Bullshit!
Glenn Kessler was editor and chief writer of “The Fact Checker” for the Washington Post from 2011 to 2025. This is an excerpt from his Substack.
Twenty years ago this month, the late Princeton philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt published his seminal work On Bullshit, which argued that bullshit was worse than lying. His point was that a liar knows the truth and deliberately tries to hide or distort it, while a bullshitter doesn’t care about the truth at all — they care only about the impression they make.
When Donald Trump emerged on the political stage in 2015, Frankfurt wrote in Time magazine that Trump was the epitome of the bullshit artist he had identified a decade earlier.
“Trump freely offers extravagant claims about his own talents and accomplishments,” Frankfurt said. “He maintains, for example, that he has the greatest memory in the world. This is farcically unalloyed bullshit.”
When I managed The Fact Checker for the Washington Post, readers constantly asked: Why rely only on Pinocchio ratings? Why don’t you call Trump a liar?
I thought “liar” was a conversation stopper — it would be my judgment that he lied. With Trump, it’s hard to tell. He might actually believe some of the stuff he says, or has convinced himself it’s true.
The one time I clearly labeled a lie was when I had convincing evidence. Trump had insisted he knew nothing about hush-money payments to silence alleged paramours before he was elected president. Then his former attorney released a recording of Trump discussing an arrangement with the National Enquirer to pay $150,000 to one woman. Trump was caught on tape, so there was no doubt Trump had lied.
But, following Frankfurt’s theory, focusing only on Trump’s lies obscures a deeper danger to American society. As a bullshitter, Trump doesn’t care whether what he says reflects reality. He says whatever serves his momentary purpose, often contradicting himself without hesitation or shame. This indifference to truth makes Trump’s bullshit more insidious than lies.
Trump is the dominant political figure of the past decade — perhaps of our lifetimes. Tens of millions of Americans support his policies, or at least disdain the policies of his Democratic opponents. In the last election, he narrowly won both the Electoral College and the popular vote. He views those victories as a mandate for a reordering of the federal government, with an unchallenged executive wielding vast power.
The danger is that Trump’s bullshit has become woven into the fabric of American life. Many citizens now struggle to discern reality from spin. Was January 6 a violent attack on democracy — or a peaceful protest demonized by the media? Was Joe Biden legitimately elected — or did Democrats steal the presidency in the greatest fraud in U.S. history?
Trump bullshits to construct an alternative reality — one that almost half the country has accepted as fact. . . .