If we know anything about Donald Trump, American president, it's that he believes he can mold the contours of reality to suit his interests. The truth is whatever you can get enough people to believe. You've got a conclusion—now go find some evidence to support it. As the head of a privately held business, this was fairly straightforward: say something over and over again, and hire minions to attempt to make it real until you can make the sale or the whole thing falls apart. But when you're in charge of the world's most powerful country, this becomes a somewhat more difficult task. Beyond the reporters and the political opponents hassling you, reality has a way of crashing through the atmosphere of your little self-reinforcing bubble, complicating the task of proving Everything Is Tremendous because you say so.

Another reality comet hit this week when U.S. intelligence chiefs testified before Congress that, contrary to the prior announcements from Trump and his administration, ISIS is not vanquished and there's no indication North Korea will actually give up its nuclear weapons. This was worrying, in that the intelligence types—whose every word deserves a great deal of scrutiny, if not quite as much as the guy who says 15 false things a day in public—seemed to be sounding the alarm about the administration they work for. Needless to say, this did not sit well with our fearless leader.

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The Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran. They are wrong! When I became President Iran was making trouble all over the Middle East, and beyond. Since ending the terrible Iran Nuclear Deal, they are MUCH different, but.... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 30, 2019

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....a source of potential danger and conflict. They are testing Rockets (last week) and more, and are coming very close to the edge. There economy is now crashing, which is the only thing holding them back. Be careful of Iran. Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 30, 2019

Again, there's ample reason—Iraq, the meddling in South America, the meddling in Iran, the disastrous hijinks elsewhere—to doubt what the director of the CIA has to say about anything. But look at these Official Messages From the President. Who ya got when it comes to relating a picture of what's happening that's closer to observable reality?

It's particularly one-sided here because, as CNN's Jim Sciutto points out, Trump has already begun to try to hedge his position:

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The news from Trump's tweets this morning is that he is markedly walking back his earlier claims:

On ISIS, from "defeated" in Syria to "Caliphate will soon be destroyed"

On NK, from "no longer a nuclear threat" to "decent chance of denuclearization" — Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) January 30, 2019

It's almost like he just says whatever he thinks benefits him, regardless of what is happening in reality, in the hopes enough people will believe it that it's repackaged as the truth. What a great way to run policy when you're trying to denuclearize the Korean peninsula!

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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