One cornerstone of Donald Trump's political strategy is his belief that truth does not exist in the public discourse. The truth is whatever you can get enough people to believe, so you say whatever you can get away with. He spelled this out in a Washington Post interview Tuesday, in which he suggested he ignores what others have discovered about the world around us through observation and the scientific method and years of study and just goes with his "gut." His gut just so happens to tell him what he wants to hear, and what best serves his interests, at all times. You might recognize this as Stephen Colbert's argument for "truthiness" all those years ago—except Colbert was joking.

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Still, as much as the president is a complete moron in terms of intellectual capacity, he does have an instinct for how people and the media work. And he has, over the last three-years-going-on-a-century, successfully hacked the traditional news media to avoid accountability for lying incessantly, behaving shamelessly, and generally knowing nothing about anything and caring less.



This is partly because he has an entire right-wing media ecosystem to fall back on—one that treats whatever he says and does as the only thing to say or do. (They often don't bother defending it as the right thing to do. Sometimes it's enough to simply own the libs.) But he has also largely skated past legitimate journalists and news organizations by just denying he ever said something he's on tape saying—or which he tweeted and never deleted. It's still there, out in reality, but it's hard to pull up the receipts fast enough to catch him before he rumbles off on another rant about how "the oceans are very small."

Win McNamee Getty Images

Naturally, because it has been effective, this strategy has filtered down to Trump's apparatchiks—like, say, Ivanka Trump. The president's senior adviser, who also moonlights as The First Daughter for news stories where it's more convenient, was asked on Good Morning America this morning about her father's decision to authorize U.S. authorities at the border to use lethal force against a group of migrants. She used her dad's strategies to try to get out of it, but GMA brought the receipts—and may just have cracked the code on how to hold a Trumpist accountable.

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Did you see how she tried to deny it ever happened, then, when faced with video showing her father saying it, was forced to answer the question? Unfortunately, in this shameless era, it may be necessary to come to any interview armed with video evidence of what you plan to ask about. In the process, though, GMA exposed her entire scam: all that talk about how she's "devastated" by images of mothers and their children getting teargassed comes off a little cheap when she then defends her father's move to put these people—most of whom are seeking asylum, as is their right under international law, and which makes them refugees—at risk of lethal violence.

It is incredibly difficult to hold someone accountable for their behavior when they simply deny what you're talking about ever happened. Imagine your dog shit on the couch and, when you scolded him, he stuck up his nose indignantly and indicated he does not, in fact, defecate. This was on show elsewhere in the interview, when it came up that Ivanka used private email for government business—the exact offense for which her father suggested Hillary Clinton should be thrown in prison.

This one is trickier, because there are no quick video receipts to pull up beyond the endless video of Trump suggesting bad email protocol is borderline treasonous. But Ivanka is indeed distorting reality here when she suggests her situation isn't comparable to Clinton's. She focuses on a key distinction:

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IVANKA: All of my emails that relate to any kind of government work—which was mainly scheduling and logistics and managing the fact that I have a home life and a work life—are all part of the public record. They're all stored on the White House system. Everything has been preserved, everything is archived.

And here's where Deborah Roberts, who conducted a strong interview overall, had a misstep.

ROBERTS: But people see it as the same.

This left an opening for Ivanka to spin this as a partisan attack, which she did. (She also then led a merry dance about how we all have emails, and "receive content" on those emails, and some are public and some are private. Yes, as an adult—much less a senior employee at the White House—it is your job to manage these things. Everyone has "a home life and a work life," but you have a top-secret security clearance. All this is what your father said Clinton failed on and should be jailed for it.) Later, she went to another level on this "archive" spin.

IVANKA: In my case, all of my emails are on the White House server.

Oh, so now they're all on there? Just a minute ago it was all of them that relate to government work. She just ratcheted up the claim as the interview went on—very Trumpian.

Ivanka Trump and her father test the microphones on stage at the 2016 Republican National Convention. Chip Somodevilla Getty Images

Here's the Washington Post story that broke the news:

Both [Ivanka] Trump and Clinton relied on their personal attorneys to review their private emails and determine which messages should be retained as government records.

So they're not all on there, and Ivanka's personal attorney decided what emails should be kept—the exact methodology that Clinton used. This is an example of the stunning volume of receipts you have to bring to an interview with a Trumpist. Every fact is in dispute. Every molecule of reality is a battleground. The intent is to stay on the front foot through relentless attack, saying anything to avoid losing an inch of ground. It's just Ivanka comes at things with this weird Goop-ish tone:

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Perhaps all children are some unique expression of their parents' core tendencies. Or maybe this family is just a pack of liars. GMA certainly proved one thing, though: if you want one of them to answer a question, you better bring the receipts. All of them.