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The Trump White House is just an insulated bubble of lies. The funny part is that they don’t know it. Or at least it appears that they don’t.
If President Trump were to tell his staff that he was canceling all outdoor activities because it’s raining, those who live in the bubble of lies would merely repeat it. They would close all the blinds that clearly show how sunny it is outside. If they needed to go outside, they would grab an umbrella or a rain hat and move fast so that they wouldn’t get wet.
And if anyone dares to ask, “Why are you acting like it’s raining when it’s crazy sunny out here?!”, that person would become the shunned one for telling the truth and not adhering to the agreed-upon lie.
That’s all Trump’s White House is — a series of agreed-upon lies.
Citizens, reporters, and members of Congress are never to break the fourth wall, which is what happened Tuesday during a White House briefing in which Associated Press reporter Josh Boak asked White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt why the president was imposing “tax hikes in the form of tariffs.”
It’s a legitimate question for anyone outside of the White House bubble of lies, but Leavitt — who is up to her neck in suds — couldn’t even let Boak finish his question before she claimed, it was “not true” and “he’s not doing that.”
“He’s actually not implementing tax hikes,” Leavitt said, Mediaite reports. “Tariffs are a tax hike on foreign countries that, again, have been ripping us off. Tariffs are a tax cut for the American people, and the president is a staunch advocate of tax cuts. As you know, he campaigned on no taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime, no taxes on Social Security benefits. He is committed to all three of those things, and he expects Congress to pass them later this year.”
Boak then responded, again with a heaping helping of the truth, “I’m sorry, have you ever paid a tariff? Because I have. They don’t get charged on foreign companies. They get charged on the importers.”
Which is true. Everyone knows this. Everyone has tried to explain this truth to Trump’s White House but it’s impossible to penetrate the bubble of lies.
Here is how Tax Foundation, a tax-focused think tank, explained it:
Historically, economists have found that foreign firms absorbed some of the burden of tariffs by lowering their prices, resulting in a combination of foreign businesses and domestic firms and consumers sharing the burden of tariffs. In contrast to past studies, however, recent studies have found the Trump tariffs were passed almost entirely through to US firms or final consumers.
Realizing that she’d been tripped up, Leavitt then went to the second form of denialism: avoidance.
“And, ultimately, when we have fair and balanced trade — which the American people have not seen in decades — as I said at the beginning,” Leavitt responded, “revenues will stay here, wages will go up, and our country will be made wealthy again, and I think it’s insulting that you’re trying to test my knowledge of economics and the decisions that this president has made. I now regret giving a question to The Associated Press.”
Of course she does because AP is outside of the bubble of lies. They won’t act as if it’s raining when it’s not. They won’t act like trickle-down tariffs are a real thing. They won’t participate in the repetitive lie munching that seems to sustain the Trump White House because it’s toxic and most importantly not true.
The truth is like Kryptonite to Trump’s White House, though, so the spread of disinformation continues.
