Since the beginning of his presidential campaign, Donald Trump has weaponized his insincerity and the bad faith of his supporters in order to deny his own accountability for the things he does and believes.
If critics take Trump’s praise for mass deportations or internment camps at face value, they are guilty of taking Trump too literally. If Trump praises violence against the media, or calls for a foreign government to aid his campaign, his detractors are informed that the president is only kidding—when he absolutely isn’t. Whenever Trump says or does something horrible, his defenders insist that he did not actually do or say it, and then attack Trump’s critics for misrepresenting him. Yet everyone involved in the charade knows which Trump is the real Trump, his defenders most of all. It’s why they like him.
During the 2016 campaign, reporters and political analysts would frequently discuss a hypothetical Trump “pivot,” imagining the moment when he would cease his appeals to prejudice or use of casual falsehoods in order to embrace a more traditional political persona. That never happened.
David Frum: A president who condones political violence
After Trump assumed the presidency, those desperate for the pivot that never came indulged in another frequently mocked rhetorical device. Whenever Trump publicly performed the traditional duties of the office in a satisfactory fashion, they declared that “this was the day he became president.”