[throwaway82388]

I’d describe Trump and Musk as similarly adapted to the attention economy. But it is a similarity of style, as you said, and not necessarily politics.

While Bush II was far from the inventor of executive dissimulation, his administration did have a uniquely dysfunctional relationship with the truth. But truthiness was coined by Colbert, a brilliant critic of that administration, to describe things that aren’t true but feel true. It’s regrettable, but increasingly over the last five or six years, that term could be applied with similar frequency to claims made on either side of the aisle.