No one could blame you if you didn’t tune into Trump’s press conference at Mar-a-Lago on January 7, so let me summarize it for you: He put on a masterclass of deception.
Here’s just a sample. About the various legal cases filed against him, Trump declared: “We did nothing wrong on anything.” He called Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw the porn-star/hush-money/election-interference case in which Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts, “a very crooked judge.” He said special counsel Jack Smith is a “nutjob” who “executes people.” He boasted his first term saw the “greatest economy in the history of our country.” He railed against windmills and said they were causing the deaths of whales. He stated the Panama Canal is “run by China.” He suggested that the FBI was involved in instigating the January 6 riot and declared that there was not one gun among the rioters. He claimed President Joe Biden blew up a deal that would have averted Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (while justifying Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine) and that the level of killing was higher in this conflict than any other since World War II. He repeated his claim that other countries have released “thousands of murderers” and prisoners and sent them to the United States. He maintained the Democrats tried to “rig” the 2024 election and that he won in a “landslide.” He said that Biden’s recent decision to protect 625 million acres of coastline from offshore drilling covered “the whole ocean” and would cost the US $50 trillion in revenue.
None of this was true.
Meanwhile, during the 72-minute-long press conference, there was zero focus on the all-too real matter of his nominations: the anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist whom he wants to lead of the nation’s public health system, the MAGA ideologues he’s tapped to run the Pentagon and the FBI, or the apologist for Putin and the recently deposed Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad he’s selected for the top post in the intelligence community. These bonkers appointments have simply been subsumed by Trump’s more recent surge of extremism—and that improves the odds these people are confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate.
This is how things will continue to go. In a shitstorm, there are too many turds to notice each one. The press coverage of the Mar-a-Lago presser tended to smush all the nuttiness into single stories. Afterward, the New York Times posted a fact-check of Trump’s remarks that covered many but not all the lies he told. Even in infinite digital space, there’s only so much room within our attention spans.
Fittingly, the same day of that Trump show, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta (Facebook and Instagram) announced it would dump fact-checking in exchange for a system like community notes on X (née Twitter) and claimed this would advance “free expression.” (The much more likely outcome is that it will lead to a greater flow of misinformation, disinformation, and toxicity.) At the Mar-a-Lago press conference, a reporter asked Trump about Meta’s decision. Trump approved, saying, “I think they’ve come a long way.” The journalist followed up: “Do you think they’re directly responding to the threats you’ve made to [Zuckerberg] in the past?” Trump answered, “Probably.” This is a win for an authoritarian—the latest surrender to the post-truth culture that Trump has exploited and social media boosted.
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