Trump’s success in winning the presidency despite a modern day record of lying suggests that for the moment he has been empowered by a large segment of the electorate to redefine the past, present and future to suit his agenda. He has been unconstrained by facts.

We don’t yet know if Trump will take full advantage of this free pass or how much leeway Congress, the courts and the public will grant him. But once established, this command over reality has an appeal that is difficult, if not impossible, to let go. Trump has shown no signs of doing so. Indeed, he brings to mind George Orwell’s observation that totalitarianism demands

the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth.

Trump, in a notorious tweet on Nov. 27, asserted that

In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.

Appearing Dec. 11 on Fox News Sunday, Trump, despite losing the popular vote by 2.84 million, continued to describe his win as “one of the great victories of all time,” arguing that Democrats “suffered one of the greatest defeats in the history of politics in this country” and that “we had a massive landslide victory.”

Trump’s adamant rejection of the C.I.A.’s finding that Russia intervened in the election in order to help him has become the focus of partisan warfare putting Trump in conflict not only with Democratic congressional adversaries, but with Republican critics like Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham.

On Dec. 9 the Washington Post published a story on the C.I.A.’s assessment that American intelligence agencies had

identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, according to U.S. officials. Those officials described the individuals as actors known to the intelligence community and part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and hurt Clinton’s chances.

The Trump transition team quickly attacked the credibility of the C.I.A. in a prepared statement:

These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and “Make America Great Again.”

The push back against Trump was swift. Michael V. Hayden, director of the National Security Agency and later the C.I.A. under George W. Bush, told The Times:

To have the president-elect of the United States simply reject the fact-based narrative that the intelligence community puts together because it conflicts with his a priori assumptions — wow.

The ongoing conflict over the intelligence agency’s analysis of Russian involvement has become the first major test of Trump’s alt-reality vision.

John McCain, the Arizona Republican who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, flatly contradicted Trump last Sunday during an appearance on Face the Nation:

The facts are stubborn things. They did hack into this campaign.

On Dec. 12, Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, endorsed a formal inquiry into the allegations. In doing so, McConnell set the stage for a confrontation between the congressional and executive branches even before Trump takes office.