One Hundred Days of Trump 2.0: Exhaustion, Misinformation, and the Myth of Control

The first 100 days of Donald Trump’s second term have unfolded with such velocity and dissonance that many Americans have been left dazed, if not numb. Not because of overwhelming progress or sweeping reform—but because of the sheer weight of falsehoods, circular reasoning, and narrative manipulation unleashed at a scale and speed designed not to persuade, but to overwhelm. These are not simply policy choices; they are tools in a strategy of cognitive exhaustion, epistemic sabotage, and myth-making. As former strategist Steve Bannon once said with chilling clarity, the goal is to "flood the zone with shit." And flood it, Trump has.

Take the claim that the U.S. was "losing $2 trillion a year on trade" under Biden. It is not only false—the actual goods and services deficit was under $920 billion in 2024—but it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how trade deficits function. Trump has repeated this misstatement so often that its falsehood becomes less important than its emotional function. It signals betrayal, loss, and economic decline. It directs blame outward and invites the comforting illusion of control through punishment: tariffs, bans, walls. The logic isn't economic. It's mythic.

Similarly, he claimed that other nations were "emptying their prisons" into the U.S., invoking the image of dangerous criminals streaming across the border. This is not supported by any credible immigration data. It is a revival of a decades-old lie drawn from the 1980 Mariel boatlift, which itself was steeped in Cold War paranoia and xenophobic backlash. No immigration expert has identified mass prisoner releases as a significant or organized policy in other countries during the Biden administration. But again, the point is not factual accuracy. The point is fear. The point is vigilance. The point is, ultimately, loyalty.

Repetition is key to this strategy. Trump repeatedly claims that under him, the U.S. "took in hundreds of billions" in tariffs from China and that there was "no inflation." In reality, tariff revenue from China was closer to $75 billion across his entire first term—not counting the $28 billion in federal aid paid to U.S. farmers to offset China's retaliatory tariffs. Inflation did exist under Trump; in fact, it averaged 2% before the pandemic pushed it even lower in 2020. But to acknowledge inflation is to acknowledge complexity, which has no place in the kind of heroic tale Trump is telling.

This is the circular logic at work: the more you disprove the claim, the more it reasserts itself as evidence that the truth is being hidden. If inflation statistics don’t support Trump’s view? Then the statistics must be fake. If foreign leaders deny calling him? They must be lying. If a deported man isn't an MS-13 member? Then Photoshop the evidence. Every contradiction becomes proof of conspiracy. Every correction becomes an attack. The very act of trying to clarify is recast as censorship, elite suppression, or betrayal.

The exhaustion this creates is not accidental. It is strategic. Trump does not need everyone to believe every claim. He only needs the public to stop trying to make sense of them. When people can no longer track what is true, they retreat into simpler frameworks: identity, allegiance, outrage. In that fog, Trump thrives. He offers emotional certainty in the place of intellectual coherence.

This is perhaps most evident in how he frames global events. According to Trump, the war in Ukraine "would have never happened" if he had been president. The October 7 Hamas attacks? Also would not have happened. This retrospective clairvoyance positions him as a man outside of history, immune to its complexities. When in fact, he praised Vladimir Putin's move into Ukraine as "savvy" and "genius," and did nothing to deter Russian aggression during his first term.

His revisionism goes deeper. He says Crimea was "handed over by Obama," ignoring that it was annexed by Russia in 2014 over the Obama administration's objections. He says he "won all seven swing states" in 2024—a claim without foundation, though he did narrowly win the electoral college. He claims there was "plenty of cheating," though no court or credible audit has found substantial fraud.

All of this adds up to a larger strategy: make the past malleable, the present incoherent, and the future terrifying without him. It is a classic authoritarian template. He alone remembers it right. He alone tells the truth. He alone can save you.

This is not just misinformation. It is myth-making. Trump routinely uses enormous, unverifiable numbers to convey strength. He claimed Apple was investing $500 billion in new plants (false: Apple had already committed $430 billion under Biden and $350 billion under Trump). He claimed that the Saudis agreed to invest $1 trillion in the U.S. economy (they pledged $600 billion, with much of it still theoretical). He said the Department of Government Efficiency found "hundreds of billions" in waste (DOGE's own website only claimed $160 billion—and even that was likely double-counted).

These numbers do not inform policy. They perform authority. They are symbols, not statistics. What matters is not whether they are true, but whether they make you feel like he is winning. And if he is winning, then America is winning. And if America is not winning, then someone else is cheating.

Trump weaponizes contradiction, too. He is simultaneously the strongest leader and the most persecuted man in America. He brags of massive victories (all swing states, hundreds of trade deals, biggest investment boom in history), while claiming that he has been hounded, censored, sabotaged by the "deep state" and the media. This double role—dominator and victim—requires total loyalty. Because if he is both unbeatable and under siege, then your faith becomes the thing that holds the truth together.

It’s not surprising, then, that Trump continues to stoke false comparisons between the January 6 insurrection and the 2020 racial justice protests. He insists people did "far worse" during the George Floyd demonstrations, that those people "got nothing," while "political prisoners" from the Capitol riot suffer. This is false. Protesters were prosecuted, convicted, even killed in some cases. In Portland, Minneapolis, and Seattle, authorities pursued charges, issued long sentences, and investigated acts of violence.

Yet Trump insists this violence is invisible. Why? Because to acknowledge that others faced consequences would destroy the specialness of January 6. In Trump’s story, the Capitol riot is not a stain—it's a symbol. His supporters weren’t criminals. They were patriots. Any evidence to the contrary must be erased, burned, deleted, just like he says the "unselect committee" did (they didn’t).

Then there are the personal vendettas rebranded as truth-telling. He claims Stacey Abrams received $2 billion for environmental work. She didn't. She worked with a consortium that helped win clean-energy grants totaling $1.9 billion—none of it for personal gain. He says Nancy Pelosi got rich on insider information. No proof. He invokes DOGE as a watchdog of corruption, when it’s a barely-functional department cutting enforcement and creating chaos.

Trump’s approach isn’t built on ignorance. It’s built on performance. He has mastered a language of mythic grievance. It's not about policies; it's about enemies. It's not about governance; it's about glory. The facts do not matter. The feeling does.

And that brings us to the true danger: exhaustion.

Over time, people stop checking. They stop correcting. They start saying things like "well, they all lie anyway," or "at least he fights." This is the long game. Not to convince, but to corrode. To break down public capacity for discernment, and replace it with reflex. We are no longer debating policy. We are fighting for the ability to agree on what a fact is. And Trump is winning that war by making people stop caring.

If this continues unchecked, we risk entering a post-accountability politics—not just a post-truth one. A system where lies are no longer challenged because everyone assumes the game is rigged. Where the most audacious falsehoods are taken as signs of strength. Where democracy is reduced to a vibe.

The first 100 days of Trump 2.0 are not a return to normalcy. They are a refinement of the tactics he tested in his first term. More conspiratorial. More confident. More detached from reality. And far more dangerous because of the exhaustion they generate. The question is no longer just how we correct these falsehoods. The question is how we restore attention, rebuild clarity, and remember that facts still matter—not just in courtrooms or textbooks, but in the stories we tell ourselves about who we are.

Donald Trump is not winning on truth. He is winning on story. But the truth, when told well, is still the more powerful one. And it’s time we started telling it again.