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“The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world.” – George Orwell
To understand Donald Trump, start with a single word:
“Hoax.”
It’s the word he’s weaponized more than any other, his shield against accountability and his sword against truth. For nearly a decade, Trump has dismissed every threat to his power, from Russia to Ukraine, from COVID to climate change, from the 2020 election to E. Jean Carroll, and now the Epstein emails, with the same hollow label: “hoax.”
🔎 How a Hoax is Made
When Trump says “hoax,” he really means one thing: “A truth I don’t like and can’t control.”
Trump’s use of “hoax” isn’t random, it’s strategic. It does three things at once:
Reverses reality. By declaring every inconvenient truth a fabrication, he inverts the moral order: the accused becomes the victim, and the accusers become the villains.
Conditions followers. The repetition creates cognitive immunity; by the tenth “hoax,” even supporters struggle to distinguish fact from fiction. It signals to his base: Don’t believe this. Don’t trust them. Trust me.
Destroys accountability. Every scandal becomes political theater. Every consequence becomes persecution. Every truth-teller becomes an enemy.
When everything is a hoax, nothing is real. And if nothing is real, then nothing is wrong. Create confusion and then fatigue. Trump has relied on that confusion for years.
📰 Trump’s Own List
In 2021, The Washington Post published a remarkable piece by Philip Bump documenting how Trump personally compiled a list of what he called “The 13 Biggest Hoaxes in America.”
This is not satire. This was his actual political messaging. I know this first hand from working in Trump 1.0 because it was his go to word during meetings if something didn’t align with his thinking. Bump writes:
“Trump used [the word ‘hoax’] nearly 800 times as he was first running for and then serving as president… Every time someone criticized him, it was a ‘hoax.’”
— The Washington Post, Nov. 2, 2021
Among Trump’s self-declared “hoaxes”:
Impeachment Hoax #1 (Ukraine)
Impeachment Hoax #2 (Jan 6 Insurrection)
Russia, Russia, Russia
Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine
The ‘No Collusion’ Mueller Hoax
The 2020 Presidential Election Scam
The “Global Warming Hoax” (ranked #7 out of the blue)
He never even bothered to name the other six entries, because in his world, the specifics don’t matter. The emotion does. By calling everything a hoax, he’s telling supporters: “Reality is optional.”
🔢 He Numbers His Hoaxes Like TV Episodes
Trump doesn’t just call things hoaxes. He categorizes them like sequels in a reality-TV franchise built around his own misconduct:
Impeachment Hoax #1.
Impeachment Hoax #2.
The Russia Hoax.
He rolls them out like branded episodes, each one designed to erase accountability and rewrite the narrative in real time.
🧨 The Latest Hoax: Epstein
Now he’s added one more to the list. In the face of more than 20,000 newly unsealed Epstein emails, documents that mention Trump multiple times and link him to the disgraced financier’s inner circle, he brushed it all off as “The Jeffrey Epstein Hoax.” The same man who dismissed climate science as a “hoax” now calls evidence of abuse and exploitation a hoax.
Why This Matters
Words shape reality. When a president, especially one now back in power, labels truth itself as a hoax, he’s not just dodging accountability. He’s teaching millions to distrust the very idea of objective fact. I saw it firsthand inside the Trump administration:
Every truth was negotiable.
Every moral line is flexible.
Every lie is a loyalty test.
And when lies become loyalty tests, truth becomes treason.
So the next time Donald Trump calls something a “hoax,” remember: it usually means he’s been caught. And that’s the tell. Because in Trump’s America, the truth isn’t the hoax. He is.
So, if they are all hoaxes, then why is there all the wreckage? Why did real people suffer? Why were careers destroyed? Why were lives endangered? Why were witnesses intimidated? Why were survivors silenced? Why have the Epstein victims relived their trauma again and again?
Hoaxes don’t require cover-ups. Crimes do.
Here’s a snapshot of what Trump calls “hoaxes” and the very real destruction each one left behind.
If it was a hoax, then why:
Did so many of his staff end up indicted, convicted, or imprisoned?
Did investigators document dozens of contacts between his campaign and Kremlin-connected actors?
Did the White House spend years hiding calls, meetings, and communications?
Hoaxes don’t produce federal charges.
🇺🇦 Impeachment Hoax #1: Ukraine
If it was a hoax, then why:
Were career diplomats smeared, reassigned, or pushed out?
Did the administration hunt for files and notes from anyone who cooperated?
Was my colleague’s office raided inside the White House, with Trump staff demanding that I tell them where she kept her notes right after she testified?
Were witnesses threatened simply for telling the truth?
Hoaxes don’t require witness intimidation.
🇺🇸 Impeachment Hoax #2: January 6
If it was a hoax, then why…
Did Mike Pence have to be evacuated to a secure location at the U.S. Capitol as rioters chanted “Hang Mike Pence”?
Did violent extremists roam the halls hunting congressional leadership?
Were officers beaten, crushed, sprayed, and traumatized?
Did Trump sit in his White House dining room, glued to the TV, watching the attack instead of stopping it?
Hoaxes don’t leave blood on the Capitol steps.
🦠 COVID-19 Was “Their (the Democrats) New Hoax.”
If it was a hoax, then why…
Did more than a million Americans die?
Did hospitals overflow?
Did scientists get silenced and agencies pressured to alter data?
Did I end up in arguments with Vice President Mike Pence’s Chief of Staff in the Situation Room after I realized that Kevin Hassett had shown Pence a chart implying U.S. COVID deaths would fall to zero by mid-May, a projection economists later called “malpractice” and “the lowest point in the 74-year history” of the Council of Economic Advisers? (And for context: this is the same guy who is now on TV claiming tariffs won’t hurt working Americans, while privately calling Trump’s own tariff plan “tin-eared and terrifying.”)
Hoaxes don’t require rewriting science, or bending the math to fit the politics. And hoaxes don’t fill ICUs and morgues.
🔥 The “Fine People Hoax”- Charlottesville
If it was all a hoax, then why:
Did Trump repeatedly refuse to condemn the neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville?
Hoaxes don’t kill innocent people standing up to hate.
🗳️ The 2020 Election Was “Rigged”, “The Big Lie”...another “Hoax”
If it was all a lie, a hoax per se, then why:
Why did he feel the need to pardon all these people this week if they’ve done absolutely nothing wrong and it was all a fabricated lie?
Hoaxes don’t require criminal conspiracies.
If it was and still remains a hoax, then why:
Are towns underwater?
Are wildfires, storms, and record heat waves becoming the new normal?
Hoaxes don’t melt glaciers.
If her allegations were a hoax, then why:
Did a federal jury find Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation?
Was he ordered to pay $5 million in damages (and later over $83 million more)?
Did jurors unanimously conclude he lied about her?
E. Jean Carroll told the truth. A jury believed her. Trump’s response? The same as always: deny, attack, smear, then call it a “hoax.”
Hoaxes don’t lead to jury verdicts or millions in damages. Hoaxes don’t result in findings of sexual abuse. Now he’s even asking the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling.
🕳️ The “Epstein Hoax”
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If this is all a hoax, then why:
Have victims spent years begging to be heard, only to be retraumatized again now?
Did Trump call his own supporters “weaklings” for wanting transparency on this hoax?
Did newly released emails document Epstein alleging that Trump had “spent hours” at Epstein’s home with one of Epstein’s victims?
Are so many powerful men fighting so hard for so long to keep the files sealed?
Hoaxes don’t involve decades of exploitation, sealed records, and powerful men scrambling for daylight.
So, Will This Be the One “Hoax” That Finally Stops Him?
This time, the victims aren’t diplomats, scientists, election workers, journalists, or members of Congress.
They were young girls when they were exploited by Epstein’s network.
They are survivors like E. Jean Carroll, who refused to be silenced. They are people whose pain Trump shrugged off as just another “hoax,” even as powerful men worked for years to keep the truth buried and protect pedophiles from accountability.
They deserve the truth. They deserve justice.
They deserve a country where powerful men do not get to call their trauma “fake.” And the rest of us deserve a country where the word “hoax” finally stops working.
I’ll come back to this, because this story isn’t done. Not even close. But for now, here’s a factual record you can carry into any conversation. Let this be your backbone the next time someone tries to wave away the Epstein revelations.
Donald Trump, Pam Bondi, and Kash Patel don’t get to hide behind the word “hoax.” They owe answers. They owe accountability. And the victims deserve far better than the silence and excuses they’ve been given.
Because at the end of the day, if this were your loved one—your sister, your daughter, your friend—it wouldn’t matter if you were a Democrat, conservative, MAGA, independent, or apolitical. Human pain doesn’t check party registration. No survivor should ever have their pain turned into a punchline to shield the powerful.
The true test of a nation’s greatness is its willingness to confront the truth, not bury it.
-Olivia
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