Photograph Source: Xuthoria – CC BY-SA 4.0

“I know nothing!”

—Sgt. Schultz, Hogan’s Heroes

“Oh yeah, you’ve got your own version of the truth And there’s only three things left now that I can do Deny, deny, deny”

—Brooks and Dunn, Deny, Deny, Deny

Like the country he “leads,” Donald J. Trump lives in a state of perpetual denial. Trump and his enablers like to present him as a hands-on president, a man at the top of his game, whether it’s on the golf course, in the Oval Office, or at televised cabinet briefings where sycophants pucker up and lather him with praise. He has proven himself a master of gauche interior design – metastasizing ballrooms, gaudy Oval Offices, marble and gold-accented Lincoln Bedroom bathrooms – and of branding, most recently affixing his name to the U.S. Institute of Peace (where he will probably display his FIFA Peace Prize).

Yet when asked about the strike on boats in the Caribbean, Trump, the master of denial, “knows nothing.” The pardon of former Honduran president and convicted cocaine kingpin Juan Orlando Hernández? “I don’t know who you’re talking about.” This denial is darkly ironic, given that Trump promised to protect Americans from suspected Venezuelan “narco-terrorists” and has overseen the extrajudicial killing of more than 80 people whose involvement in drug trafficking remains unproven – yet he pardons a legally convicted drug trafficker who once even boasted he would “stuff the drugs right up the gringos’ noses.” The pardon of cryptocurrency mogul Changpeng Zhao? “I don’t know who he is.” Perhaps these pardons were signed in absentia with the same autopen Trump apparently used to sign his birthday card to Jeffrey Epstein, yet another document he knew nothing about.

For what it’s worth, remember: we are dealing with a transactional president who does nothing unless it benefits his ego, his libido, and his immediate family.

Trump’s denials extend to the Jan. 6 insurrectionists. Here, however, he doesn’t deny knowledge of them; instead, he denies their treacherous intent and violent actions, claiming “they didn’t assault anyone” – a point surviving police officers dispute – and insists that no one has been treated as badly as they have. This claim collapses under scrutiny when their treatment is compared to that of the Exonerated Five, five black[1] and Latino teenage boys falsely convicted in 1990 of raping a white woman jogger in New York’s Central Park. At the time Trump himself called for their execution in full-page ads, and even after their exoneration he has continued to believe “they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately.” Even though it was revealed their confessions were coerced and the actual perpetrator confessed to the crime, 17 years after their exoneration, Trump still maintains they are guilty, so good luck to Sen. Mark Kelly and the Democratic Six.

For a man who has boasted he knows more about everything than anybody, there seems to be an awful lot he knows little to nothing about. Of course, we know Trump is lying – or “just being Trump,” as his gaslighting idolaters like to say. And because he is Trump, a crass, rich, white man who appeals to America’s racist and misogynist instincts, he is never held accountable for his lies, but instead afforded implausible deniability despite, or perhaps because of, their audacious defiance of credulity.

We’ve seen this pattern of reckless denial before, lies we still haven’t completely digested, even as he moves into his second term. He didn’t know who David Duke was. He “never said anything derogatory about Haitians.” He denieshaving had affairs with porn stars and Playboy models. He had “absolutely no idea who [E. Jean Carroll] is.” He claims to “know nothing about Project 2025.” He never used the word “nigger” – a denial since refuted by The Apprentice producer Bill Pruitt and Trump’s own nephew, Fred Trump III. He didn’t know who the Proud Boys were, though today ICE and DHS are recruiting its members to carry out their dirty work. Ironically, the group that Trump once told to “stand back and stand by” and “let law enforcement do their work,” now works mask in hand with law enforcement, whose actions violate the Constitution and break the law, although thanks to the Supreme Court, the line between legal and illegal has become alarmingly porous.

Pinocchio’s nose grew when he lied; Trump’s cankles balloon with every denial, the swelling so great now that his gaitis as meandering as his lies. If only MRIs could diagnose prevarication. But really, at this stage in the game would it even matter?

In fact, for our part, there’s a lot we already know about our “know-nothing” president, not that it has made much of a difference. We know, for example, he declared he would “protect the women of our country, whether they like it or not.” Yet Trump’s statements betray a twisted logic in which what he says is almost always the opposite of what he does. This explains why he appoints sex offenders to key cabinet posts. His claims to protect women have the same weight as his assurances that his new ballroom would not touch existing White House structures.

This logic and his virulent misogyny also explain why he initially sought to appoint Matt Gaetz Attorney General, despite Gaetz’s documented sexual misconduct allegations. It explains why Pete Hegseth, another alleged sex offender, is now Secretary of Defense. The dishonor roll also includes Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr., accused of sexually assaulting his babysitter, former-DOGE head Elon Musk, accused of exposing his “miniature Starship” to a SpaceX flight attendant and later sued by eight former SpaceX employees for sexual harassment. And Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, whose reality television past included sexually suggestive behavior toward female castmates. Like Trump, their casting director, these “stars” have evidently been granted pussy-grabbing privileges.

Forget Epstein Island, Trump’s cabinet itself is an island of accused sex offenders, whose names are already part of the public record. And somehow a powerless nation shrugs. If Trump were truly serious about keeping the country free of rapists and other assorted “garbage,” he would deport them to Mexico and Venezuela. Oh, right, they’re white men. Well, except for Education Secretary Linda McMahon, the cabinet’s distaff Jim Jordan, who during her tenure as World Wrestling Entertainment CEO is alleged to have allowed one of its employees to sexually exploit young teenage boys aspiring to become professional wrestlers.

Outside of his cabinet, things are a bit more diverse. When he is not vigorously practicing his “Bubba” technique on microphones, Trump is busy appointing Giants legend and registered sex offender Lawrence Taylor to the Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition. His White House reportedly intervened on behalf of alleged sex trafficker Andrew Tate, and he has not ruled out pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell. Nor has the chivalrous Prince Cankles, our blight in mottled armor, ruled out pardoning Diddy, even if doing so might alienate his white MAGA base while appealing to a small circle of black MAGA drawn to his riches-to-riches, bling-worshipping, “sugar daddy, vixen side-hustling” persona and questionable prison reform policies that seem designed to bail out his tiny cadre of opportunistic “blacks for Trump” supporters. If he does and faces blowback, true to his pattern of denials, he will simply claim he hardly knew him, if at all, or was not involved in the process. Still, with all the photos of the two together, like Epstein, he will have to construct another narrative of denial in which he claims to have cast aside the oleaginous rap mogul after learning he, too, was a “creep.”

One would think Americans would have had enough of Trump’s falsehoods. Credited with telling 30,573 lies) during his first term, he repeats them so relentlessly that the media, numbed by their frequency, no longer bothers to keep count.

Lies may endure forever, but liars themselves are mortal. At 79, Trump’s days in political power are numbered, yet the damage he has wrought will outlast him. We must brace ourselves for a post-Trump America, one that, I fear, may prove as corrosive as his current reign. The Pandora’s box he has opened has unleashed a flood of white supremacism, misogyny, xenophobia, and transphobia, leaving Hope to cower meekly inside. Whether that pestilence can ever be contained again remains uncertain, particularly as it thrives on post-Obama white racial resentment and dreams of restored hegemony.

Optimistic scenarios of major midterm Democratic victories for a party, assuming that elections are held and not rigged, seem unlikely for a party that has yet – and may never – embrace its progressive wing, despite the proven popularity of Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Zohran Mamdani. Nativist, white supremacist conservatism will prevail, as will the piecemeal dismantling of democracy and human decency, if perhaps a bit less dramatically, as mainstream media conglomerates, now firmly entrenched under the management of reactionary corporate oligarchs, sanitize their reporting of American betrayal. If so, leadership of the country will be passed from a demented, epicene uncle to a risibly rizzless, potentially Turning Point USA-backed JD Vance – perhaps with Erica Kirk as his newly appointed First Lady, or maybe Sydney (“Great Genes Jeans”) Sweeney, at his side instead. Implausible as that may seem, such fears cannot be denied.

Note

[1] I have chosen not to capitalize “black” until there is substantive reform of American police enforcement and the criminal justice system that results in the criminal prosecution of those who use excessive force and a systemic, long-term reduction in the number of police killings and brutalization of black people.

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