Let’s talk about Donald Trump and lying. By Lawson Akhigbe

Not ordinary lying. Not politician lying. Not the “I’ll build a bridge and then quietly forget” kind of lying. This is industrial-scale, mass-production lying. Lying with confidence. Lying with branding. Lying so frequently that reality needs a lie detector and a therapist.
People still ask, very earnestly:
“Why does Trump lie so much?”
And the answer is simple: because it works.

Trump discovered something powerful very early on:

You don’t need people to believe you.
You just need them to stop believing anything else.
Once you break that, you can say whatever you like.

He told us the economy under him was the greatest in history.
It wasn’t.
He said he passed the biggest tax cut ever.
He didn’t.
He claimed total victory over ISIS, total control over COVID, total innocence over January 6, and total success over everything he’s ever touched — including casinos that somehow went bankrupt.
Casinos.
Where the house is designed to win.

At some point, you realise accuracy isn’t the point. Repetition is.
Trump lies the way a toddler insists there’s a monster under the bed — not because it’s true, but because if he says it often enough, everyone else starts checking under the bed too.

And here’s the trick:
Not all his lies are meant for you.
Some are meant for people who already agree with him.
Some are meant to outrage his critics.
And some — the most dangerous ones — are meant to destroy the idea that truth exists at all.
Because once truth becomes optional, accountability becomes impossible.
When he calls the media “fake news,” he’s not saying they are wrong.
He’s saying nothing can be trusted.
When courts rule against him, they’re “rigged.”
When elections don’t go his way, they’re “stolen.”
When facts contradict him, facts are suddenly political opinions.

This is not chaos.

This is strategy.
Authoritarian regimes don’t need you to believe their version of events.
They just need you exhausted, confused, and cynical enough to say:
“Honestly, who knows what’s true anymore?”
And once you get there — congratulations — democracy packs its bags.

By 2025, we’re no longer arguing about policies.

We’re arguing about reality.
Was the election fair? Depends who you ask.
Did January 6 happen the way we all saw it happen? Depends what channel you watched.
Is the economy strong or weak? Depends which talking head is shouting louder.
Truth has become a team sport.
And Trump thrives in that environment, because facts have rules — but vibes don’t.

So how do you survive this?
You slow down.
You read history.
You read about societies where propaganda replaced facts and loyalty replaced competence.
You cling to verified information the way shipwreck survivors cling to floating wood — because everything else is designed to pull you under.
And when Trump lies — pause.
Ask yourself:
Is this a lie he believes?
A lie meant for someone else?
Or a lie designed to make truth itself seem pointless?
Because once truth is treated as just another opinion, elections stop being judgments and start being rituals.
And that — not any single policy, not any single scandal — is the real legacy of Trumpism.
Not that he lied.
But that he taught millions of people to stop caring whether something is true.
And once that happens, the loudest voice wins — not the right one.