Across his political career, Donald Trump has become known for making false or misleading claims to gain voters’ support. Katie Pruszynski calls this use of misleading claims, “Wedge Lies”, where a leader can use untruths to manipulate the emotions and responses of their followers to gain and retain power. Trump’s use of Wedge Lies, she writes, helped him to galvanise Republican voters in the 2024 election and consolidate executive power immediately after returning to the White House. 

• This article is part of ‘The 2024 Elections’ series curated by Peter Finn (Kingston University). The series has explored the 2024 US elections at the state and national level. If you are interested in contributing to the series, contact Peter Finn (p.finn@kingston.ac.uk).

Donald Trump makes false or misleading claims which many consider to be lies. How can we be so confident in this? Either because we can see the claims as being demonstrably false, or because article after article has documented the tens of thousands of false or misleading claims he made during his first term (30,573 is the broadly agreed upon total). Some of his most ardent supporters even know it, but have come to the conclusion that while he may be a “liar”, he’s their “liar”. He lies brazenly; an implicit challenge within each claim to prove him wrong, and if you can do that, well good luck doing anything about it.

The new paradigm of lies in politics

The use of lies – or false or misleading claims – has become a pattern (or paradigm) in how we now talk about and experience modern politics, particularly in long-established Western democracies in which centrist parties are fending off challenges from the populist right and left. But while there is undoubtedly a cost associated with lies or falsehoods of all sizes and shapes (a leader who lies about an extra-marital affair still runs the risk of voters considering them to be less trustworthy), those of us who investigate the links between trust, democracy, polarisation and populism are increasingly concerned about what Renée DiResta, in her 2024 book, Invisible Rulers, has called the creation of “bespoke realities”. DiResta’s work homes in on the role of social media influencers and algorithms as invisible rulers that can construct carefully tailored cultural, aesthetic and political ecosystems for users that are also utterly detached from reality.

My own work looks at how political leaders, and in particular Donald Trump, are also working from this playbook through a concept I have called Wedge Lies. The idea is simple: if a leader is willing to jettison the truth, then they can influence the powerful emotional responses that come from their audiences in reaction to any claim they wish to make. Why bother? Does it not, as with the leader who lies about an affair, damage the perception of their trustworthiness? The Wedge Lie is different to other falsehoods because it does not seek to convince everyone of its truth – quite the opposite. The liar is only interested in convincing his own supporters of the truth of his claim. If his opponents don’t believe him, so much the better to foster that frustration and impotent rage now commonly known as “gaslighting”. Supporters feel vindicated, validated and energised, whilst opponents build resentment, anger and frustration. The Wedge Lie’s crucial impact, though, is to direct those emotional responses towards each other as well as to the liar himself. Both social and political trust are damaged. And it can be done on command. This has serious implications for the healthy functioning of democracy, which depends upon good levels of both types of trust.

The underlying goal for this approach is the centralisation and consolidation of power for a burgeoning authoritarian or autocrat. Democratic backsliding and the rise of authoritarianism thrives in misinformation-heavy environments. Not only does the public have crucial gaps in information, they are also easily led into laying blame for their socio-economic circumstances at the feet of entirely the wrong targets. Donald Trump honed this technique in the 2016 and 2020 Presidential campaigns, and it emerged again in 2024.

“64.East.USCapitol.WDC.6January2021” (CC BY-SA 2.0) by Elvert Barnes

Trump and the “Big Lie” narrative

Sitting at a Trump rally in Macon, Georgia, two days before the 2024 election, I spoke to dozens of his followers in the crowd and the long queue to enter the stadium. Each one expressed certainty that the imminent election would be stolen from them if the Democrats had the opportunity to do so. Each speaker at the rally, and then Trump himself, exalted the crowd to make their victory “too big to rig”. It was the continuation of Trump’s “Big Lie” that began as the “stop the steal” narrative seeded by Republican operative, Roger Stone, as far back as 2016. The lie provided the backbone for an expansion into darker messaging accusing an amorphous “them” of hating patriotic Americans and American values. “Liberals”, not just the Democratic Party, became the target for vitriolic and even dehumanising language. Attendees at the rally spoke about “liberal traitors”, “enemies” and “rats”. Suspicion, resentment and hatred were being carefully and repeatedly steered towards neighbours and coworkers.

The continuation of the Big Lie served two purposes; the first was to galvanise Republican supporters to get out and vote in numbers to ensure an “unstealable” election result. The second, and far more serious, was the permission structure it created for the swift and unprecedented consolidation of executive power immediately after Trump’s inauguration for his second White House term. Trump, after all, was simply protecting America (and by extension, real Americans) from the dangerous, woke liberal elite. The Big Lie narrative was interwoven with other Wedge Lies in the 2024 election, most notably about immigration and LGBT rights, spotlighting another key feature of Wedge Lies: their close association with the recurring themes of the culture wars and moral panic. This is by design. Those issues are likely to draw emotional rather than rational responses, exploiting and deepening existing societal fissures. 

A precarious moment in US politics

America in 2025 is deeply polarised, but for little good reason. Its simmering anger and suspicion have been manipulated by Trump and the right-wing media ecosystem for political gain. The full results of this are yet to be seen. As the more extreme agenda of Trump’s second term takes shape, protests will inevitably follow. He has already laid the groundwork to justify an unprecedented crackdown on public dissent, with his most influential advisor, Stephen Miller, repeatedly floating the “necessary” suspension of habeas corpus to protect America. Those who would immediately cry that the law is the law and it does not permit this assault on civil liberties are missing the point. The law is only as strong as the people tasked to uphold it. This administration will act first and seek forgiveness later. The damage done waiting for the courts to act will be considerable.

It paints a bleak picture. Certainly, Democrats seem ill-equipped to meet this precarious moment. As they prepare for the 2026 Midterms, they must remember that politics is inherently a deeply social phenomenon that has become atomised by people’s reliance on social media for “news” information. Online fact checkers are no replacement for conversations that bring the truth back into living rooms and break rooms. Those who oppose this new paradigm of lies shouldn’t be too afraid to tell the truth.

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• Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor the London School of Economics.