Chinese, Russians, Hondurans, etc. enter Mexico legally and then travel to the US border, there’s nothing anyone can legally do about it.
“GiftAtlantic”
Your Atlantic link did not work for me, perhaps the above will?
“Of course social security wasn’t eliminated. Demonrats are just keeping you from getting the checks! Blame them, not my bills that canceled it!”
Allow me to be the X thousandth person this year to quote what Hannah Arendt said in 1951.
@Gavin:More realistically it’ll be, “Those tax and spend libturds ignored all our warnings for years and allowed the system to go bankrupt. And they wouldn’t support our bi-partisan efforts (to cut benefits) so we’re, oh so reluctantly, forced to cut benefits.”
It’s been estimated that the SS trust fund will be unable to support full payments in 2035. Where we see a problem, GOPs see a plan.
And Trump said it would be. So, all it really took was Trump’s re-election. Take that libtards!
As I mentioned in the other thread, this was predictable (although I honestly thought it would take longer and involve a few drone strikes).
@DrDaveT:
There are plenty of media outlets available that care deeply about the truth, so I don’t think “disappearance” is what is happening. The general public (49.9% of the general public, at least) doesn’t want the truth; they want to be assured that what they feel is true. There’s a market for misinformation and the media being commercial first and foremost, the market is being served. Joe Rogan is a political influencer, fergawdsakes.
I still want to believe that “at the length truth will out,” but the 2024 election has shook my faith to its core.
@Scott F.:
We obviously have different faiths. IMO , you believe that truth will out, whereas I believe (a) the leopard will eat their faces, and (b) the barbarians have already set up tables in the village square.
I agree with the sentiments in the post, but it understates the problem. A vast information network has already uncritically spread the “fact” Trump did in one phone call what Biden and Harris have been unable to do in four years: get Mexico to close the border.
That’s a nice, simple narrative. Easy to relate, easy to understand, easy to remember. Many people will believe it, not all of them MAGA supporters. I’m constantly surprised at liberals accepting big lies peddled by the right because they are so pervasive; for example, I’ve read lots of liberals bemoaning the 14/10/20 million Biden voters who stayed home this election, when the true figure will be something around 6.5 million.
President Sheinbaum could have responded with a tweet that Trump’s a goddam liar. That might have cut through the MAGA narrative and caused some people to doubt it. But naturally she didn’t, because it’s not in her or her country’s interests to start relations with a new US president with a vicious slanging match. So she sent a letter which called him a goddam liar forcefully but diplomatically. But since it was more than three lines hardly anyone will read it, and Trump’s simple tale of triumph will be the received wisdom in large parts of the country.
He will do this again and again, and given the asymmetrical power relationships between him and those in a position to call him out on his lies, he’ll keep getting away with it. That’s what happens when one half of a two-party system adopts deliberate lying as its core political strategy. Either the other party responds in kind, or it loses the propaganda war by default. And in either case, democratic governance continues to deteriorate.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
Leopards eating the faces of those who voted for the LEPF Party is the truth coming out, is it not? Trump claiming credit for good things that happen despite himself is much worse.
@Scott F.:
Well, the populace did open the gates…but the barbarians did promise that the village would be completely remodeled when they leave, right? Bestest shiniest village ever, so many people say!
@Joe: I bet Putin has a few off the record conversations with him.