Trump’s hall of mirrors presidency

Donald Trump has constructed a political hall of mirrors. It is a sinister, distorting reality that shows the president only what he wishes to see: fantasies of greatness and unchecked power. The effect disorients those who still live in the reality-based community, with centrists, institutionalists, mainstream liberals and progressives among the most vulnerable. For the president and his MAGA followers, though, these distortions are more comforting and real than the outside world. Since Trumpism is a political personality cult, the hall of mirrors and alternate reality it creates are a powerful tool for tying its followers to their dear leader.  

This illusion is not to be found at some traveling carnival in small-town America. It exists in the White House and is expanding across the United States — and, increasingly, the world, where Trump’s behavior is, by his own admission, constrained only by “my own morality…my own mind.”

In keeping with Trump’s thought-crime regime, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery has erased the text accompanying the president’s portrait that referenced his two impeachments. The administration has also rewritten the events of Jan. 6 and the broader plot to nullify the 2020 election. The official White House webpage now describes the events of that horrible day as “peaceful” and “orderly” until the police incited Trump’s followers — a delusional version of events that is demonstrably false — and has sanitized the role that Trump’s own words and actions played in the resulting assault on the Capitol.

In scenes that recall North Korea, or some other dictatorship or banana republic, Cabinet meetings increasingly function as loyalty rituals, with participants taking turns praising Trump’s greatness and flawless leadership.

The president is also in the process of remaking Washington, D.C. to glorify himself. Large banners featuring Trump’s scowling face adorn several federal buildings, including the Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Agriculture. His name has been added to the exterior of the Kennedy Center, which his administration is now calling the Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Trump has demolished the White House’s East Wing to construct a grand ballroom bearing his name. According to a recent interview with the New York Times, he intends to build a second story atop the West Wing colonnade. 

The president’s followers in Congress want to put his face on the silver dollar and other currency. They also want to see Trump’s face on Mount Rushmore. The U.S. Navy recently announced plans for a new type of “battleship” called “the Trump-class.”

POLITICO’s Jonathan Martin captured this atmosphere best: “Trump is living his best life in this second and final turn in the White House. Coming up on one year back in power, he’s turned the office into an adult fantasy camp, a Tom Hanks-in-Big, ice-cream-for-dinner escapade posing as a presidency…This is free-range Trump. And the country has never seen such an indulgent head of state…”

Trump’s hall of mirrors is much more than narcissism or egomania. It is a vainglorious Orwellian project to rewrite America’s public memory with the goal of further hollowing out democracy and the rule of law. 

Abroad, his hall of mirrors has manifested in acts like his recent military attack on Venezuela and the abduction of its president Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores. Trump justified this brazen violation of international law and the sovereignty of a foreign nation through an appeal to what the administration calls the “Donroe Doctrine.”

But the president’s version of the 18th-century Monroe Doctrine goes well beyond a declaration that European powers should not interfere in the Western hemisphere. Instead, Trump and his advisors view the Western Hemisphere as an imperial sphere of influence where he can use American power to invade other countries and take control of their resources as he deems necessary — a trend that political scientist Monica Duffy Toft has described as “America the Bully.” On its official social media accounts, the State Department posted an image of Trump with the caption “This is OUR Hemisphere, and President Trump will not allow our security to be threatened.”

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Historically, when foreign policy is driven by a leader’s ego, it often fails spectacularly. To that point, the New York Times reported that a video of Maduro dancing to techno music, supposedly mocking Trump’s own dance moves, was one of the final provocations for Operation Absolute Resolve. Now Trump is training his sights on Cuba, Colombia, Mexico and Greenland, which he sees as belonging to the United States. Acquiring the semiautonomous Danish territory would further elevate his claims to greatness and the status of legend in his own contorted reality.

Trump’s action against Venezuela and his designs on Greenland are reflective of an imperial logic that has a name: neo-royalism. Traditionally, under such a system, the king is the state. Since his return to office, Trump has made clear his belief that his personal interests are America’s, and the country’s vast military and economic power can and should be used to serve him. The foundations for this were laid last year by the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity. In Trump v. United States, the court’s conservative majority effectively elevated him (and future presidents) above the law, ruling that he can do anything he wants as long as he claims “presidential responsibilities.”

It’s also important to understand the role of elites under Trumpian neo-royalism. As Abe Newman, a Georgetown University political scientist, explained in an interview with Mother Jones, these “groups of elites that are organized around political leaders [are] trying to grab hold of the state to use its power to get what they want.” 

Newman added an important qualifier. “I think a lot of people start with the idea that Trump is about spheres of influence balancing against China,” he said. “Sometimes people call it America First. But that’s a red herring. But really, what you’re seeing is a set of foreign policy decisions that are about accumulating status and material wealth and then concentrating that in that group of insider elites. This is about status hierarchy, the relations of individuals.”

Several years ago, one of Trump’s biographers told me that the president views his life — and reality itself — as a type of story in which he is the main character and hero who is writing the story in real-time. Inside this hall-of-mirrors reality, his defeat or failure is not possible.

In the end, the survival of American democracy, as well as the broader project of Western democratic project, greatly depends on whether they can exist independently of Trump’s ambitions and ego, or whether they are ultimately subsumed by them.

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