For ten years, the MAGA faithful have overlooked a level of dishonesty from Donald Trump that once would have ended political careers. What might previously have been disqualifying has instead become normalized, excused, and eventually expected.
What began as exaggeration hardened into routine falsehoods, then evolved into a governing style in which truth is negotiable and fabrication is often rewarded. That tolerance, once unwavering, is now beginning to erode. Even conservative media outlets that long amplified administration talking points are quietly questioning whether constant deception about failures, scandals, and human consequences still serves their political interests.
Trump’s leadership has always relied on narrative dominance rather than factual coherence. If reality conflicts with the message, reality must be dismissed. If evidence intrudes, it must be attacked. If criticism persists, it must be discredited. For years, supporters interpreted these lies not as deception but as defiance. Today, repetition has drained them of potency. The lies are no longer shocking, no longer energizing, and increasingly no longer believed.
Cabinet secretaries and agency heads have attempted to copy Trump’s ability to invent a favorable reality. Most have failed. Lacking his instincts, they resort to strained denials, circular explanations, and statements that collapse under minimal scrutiny. The spectacle of senior officials defending the indefensible on television has become routine. What once looked like confidence now looks like fear. What once appeared coordinated now appears coerced.
This shift reflects a deeper institutional decay. There was a time when the federal government sought to recruit individuals with experience, judgment, and credibility. Republican administrations once emphasized managerial competence, ethical restraint, and respect for public trust. Those values were never perfectly upheld, but they were publicly acknowledged. Today, they are largely absent from the selection process.
The most reliable qualification for advancement in the Trump administration appears to be loyalty to Trump above all else. Close behind is the willingness to lie convincingly in public, preferably on television, and to do so without visible discomfort. Experience ranks lower. Expertise ranks lower still. Truth, when it appears at all, is treated as a tactical inconvenience.
Television performance has become central to political survival. Officials are expected to project confidence regardless of substance, certainty regardless of evidence, and calm regardless of consequence. Professional makeup, wardrobe consultation, and media coaching are not cosmetic extras. They are operational necessities. The appearance of control matters more than control itself. Governing has become secondary to performing governance.
This dynamic has consequences. When public officials must lie to remain employed, decision making deteriorates. Honest assessments are suppressed. Internal warnings are ignored. Problems are concealed rather than solved. A system built on loyalty and deception cannot correct itself because acknowledging error becomes an act of disloyalty.
Recent efforts to obscure or mischaracterize the circumstances surrounding two deaths in Minneapolis, may represent a breaking point. Voters can be persuaded to dismiss policy disputes, budget overruns, and procedural abuses. They are far less willing to accept falsehoods surrounding the loss of life. When officials appear to minimize or distort fatal outcomes linked to federal actions, even sympathetic audiences recoil. There is a moral boundary that propaganda struggles to cross.
Conservative media figures have begun to hedge, qualify, and occasionally contradict official statements. This shift does not reflect a rediscovery of principle. It reflects calculation. They sense that blind repetition of demonstrable falsehoods risks alienating viewers who may excuse misconduct but will not abandon basic credibility. When the messengers lose trust, the entire structure weakens.
If this trajectory continues, the likely outcome is deeper institutional corrosion. Qualified professionals will continue to leave. Authority will become more centralized and more erratic. Policy will be driven by optics rather than analysis, loyalty rather than competence, and denial rather than evidence. A government that cannot tell the truth cannot correct its mistakes. A government that fears the truth cannot govern effectively. A government that requires constant lying to survive is already in decline.
A government sustained by deception cannot endure. When lying becomes a job requirement, honesty becomes a liability and competence becomes expendable. Institutions hollow out, trust collapses, and reality eventually asserts itself. The Trump administration may still command attention, but it is losing credibility even among those once most willing to suspend disbelief. History is unkind to governments that confuse loyalty with legitimacy and performance with truth. The reckoning, when it comes, will not be shaped by slogans or spin, but by the damage left behind.
Van Abbott is a long-time resident of Alaska and California. He has held financial management positions in government and private organizations, and is now a full-time opinion writer. He served in the late nineteen-sixties in the Peace Corps as a teacher.
