Jill Lepore has a good essay in the New Yorker on living in trumpworld.

Peer into the dark. Earlier this fall, Trump reposted on Truth Social a four-minute news clip generated by A.I. The clip purported to be a segment from Lara Trump’s Fox News show, reporting on Trump’s announcement of the launch of “medbeds . . . designed to restore every citizen to full health and strength” at special hospitals about to open all over the country. Medbeds, which can cure all ailments and reverse aging, appear regularly in science fiction. (Think of the “biobeds” in the “Star Trek” sick bay.) They began featuring in online conspiracy theories in the early twenty-twenties; QAnoners claim that medbeds exist, and have existed for years, and that the rich and powerful use them (and that J.F.K. himself is on one, still alive), and that soon Trump will liberate them for use by the rest of us, as if Trump were Jesus opening the gates of Heaven and medbeds eternal life.

Take out your flashlight and ask the inevitable question: Is there any precedent for a President of the United States doing such a thing? Is American history any guide to understanding why Trump, or someone on his staff, posted (and soon afterward deleted) a fake video about a nonexistent news report concerning a fictional miracle cure, an episode whose political significance strikes me as asymptotically approaching zero?

I missed that. I’m ignoring much of Trump news, because I’m a brat.

Even if early American Presidents had wanted to speak directly to the public, they would have found it exceedingly difficult, not to mention exhausting. But, with the rise of railroads, travelling to meet your constituents soon got easier. John Tyler went on a thirteen-day tour in 1843, during which he made seventeen speeches. Trump, of course, likes to make speeches, too, and for hours on end. But the likeness ends there because, to be clear, Tyler did not use the occasion to tout patent medicines. After the Civil War, Presidents travelled more, not least because they had to try to stitch the country back together. That meant, in particular, touring the South. In 1878, Rutherford B. Hayes went on a speaking tour, whereupon an account was published that included every word he said, titled “The President’s Tour South. A Triumphal March Through the ‘Solid South.’ Enthusiastic Reception of the President and Cabinet at All Points Along the Journey. Speeches, Sayings and Doings of Those Who Participated in the Ovation to the President.” And, still, he hawked neither gold coins with his face stamped on them nor silver ones.

Yes but who remembers him now?

Historians will need to account for Trump when, as Gerald Ford said when he succeeded Nixon, “our long national nightmare is over.” Analogies won’t help them. Because nothing in American history anticipates or explains the way Trump speaks to his supporters at his rallies—or his use of Twitter, between 2015 and 2021, and Truth Social, beginning in 2022. He riffs; he cusses; he dodges; he weaves; he raises money; he spreads lies. He is lurid and profane. He targets his political opponents, threatening them with prosecution, prison, and execution. He is the world’s most outspoken troll, and its most dangerous. He posts day and night, about everything from taco bowls to possible ceasefires. He is getting worse. In his second term, he has posted three times as often as he did during his first. Tonally, nearly everything he posts is unhinged, even when it’s a simple endorsement or amplification of a policy, like tariffs:

THIS WILL BE THE GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICA! WILL THERE BE SOME PAIN? YES, MAYBE (AND MAYBE NOT!). BUT WE WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, AND IT WILL ALL BE WORTH THE PRICE THAT MUST BE PAID. WE ARE A COUNTRY THAT IS NOW BEING RUN WITH COMMON SENSE – AND THE RESULTS WILL BE SPECTACULAR!!!

Maybe, and maybe not.