Why I’m Now Calling It Bullcrap
Trump doesn’t care if it’s true, false, or absurd. He cares that it works — and that you’re too exhausted to argue.
Since August, I have posted a series of essays — now totaling 15 — titled On Trump’s Bullshit. The theory was that simply calling Donald Trump a liar is not enough. A bullshitter doesn’t care about the truth at all. They care only about the impression they make.
But after Wednesday night’s 18-minute prime-time rant, I decided that bullshit doesn’t quite capture Trump’s danger to American society.
Trump doesn’t care whether what he says reflects reality. He says whatever serves his momentary purpose, often contradicting himself without hesitation or shame. Trump not only is indifferent to that truth, he has contempt for his listeners. He assumes they will believe whatever he says — and support whatever he does. This makes Trump’s rhetoric more insidious than lies — and worse than bullshit.
I’m giving it a different name — Bullcrap. While people sometimes use bullcrap interchangeably with bullshit, it’s not the same.
Bullshit often deals in abstracts; Trump’s bullcrap is specific, numeric, or faux factual. In his address, Trump asserted with authority “Under Biden, real wages plummeted by $3,000. Under Trump, the typical factory worker has seen a wage increase of $1,300. For construction workers, it’s $1,800. For miners, we’re bringing back clean, beautiful coal, it’s $3,300.”
Who knows how these figures were constructed? There’s a White House chart floating around on social media, with no sources, though it indicates it is comparing apples (Biden’s whole term) with oranges (an annualized figure for Trump’s first year). But the gold standard — the Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly report on average weekly earnings of all private-sector employees — shows a modest increase when adjusted for inflation under Trump. That’s a trend line that started under Joe Biden in June 2023, but of course Trump falsely claimed “for the first time in years, wages are rising much faster than inflation.”
While everyone bullshits from time to time, bullcrap is habitual. With Trump, it’s not a slip of the tongue; it is a method of governance. His entire speech was chockful of absurdly exaggerated claims, such as that he inherited the worst inflation in history (it was three percent) and Joe Biden allowed 25 million undocumented immigrants into the United States (off by a factor of four or five). He also pretended that he was using money raised from tariffs to issue $1,776 bonuses to miitary personnel, but in reality the funds were stolen from a Pentagon housing account.
And while people often bullshit to mask their ignorance, Trump can’t use that excuse. His statements are often fact-checked and debunked, and yet he says them over and over again. He asserted undocumented immigrants came from “prisons and jails and mental institutions and insane asylums” and that Biden released “11,888 murderers, more than 50 percent of whom killed more than one person.” I fact-checked those claims repeatedly in 2024 and 2025 and they are both ridiculous.
That makes it bullcrap. As president he should know better, but Trump says it anyway.
Finally, bullcrap is performative. Trump holds rallies, where he will spout off a hundred or more falsehoods. He gives endless interviews, repeating the same false claims over and over. He posts dozens of false claims a day on social media. He does this to exhaust his critics and buttress his supporters.
Given the time constraints — the networks gave him 15 minutes but of course he went over — Trump was forced to squeeze as much bullcrap as possible into the allotted time. The rushed quality didn’t give the lies time to soak in, undermining their impact.
One of Trump’s attributes is that he usually sounds confident. His bullcrap is specific enough to sound real, false enough to mislead, and repeated often enough to become familiar.
Yet Trump didn’t sound especially confident Wednesday. He appeared desperate, bellicose, almost pathetic.
Is the bullcrap finally failing? Trump’s demise has been predicted all too often, but now he confronts the biggest spin job in his life. If prices and unemployment keep rising, no amount of bullcrap will convince Americans otherwise.
The thing about a malignant narcissist is that their lies are first and foremost, for themselves. Those lies are like a life raft, keeping them afloat in a sea of self-hatred. Trump has zero confidence or self-esteem. He runs entirely on the fuel of hate - hate for others to be sure - but also hate for himself.
How about Trump’s confabulations? I sincerely believe his statements reflect frontotemporal dementia and as such he believes them to be true.