‘Trump Couldn’t Care Less That He’s Obviously Lying’

But manipulations belong, in a sense, to the nature of a political debate, don’t they?

Yes, politics is always also about interpreting reality and trying to convince each other. And we often depict reality in the way we would like to see it. In my research, I deal at a fundamental level with the question of how the political understanding that is central to democracies can succeed against this background. We need to reach an understanding to maintain our system – even if it ultimately only amounts to agreeing about the processes and accepting them. I describe the political space in which understanding happens as an interpretational space. This means that it’s not just a matter of facts or opinions but a space in which understanding is possible – or fails. This space is marked by several points of intersection. For one thing, there’s of course the rational exchange of arguments, the attempt to convince each other with reasons. Just as important, however, are emotions, because the way in which we perceive and interpret the world is always connected with feelings. Then there’s also our story: Why do we think like we do at all? What experiences, what stories are we shaped by? And then, the political is always also a place of dispute – a space in which different political ideas struggle with each other. It is thus not a neutral space but one in which we struggle for the power of interpretation. For precisely this reason, this space is open – open for truth but also open for lies.

And there is often no simple ‘true’ or ‘false’ in this interpretational space …

Exactly. Political statements cannot be proven like mathematical theorems; they are always interpretations. They can often be interpreted in one way or another – and we never have the possibility of knowing all of the developments in advance. After all, it is in the character of a political decision that we can never be certain what will happen in the next moment. … These conditions of the political space also provide the breeding ground for interpreting reality in one direction or the other – or for deliberately spreading a certain interpretation, perhaps even with the help of disinformation. That’s the classic path, so to speak. But even with Machiavelli, the prince is still proficient in the art of hypocrisy; he lets people believe he’s virtuous. This mask is essential – but with Trump you have the feeling that even this mask is missing.

Trump doesn’t even give the impression that he’s not lying anymore …

It’s not about anything other than satisfying his own interests anymore. If another felt truth suits his own goals better the next day, then he’ll take that one. The American philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt calls this ‘bullshit’ – bullshit has a relation to truth that is ultimately no relation at all anymore. The liar knows the truth. He takes it for granted and tries to conceal it. The bullshitter is indifferent towards the truth. He’s not interested in whether a statement is true or false – but only in producing an effect. He just blurts things out, out, out, regardless of their truth content. What matters is not their relation to reality but the performative effect of what he says. This effect is amplified on a massive scale by social media. Bullshit generally gets more attention there than the often unspectacular truth. This creates an environment in which people cobble together their world view just as they see fit – not on the basis of knowledge but along emotional and ideological preferences.  Moreover, social media platforms offer an ideal range of instruments for intentionally flooding people with bullshit, provided that one is adept at using them. Donald Trump is a master in this art: He doesn’t just disseminate an individual piece of targeted disinformation but immediately hurls 15 more after it. This undermines the concept of truth, because at some point the audience stops making the distinction.

Why does that work so well?

This is a question we urgently need to address in more depth for our democratic coexistence. I see great danger here for political understanding in any case, because it always requires something like solidarity or mutual trust: You have to be able to fundamentally rely on the other person’s word.

Even if they do not agree with you …

Exactly. In a democracy, we can’t resolve the tensions of the political space by saying: I have the one truth and I insist on it, even if it’s counterfactual. Trump goes so far as to call into question the processes that guarantee our political coexistence, for example when he refuses to recognize election results. This denial of reality can lead to a situation where we wake up one day in a society in which there are only different opposing camps that can’t talk to each other at all anymore.

At the conference, you speak about the ‘attempt to live in the lie’. What does this attempt look like?

That’s a reference to Vaclav Havel’s political essay ‘Living in Truth’. The danger I see in living in the lie is that we get more and more used to the disorientation and thus lose confidence in democratic processes and in a common basis. The next step is then that we effectively forget that we’re living in the lie – thus undermining our own democratic system.

What can be done to prevent this?

The important thing is to cultivate an awareness of what this attempt to live in the lie does with us: that it leads to a gradual erosion of our democracy, triggered off by an erosion of citizens’ awareness – but also what harm the government wreaks when it uses the means of disinformation in this way. We need to insist again and again that the difference between right and wrong is not arbitrary. If you negate this difference, you also call into question the conditions of mutual understanding. And we need to teach pupils to orient themselves in the political interpretational space and to accept that the other person could also be right, as the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer once put it.

Disputes, but on common ground …

… and without the political dispute immediately spilling over into a kind of cultural conflict. That’s my understanding of solidarity. The Earl of Shaftesbury  (Anthony Ashley Cooper), a British philosopher from the eighteenth century, likened solidarity to humour: When we tell each other jokes, we know exactly how to interpret what we’re saying, because we have common ground. You don’t take what I say to you deadly seriously; otherwise you don’t get the joke. Sometimes I have the feeling that we as a society are losing just this kind of solidarity – because we increasingly lack the ability to really hear what the person we are talking to actually wants to say, beyond the mere words coming out of their mouth. But that’s precisely what makes up the precondition for solidarity: attempting to put ourselves into the perspective of the other, instead of twisting their words. This form of mutual respect is undermined by disinformation – it destroys the trust that makes understanding possible in the first place.

The conference with panel discussion ‘Democracy in the Age of Disinformation’ will be held on Friday, 6 June 2025, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. in the Aula of the University of Freiburg. The event is open to the interested public and may be attended free of charge.