This is an adapted excerpt from the Aug. 27 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
Donald Trump has always believed that he can control reality unilaterally, through the sheer force of his will. As he retook office last year, it kind of looked like he might have been right, as he went about issuing pardons, dismantling the government, steamrolling opponents and making allies of tech oligarchs. But a year and a half later, he is increasingly ruling over a world of make-believe.
In the real world, Americans are tired of the 80-year-old president and his whims. He is pursuing vanity projects and big payouts. He is ignoring their problems, the problems he caused: wars, inflation, dysfunction.
And now he is picking a trade war with Canada, one that will jack up prices for Americans on all kinds of goods. For example, the U.S. imports more toilet paper from Canada than anywhere else, and the item could soon skyrocket in price. Trump’s trade war will also increase the cost of lumber, aluminum, car parts, liquor and so much else.
All this has led to what felt like a new rock bottom this week when Trump announced he was ordering the Interior Department to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America.” To accompany his executive order, the president posted a video to social media showing himself seated at the Resolute Desk using a Sharpie to rename the body of water.
Trump is overseeing a shrinking, delusional presidency in which he thinks he can change reality with a few words.
Of course, it’s not the first time we’ve seen Trump try to reorder reality with a map and a magic Sharpie. He’s done it before with hurricane tracks and, this term, with the Gulf of Mexico. But that was a few weeks after returning to office, when he was at his strongest. But now, that’s certainly not the case. Lake America? Nobody wants this. They want cheaper gas.
But it didn’t stop with the Sharpie. The White House also posted an apparently AI-generated map to hype Lake America, one that places Washington, D.C., inside North Carolina. The administration also posted a photograph of a bald eagle attacking a Canada goose. However, commenters immediately noted that the image came from an encounter in which the goose fought back and the eagle went away.
Trump also has an equally baffling answer to the rising price of groceries in the U.S., especially beef. Last week, he signed an order to import 300,000 metric tons of beef from other countries, to be sold here at a discount. Beef that comes from … well, we don’t really know. When the president was asked which countries were involved in the deal, he told reporters: “I don’t want to say which countries, but there are a few countries.”
Trump had already increased imports of beef from Argentina, where he has been trying to prop up a right-wing government. But the Department of Agriculture had to recall 30,000 pounds of Argentinian beef that was imported to Florida and Texas without any health or safety inspection.
And then there’s the president’s deluded new approach to the war he declared that’s directly added to the cost of your gas. On Wednesday, Trump declared “mission accomplished” in Iran, posting an image of himself looking over George W. Bush and the ayatollah, beneath artificial intelligence fighter jets that appear to be missing half their tailfins.
However, despite Trump’s declaration, the war is still on. The U.S. military is still depleting its ammunition stockpiles. And Iran still isn’t letting oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. But Trump’s not going to let facts get in the way of his new map crusade. He already posted a map labeling the Strait of Hormuz a “new U.S. territory.”
Trump is governing from the land of make-believe. He’s overseeing a shrinking, delusional presidency in which he thinks he can change reality with a few words. It’s his will against the real world, and it has worked for him for years. But right now, gas is more than $4 a gallon, interest rates are rising, and the mission in Iran is not accomplished.
So Trump can wave his magic Sharpie. But it’s the rest of us, living in reality, who have to pay for it all.
Allison Detzel contributed.
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