The truth hurts, and Donald Trump is no fan of such pain. But, as president, he’s decided a full-court effort to manufacture his own set of facts will work to convince his true-believers he’s the greatest president ever — those last three words would be in all-caps on Truth Social, of course.

And he’s not ashamed of lying, while looking straight into his followers’ eyes with the devilish grin of Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat to misstate his claims. For instance:

• Last week when he ordered federal officers to take over the Washington, D.C. police force and occupy the nation’s capital, he cited crime statistics for the city that were outdated or simply wrong. He claimed the current murder rate in D.C. at 41 per 100,000, but that was 2023’s rate. It dropped significantly in 2024 to 26.6 per 100,000. One can argue that rate is still too high, but then it’s not, as Trump insisted, the “highest in the world,” or even close. Nor is D.C.’s murder rate the highest in the nation, even at its 2023 rate. In the U.S., Memphis, New Orleans, St. Louis, Baltimore, Cleveland and Detroit all had higher murder rates than 40 per 100,000, and dozens had higher rates than the capital’s 2024 rate, including Houston. But then, most of those cities are home to red-state Republicans and Trump wouldn’t want to offend them.
• Recently, Trump fired the Labor Department official in charge of compiling statistics on employment in America because he was outraged by the latest jobs report — which showed the economy was doing poorly. He ranted that the numbers on the economy were “rigged” against him, lashed out at that commissioner and hired a new person, known to be a partisan hack, and will try to force the Senate to approve his nominee. The firing caused outcry from Republicans and Democrats alike, including from William Beach, a former head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics who was nominated by Trump in his first term. Beach said the firing was “groundless” and set a “dangerous precedent,” adding that the president “seeks to blame someone (else) for unwelcome economic news.”
• In the weeks prior to this, Trump has gone after the nation’s intelligence analysts to revise their intelligence reports; denied his tax cuts would cause a $4 trillion increase in the national debt and has pulled ridiculously incredulous numbers out of a hat to suggest the tax bill will boost the economy and drive down the nation’s debt; denied the recent heat waves and drought the country is experiencing has anything to do with climate change, and rather than rely on science to prove his point, he rolls back the climate change policies President Biden put in place and the scientific justification for them and then scrubs the government websites of that underlying data; and when the Smithsonian included the historic impeachments of Trump in his first term, he ordered the nation’s museum to remove the exhibit to hide such truths.

It’s not hard to equate Trump’s quick temper, childishness, impatience and inflated ego as a mirror to Carroll’s Red Queen in his classic book “Alice in Wonderland.” But more seriously, he is a wannabe dictator masquerading as the president of our nation’s democracy.

As Peter Baker, the New York Times reporter who is now covering his sixth presidency, wrote in a recent report, the message to government officials is plain: “toe the line or risk losing their jobs.”

What this means to Vermonters is also plain: when watching the national news on television or listening to government statistics cited on the radio or reading any government stats online or in print, going forward you’ll have to apply your own research and critical thinking to analyze if the government information — particularly if it’s coming from Trump or his administration — seems valid.

Trump increasing desire to control information and dictate what the public should believe is a direct threat to every aspect of our democracy. Unfortunately, the Republican Party is so far down the Trump rabbit hole that it’s going along with his excursion into an alternative reality — much like Alice’s Wonderland — with the understanding that if they’re toadies, they’ll at least keep their heads. The rest of us, like Alice, must choose sides and fight back.

Angelo Lynn