It has long been apparent we elected a Fox News Grandpa to be President of the United States, but Donald Trump's descent into the infotainment vortex seems to be gaining steam. Where he once hate-watched any number of networks for the sheer joy of seeing his name in lights, the president has now taken to cocooning himself in the friendly confines of Fox News at all times.

As The New York Times reports, this led to a dust-up with his own wife, First Lady Melania Trump, when she dared watch CNN on Air Force One:

On the first couple’s recent trip overseas, Melania Trump’s television aboard Air Force One was tuned to CNN. President Trump was not pleased.

He raged at his staff for violating a rule that the White House entourage should begin each trip tuned to Fox—his preferred network over what he considers the “fake news” CNN—and caused “a bit of a stir” aboard Air Force One, according to an email obtained by The New York Times. The email, an internal exchange between officials in the White House Military Office and the White House Communications Agency last Thursday, also called for the ordering of two additional televisions to support Beam, a TiVo-like streaming device, to make sure the president and first lady could both watch TV in their separate hotel rooms when they travel.

Needless to say, this is not a particularly healthy information diet for the world's most powerful man. It has long been in dispute how much of Trump's worldview is now shaped by the high-level briefings he gets from aides and career public servants, and how much he gets from Fox & Friends. By his tweets, it looks like the denizens of the Couch of Great American Discourse are winning. Accounts of trying to brief the U.S. president are harrowing, and it has never been in doubt whether the president is an avid reader.

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But as the Times story makes clear, this growing psychosis is now manifest in Executive Branch policy:

At the end of the email chain, officials confirmed that tuning the TVs to Fox would be standard operating procedure going forward.

No one in the president's orbit shall be exposed to dissenting information! Only the pravda network is acceptable viewing. It is extremely reassuring to know that the president and his aides are working in a world where Steve Doocy is a major source of critical information, foreign and domestic.

But the more pressing issue is that this preference for unreality is also manifesting more directly than ever in Trump's public persona. Yes, he is well established as one of history's most prolific liars, a True Believer in the idea that there is no objective reality, and anything is true if enough people believe it. His aides—Sarah Huckabee Sanders, presiding—have bought in fully, something for which a BBC anchor thankfully called out Sean Spicer, Sanders' predecessor, this week.

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BBC interviewer to Sean Spicer: "You have corrupted discourse for the entire world by going along with these lies" pic.twitter.com/HsvNLajwQu — Robert Maguire (@RobertMaguire_) July 24, 2018

But there's a new level of brashness to Trump in recent days—a frightening proposition. The term "gaslighting" has been thrown around a lot when it comes to his public lies, but a couple of his pronouncements truly rose to that level this week. First, there was his speech before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, which he managed, through his Reverse Midas Touch, to pervert into a tawdry, crass political display in the style of his rallies:

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"Just remember: what you’re seeing and what you're reading is not what’s happening." pic.twitter.com/z90weLNLkp — MSNBC (@MSNBC) July 24, 2018

“What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”



This is almost a little too on-the-nose Orwellian. In 1984, George Orwell described the totalitarian government's ultimate demand of its subjects:

The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

It has long been clear that the president is attempting to build a genuine authoritarian movement over which only his word has any power, and which he can use to ride roughshod over the institutions of democracy. So far, this attempt has been an unmitigated success, as his supporters inhabit the same infotainment vortex he does and other members of the Republican Party—which controls both Houses of Congress and has a constitutional duty to provide a check on the Executive Branch—bow to him out of craven fealty.

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Lies that are not merely lies, but instead serve to destroy the very concept of truth, are a cornerstone of any authoritarian playbook. As the journalist Masha Gessen wrote while comparing Trump and Vladimir Putin's styles of lying in The New York Review of Books:

Lying is the message. It’s not just that both Putin and Trump lie, it is that they lie in the same way and for the same purpose: blatantly, to assert power over truth itself. Take, for example, Putin’s statements on Ukraine. In March 2014 he claimed that there were no Russian troops in newly annexed Crimea; a month later he affirmed that Russians troops had been on the ground. Throughout 2014 and 2015, he repeatedly denied that Russian troops were fighting in eastern Ukraine; in 2016 he easily acknowledged that they were there. In each case, Putin insisted on lying in the face of clear and convincing evidence to the contrary, and in each case his subsequent shift to truthful statements were not admissions given under duress: they were proud, even boastful affirmatives made at his convenience. Together, they communicated a single message: Putin’s power lies in being able to say what he wants, when he wants, regardless of the facts. He is president of his country and king of reality.

Trump has exhibited similar behavior, apparently for the same reason: when he claims that he didn’t make statements that he is on record as making, or when he claims that millions of people voting illegally cost him the popular vote, he is not making easily disprovable factual claims: he is claiming control over reality itself.

This was in evidence elsewhere this week, as Trump produced this remarkable tweet Tuesday:

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I’m very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an impact on the upcoming Election. Based on the fact that no President has been tougher on Russia than me, they will be pushing very hard for the Democrats. They definitely don’t want Trump! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 24, 2018

Why would he think the Russians intend to influence the 2018 elections? Could it be because they interfered in the 2016 elections to help him win?

Only Trump has repeatedly denied they interfered, until he granted that they did, and then said they didn't again. And all the while, he claims to be the Toughest President Ever on Russia, even though he repeatedly sided with Putin, the authoritarian thug who attacked America, against his own countrymen and United States allies, while standing next to him during the disgraceful press conference in Helsinki. He has also raged over, and dragged his feet on implementing, sanctions against Russia. He has made noises indicating the U.S. could recognize Russia's annexing of Crimea from Ukraine. It is simply unreality to suggest Russia is not thrilled with their investment in 2016.

But none of that is actually the point. As Gessen explained beautifully, the point is to command power over reality itself. All this can be true at various times, or at the same time, if Trump says it is. Which is to say, we can't be sure that anything is true at all. In that environment, the only thing that matters is what powerful people say. Trump's war on the truth is an admittedly fascinating amalgam of vanity and crippling confirmation bias combined with a ferocious instinct for manipulation and deception. He is plummeting through the infotainment vortex, but he isn't gasping for air or grabbing at something to hang onto. He seems to thrive in the void.

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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