Everyone in the media is giddy about President Donald Trump’s admission that he made up a “fact” that the United States has a trade deficit with Canada without checking the real facts, which show otherwise.

This is a cool story, because it goes beyond the daily story that Trump lied about something. Today’s story is that Trump knows that he’s lying.

The fact checkers are in heaven, pointing out that the United States does indeed have a trade surplus with Canada, even though Trump always says the Canadians are eating our lunch.

“ America is getting screwed over, therefore we must have a trade deficit with Canada. ”

The fact checkers, of course, are correct: According to U.S. data, Canada buys more goods and services from the United States than it sells to us. This is the outcome Trump says he wants, not just for Canada but for all of our trading partners.

Instead of yelling at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Trump ought to be thanking him.

But the fact checkers don’t get it. And, to a large extent, American journalism doesn’t get it. Trump doesn’t care what the facts are, and neither do his supporters. The only truth that matters is that a lot of voters are furious about the direction of their lives, their communities and their country, and they blame imports. Trump is telling them he will fix it, even if, in some cases, there’s nothing to fix.

It’s pretty obvious by now that Donald Trump isn’t exactly a wonk.

He doesn’t know basic facts about the issues, he doesn’t know the pros or cons of any argument, he doesn’t know what solutions have been proposed or rejected, or why those proposals might be wanting, either practically or politically. But Trump doesn’t care. He doesn’t want to solve problems. He wants to yell at the TV.

When Trump responds to a factual report about him by saying “fake news,” he’s not saying the report is wrong. He’s saying he doesn’t like it. He’s telling his supporters to ignore the facts and listen to their gut, which is always right about how America is getting screwed over by liberals, elitists, immigrants, foreigners, women and the media.

Listen to Trump describe his meeting with Canada’s Trudeau: “Nice guy, good-looking, comes in — ‘Donald, we have no trade deficit’ — he was very proud. ... I said, ‘Wrong, Justin, you do.’ I didn’t even know. ... I had no idea. I just said, ‘You’re wrong.’ You know why? Because we’re so stupid.”

And after the Washington Post reported on what he’d said at the private fund-raising event, Trump doubled down. Trudeau denies that Canada has a surplus, Trump tweeted, “but they do ... they almost all do ... and that’s how I know!”

What Trump should have told Trudeau is that Canada’s own data confirms Trump’s claim that the U.S. is running a deficit with Canada. But rather than debating the facts with Trudeau — a debate he might have won — Trump tried bluster instead.

Trump says he knows that we have a trade deficit with Canada — despite what his own trade negotiator says, and despite what the Commerce Department says — “because we’re so stupid.” Because “they almost all do.” He knows it because he knows it.

America is getting screwed over, therefore we must have a trade deficit with Canada.

All the fact checking in the world could never penetrate that logic.

Unfortunately, fact checking is what American journalists do. They go out, find out facts, and report on them. Then they find more facts, some of which contradict the first facts. Sometimes the facts are in dispute, and sometimes people have different ideas about which facts are important, and sometimes terrible journalists ignore uncomfortable facts or make up convenient ones.

But American journalism (the serious kind) always boils down to facts. At its best, it’s always about getting as close as possible to the truth. That’s the job.

No one can be free from bias. Objectivity is impossible. But what protects journalists from charges that what they write is biased by their opinions is their reliance on facts. Agreeing on the facts is the only way we can overcome our differences of opinion. What is it they say, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but no one is entitled to their own set of facts”?

Even a contest of ideas should be shaped by the facts. If I argue that Canada should be punished for running a trade surplus with the United States, the fact that Canada actually has a trade deficit ought to matter.

From the time I started as a novice journalist, 50 years ago, editors have drummed it into my head: “Get the facts right.” I heard it over and over: “If your mother says she loves you, get a second source!”

One time I was calling in a story to the rewrite man, and he growled at me: “Smith? How do you spell that?”

I’m not claiming I always got the facts right, but it was the point of what I was doing.

From the archives (May 2016):Donald Trump’s genius is his ability to make facts irrelevant

Trump blows that up. The facts are irrelevant, at least to his supporters, which may include 40% of the public, all of the leaders of the executive branch, and slight majorities of the House and Senate. And, of course, the emerging state propaganda apparatus.

The right-wing media — Fox News, Breitbart, InfoWars, Town Hall, etc. — aren’t so devout about facts. Meanwhile, the mainstream media is still stuck in the mentality of my first editor, who made sure I’d verified that the Smith in my story was spelled S-M-I-T-H.

These days, Smith is spelled however Trump wants it to be. And if you don’t like it, you’re using a “fake dictionary.”

David Roberts of Vox Media has a very good column Thursday about why the New York Times cannot put a real Trump conservative on its op-ed pages: “The NYT sees the opinion page as a contest of ideas. And fundamentally, what Trumpist conservatives are advocating for are not ideas, but a demographic, a tribe. It’s a tribe that has split off from mainstream institutions, rejects mainstream standards of accuracy, and now uses media entirely as a tool, a weapon.”

In this tribal warfare, disregard for the facts is a powerful weapon against those of us who believe, as the Founding Fathers did, that reason is the foundation of democracy. How can the media play its essential role as a watchdog if we can’t even agree on what barking is?