FACTS, OPINIONS, AND AN AUTHORITARIAN’S “REALITY” PART 1

PETER BAKER, CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT for The New York Times, absolutely nails it in “Trump’s Efforts to Control Information Echo an Authoritarian Playbook,” August 3, 2025. Here, in Parts 1 and 2 today and tomorrow, are tidbits gleaned from this essay, together with related comments previously appearing here at SimanaitisSays. In particular, see “A Thoughtful Analysis Part 2” and its discussion of the path to autocracy.

Baker begins with Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s comment, “You are entitled to your own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts.” 

Baker says, “President Trump seems determined to prove that wrong. ‘Don’t like an intelligence report that contradicts your view? Go after the analysts. Don’t like cost estimates for your tax plan? Invent your own. Don’t like a predecessor’s climate policies? Scrub government websites of underlying data. Don’t like a museum exhibit that cites your impeachments? Delete any mention of them.’ ”

Baker continues, “Mr. Trump’s war on facts reached new heights on Friday when he angrily fired the Labor Department official in charge of compiling statistics on employment in America because he did not like the latest jobs report showing that the economy isn’t doing as well as he claims it is. Mr. Trump declared that her numbers were ‘phony.’ His proof? It was ‘my opinion.’ And the story he told supposedly proving she was politically biased? It had no basis in fact itself.”

Authoritarians Must Control Information. Baker observes, “Mr. Trump has never been especially wedded to facts, routinely making up his own numbers, repeating falsehoods and conspiracy theories even after they are debunked and denigrating the very concept of independent fact-checking. But his efforts since reclaiming the White House to make the rest of government adopt his versions of the truth have gone further than in his first term and increasingly remind scholars of the way authoritarian leaders in other countries have sought to control information.”

Sir Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St. Alban, 1561–1626, English philosopher, natural philosopher (i.e., scientist), and statesman, Lord High Chancellor of England, 1617–1621, to King James I. Image from Wikipedia. 

“The British philosopher Francis Bacon,” Baker observes, “published his meditations on truth and nature more than four centuries before Mr. Trump arrived in Washington, but history is filled with examples of leaders seeking to stifle unwelcome information. The Soviets falsified data to make their economy look stronger than it was. The Chinese have long been suspected of doing the same. Just three years ago, Turkey’s autocratic leader fired his government’s statistics chief after a report documented rocketing inflation.”

“Alternative Facts.” Baker recounts, “Mr. Trump has spent a lifetime trying to impose his facts on others, whether it be claiming that Trump Tower has 10 more floors than it actually has or insisting that he was richer than he actually was.”

Trump, 1980. Image by Don Hogan Charles, The New York Times.

Baker continues his Guest Essay tomorrow in Part 2. What’s more, there’s more on killing the messenger. ds 

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2025