The Premise

The strategy is simple: start with a lie so big, everyone else ends up debating inside it.

We’ve hit the part of the American story where facts are quaint, and punchlines pass for wisdom. And we oblige, gamely making jokes based on setups we didn’t write about, about a world that no longer respects cause and effect.

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They say the election was stolen — and we counter with jokes about Sharpies and bamboo ballots.
They say climate change is a hoax — and we throw heat maps at people who don’t believe in thermometers.
They say journalists are the enemy — and we smugly link to articles from journalists.

It’s adorable how we keep trying to out-logic a cult.

This is the Trump trick: create a false premise, then sit back while everyone else — pundits, professors, and punchline addicts — argue as if it were real. We turn their propaganda into content. They turn our outrage into momentum. And while we’re busy diagramming their lies, they’re backstage rewriting the plot — and democracy is the extra who gets killed offscreen.

It’s not new. McCarthy did it with communists. Wallace did it with race. George Wallace, not Henry. (Henry at least had the shame to step down.) And now we’ve got a man who understands that if you lie fast enough and loud enough, someone will call it “debate.”

🎭 What’s a False Premise — and Do We Have to Fall for It?

A false premise is a rigged starting point — a lie polished just enough to sound like the beginning of a reasonable conversation. But let’s be honest: most of these don’t arrive by accident. They’re often pre-assembled at Fox News, polished for maximum outrage, then distributed across talk radio, Facebook, and family group chats like Tupperware for grievance. By the time we hear them, they’ve already been field-tested for emotional stickiness, detached from facts, and built to dominate the next 72 hours of public discourse.

And once that premise is in circulation, even smart people start arguing inside it — as if it were real. The goal was never truth. The goal was always frame control. Once they’ve built the stage, even our best rebuttals start sounding like scripted roles.

Take this classic:

“If the 2020 election was stolen, how do we fix voting?”
It wasn’t. But now we’re pretending the problem is logistics instead of lying.

Let’s be honest: a Trumper’s premise isn’t just “wrong” — it’s deliberately toxic nonsense, made to short-circuit common sense. And yet, we still chase the logic around like it’s going somewhere.

They say the FBI planted evidence — and we argue about chain of custody.
They say drag queens are dangerous — and we respond with test scores.
They lie with intention. We respond with infographics.

They know the game. We just keep bringing charts to a con.

And then there's the zombie premise that won't die:

“The government should be run like a business.”
Yes — let’s structure society around shareholder returns. Let’s cut Social Security because it’s “underperforming.” Let’s shut down poor ZIP codes and rebrand them as “non-core assets.” It sounds clever until you realize a nation is not a spreadsheet.

This mindset gives us policy documents that sound like quarterly earnings calls — soulless, reactive, and built to please exactly one kind of investor. It turns human beings into customers and democracy into a glitchy self-checkout machine.

These premises aren’t simply wrong — they’re weapons. They are deliberate distortions meant to drag the debate into a swamp where reason can’t breathe.

So, what do we do?

We tweet.
We roll our eyes.
We make ironic T-shirts.
And the frame — their frame — stays intact.

That’s the grift. Not just the lie, but the fact that we do the work of making it livable.

So, I say: don’t argue inside the lie. Blow up the stage.

They say teachers are groomers. Don’t cite curriculum standards. Reject the slander entirely.
They say immigrants are invaders? Don’t open Excel — torch the blood-and-soil fantasy.
They say, “Make America Great Again”? Fine. Ask when. Ask where. Ask who got to vote. Ask who got jailed. Ask which brand of tear gas was trending. Because the “great” they want back looks suspiciously like apartheid with better PR.

MAGA isn’t a political agenda. It’s a yearning for unchecked power dressed up as patriotism.
Refuse the setup. Don’t improve the lie. Don’t give it lighting and call it nuance.

MAGA isn’t a movement. It’s demolition in a red hat. And if we don’t start rejecting the premise, it’s going to finish the job.

But that doesn’t mean we shut people out.

In a fractured nation, communication is survival. We don’t have to legitimize the lie, but we can reject it without rejecting the person. Hold the line — yes — but hold it with clarity, not cruelty. The goal isn’t to win the argument. It’s to change the story.

Because if we stop talking altogether, the demolition wins.

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