THE FANTASY WORLD TRUMP SEEMS TO LIVE IN WAS CREATED BY FOX NEWS

President Trump was just interviewed by his daughter-in-law Lara Trump for Fox News. One of Trump's claims in the interview has been contradicted by ... Trump himself:

One reason people would be surprised to hear that Trump has left Iran’s “military alone” is that earlier this month Trump said he had “completely destroyed Iran’s army,” and that “every single ship they had is resting underwater at the bottom of the sea.”

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— Larry Glickman (@larryglickman.bsky.social) May 31, 2026 at 6:27 AM

You might say he's sundowning, but I'm reminded of what Mark Cuban said about Trump back in 2015:

“He’s like that guy who’s going into a bar and he’ll say whatever it takes to get laid. Only in this case he’s not trying to f*** some girl, he’s trying to f*** the country.”

A few weeks ago, when Trump said he'd "completely destroyed Iran's army," he was trying to impress us with his display of manly force. Now, when he says he hasn't destroyed Iran's army but implies that he could destroy it any time he wants to, he's acknowledging the fact that we can all see Iran is still fighting, so he needs us to believe that this is only because he hasn't gotten really mad yet.

But there are other falsehoods in the interview that just seem delusional.

Trump: "California's elections are a fraud"

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 30, 2026 at 9:24 PM

It's not just the suggestion in this clip that California could go red if it weren't for all the (imaginary) voter fraud. (Trump has been saying that since his first term.) It's also this claim about fraud in government programs:

On the economic standpoint, if we find half of the fraud that's going on in this country -- and we will -- we're gonna have a balanced budget very soon.

Trump said this in his State of the Union address earlier that year. (“If we’re able to find enough of that fraud, we will actually have a balanced budget overnight.”) Stephen Miller also made this claim in late May, and Trump subsequently repeated it.

Stephen Miller: "Based on what I've heard, we could balance the federal budget if the only dollars that went out of the treasury went to individuals who were properly, lawfully, correctly eligible to receive them"

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 26, 2026 at 2:32 PM

Trump claims preposterously that if Vance does a good enough job rooting out fraud, "we'll have a balanced budget without having to do anything. This is the kind of money they stole. I hope Todd is gonna do a real job."

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 27, 2026 at 12:08 PM

This is false, of course:

It is implausible that eliminating all fraud in government programs would balance the federal budget. The federal deficit was $1.8 trillion in 2025. A 2024 report from the Government Accountability Office estimated that the federal government lost $233 billion to $521 billion to fraud annually, including schemes that were undetected. Eliminating all fraud in government programs across the country would reduce the federal deficit by a third.

Stephen Miller, who's not stupid, knows this is false, but he says it anyway. Trump, who is stupid, apparently believes this is true.

From the beginning of his career in business, Donald Trump openly admitted to shading the truth. This is a quote from Trump's first book, The Art of the Deal:

I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration—and a very effective form of promotion.

But when Trump was a businessman, he had to live in a world where other people disagreed with his grandiose claims -- bankers, politicians, journalists (though not enough of them), the buying public. However, when he discovered Fox News, he entered a world where truth is subservient to narrative. Trump subsequently took over the political party that uses Fox as its media wing, and now Fox, along with the rest of the right-wing media, is subservient to his narrative.

Long before there was a Trump cult, there was a Fox News cult, which persists to this day. The cult members think anything that contradicts what they're told by Fox is a lie. The cult leaders -- Fox prime-time hosts -- tell the cultists that every Democrat is a communist and a jihadist sympathizer hell-bent on destroying America with debt, crime, multiculturism, and transgenderism. The leaders say that every undocumented immigrant and asylum-seeker is immediately registered as a Democratic voter upon crossing the border -- or was until Sheriff Trump showed up. It's one lie after another, and millions of Americans believe them all.

Fox hasn't been alone in this, of course. Talk radio hosts were cult leaders too, and podcasters are leaders now. QAnon and health conspiratorialists also built the narrative of the cult, as did sites like Breitbart and the Daily Wire.

Trump is a cult member as well as a leader. Many of the delusional things he says are things he "learned" from Fox. And when he tells his own lies, no one in the cult will contradict them. The cult affirms his greatness:

Lara Trump to her father in law: "Obviously, you have set the country up so perfectly to make life more affordable on the other side of the Iran conflict. What is your message?"

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 30, 2026 at 9:25 PM

It's possible that Trump utters more falsehoods now because his aging brain can't distinguish the truth anymore -- but I think his problem is that he lives in the hermetically sealed information bubble of the right-wing media, which affirms his delusions and feeds him additional delusions to believe.

So I still believe it's not dementia that's rotting Trump's brain. It's Fox.