Trump's first term already began with a disturbing logical aberration. His chief advisor tried to argue that when the president claimed his inauguration had been more crowded than Obama's —despite photographs clamorously evidencing the opposite— it was because he worked with “alternative facts.” Now, his most privileged disciple, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has dealt an even bigger blow to rationality. In a parliamentary statement, he was asked about the mathematical absurdity Trump had uttered when claiming he was lowering drug prices by 600% (which, if true, would mean that remedy would have a negative price five times its original value; in other words, you'd buy it and they'd pay you a fortune). Instead of admitting it was a slip-up, Kennedy let loose the following gem: “The president has another way of calculating percentages.” Yes, specifically a mistaken one. At least now we're starting to understand his great eye for business, especially when it comes to sinking the casinos he could build thanks to his dad's inheritance. Bring the calculator, and I'll tell you how much we're earning. The satirical medium The Onion hit the nail on the head as always when it published the headline “Trump announces a 5,000% increase in numbers.”
The most worrying thing about this exhibition of ignorance is that, in reality, it's cynicism. Trump and RFK must already have people who know how to calculate percentages and add four plus four. But they know that the rules of contemporary political warfare involve despising factuality – which is unique and, therefore, shared – in favor of a version of reality that we could call L'Oréal: because I'm worth it. The problem isn't the lie, then, but the uninhibitedness of an authoritarian germ.
