For most of his political career, dishonesty has come at little cost to Donald Trump. He entered the national arena on the back of the birther lie — the false claim that Barack Obama was not born in the United States — and that did not prevent him from winning the 2016 Republican nomination.
His persistent falsehoods about crowd sizes, election outcomes, and the birthplace of his father barely register in today's press coverage.
What's more, explicit acknowledgment of Trump's dishonesty has proven largely inconsequential. During the 2024 presidential race, vice-presidential candidate JD Vance admitted that Trump's claim about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Ohio had been "created." The confession had no discernible effect on Trump's popularity. If anything, some evidence suggests his supporters actively admire his willingness to bend the truth.
More recently, however, something has shifted. Data now points to growing regret and disillusionment within his base.
The administration's inability to sustain credible messaging on the Iran war, the Epstein files, tariffs, and inflation has left a portion of his supporters feeling deceived and abandoned.
Trump's approval ratings are now reflecting this erosion.
One might conclude that fact-checking is finally paying dividends. But as a philosopher who studies the cognitive and emotional dimensions of democratic citizenship, I believe that explanation misses the mark. There is a more compelling reason why Trump's supporters are now pushing back against his claims.
When falsehoods aren't lies
Fact-checking can be effective at establishing truth among those who have not yet made up their minds, but it is largely ineffective among committed believers. Once an opinion solidifies, attempts to debunk it can backfire, causing people to entrench themselves more deeply in their views.
To understand the emerging shift within Trump's base, we need to look elsewhere — and that means reconsidering whether Trump's most outlandish statements are, strictly speaking, lies at all.
That may sound counterintuitive, so let me explain.
It is surprisingly difficult to arrive at a rigorous definition of lying. The intuitive shorthand — "a lie is something that isn't true" — doesn't hold up under scrutiny.
Lying is not simply uttering a falsehood. Honest mistakes and failures of memory don't qualify. One might revise the definition: lying is deliberately asserting what one knows to be false. But that definition has problems too.
President Bill Clinton lied when he declared that "there is not a sexual relationship" — a statement that was, at the precise moment he uttered it, technically true.
Nor can lying simply be defined as making a statement intended to lead others to believe something false, since that would make every stage actor a liar.
A more workable definition: lying is speaking with the intent to deceive. That formulation has its own complexities, but it holds up well enough for our purposes.
Betrayal by contempt
Given how easily many of Trump's false statements are debunked, it seems unlikely that his aim is to deceive. No one genuinely believes that Trump has ended eight wars, defeated inflation, pushed gasoline below $2 a gallon, struck a deal with the CEO of Sharpie, or commands 100% public approval for his military campaign in Iran — all claims he has made.
If he is not trying to deceive, then Trump is not lying in the conventional sense. He is doing something else — and something arguably more corrosive.
From my perspective as a political philosopher, these statements function as acts of contempt. By boldly asserting claims no one could reasonably believe, Trump is not persuading — he is taunting. He demeans the press, compelling journalists to cover his unbelievable assertions and thereby bending the news cycle to his will. The implicit message to his critics is simple: You cannot stop me.
For a political movement animated by the conviction that American politics is a swamp that needs draining, this defiant posture has carried genuine appeal.
But there is a catch. It now appears that Trump's own supporters are beginning to feel that they, too, are targets of his contempt.
His recent assertions that grocery prices are falling, that his tariffs are working, that the economy is booming, and that the Iran operation is a "little excursion" that has already proven successful are not merely false. They belittle the very people who must live with the consequences of a faltering economy and a protracted military conflict.
Seen in this light, the erosion of support within Trump's base is not the result of his followers finally recognizing that he lies. It is that he has betrayed them.
This story has been updated to correct the date on which President Trump spoke to GOP lawmakers, describing the war in Iran as a 'short-term excursion.'
Robert B. Talisse does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
