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.”
