So the man who once bragged about his ratings on The Apprentice has walked off the set of an NBC interview. The reason: a dispute over his persistent claim that the 2020 election was ‘rigged.’ Cue the predictable outrage: ‘He’s cracking up!
’ say his critics. ‘He’s standing up to the biased media!’ roar his supporters.
But let’s step back and view this through the lens of history, because that’s what I do. This isn’t just a spat between a former president and a network. It is a microcosm of a deeper rot: the collapse of shared reality in the West.
We are repeating the death throes of the late Roman Republic, where factionalism and propaganda replaced any common ground. When a sitting—or, in this case, nearly-sitting—figure can simply refuse to engage with inconvenient facts, we have moved beyond political disagreement into something more tribal, more dangerous. Trump’s walkout is not a moment; it is a symptom.
And if you think this ends with him, you are not paying attention. The next Caesar is always in the wings, and we have forgotten how to tell truth from theatre.
