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n a populist regime, politics take precedence over reality, including in the climate, medical and economic fields. No expertise must stand in the way of the will of "the people," as expressed through elections. In the name of the legitimacy conferred by the ballot box, the elected leader, within the limits set by the Constitution, prevails over bureaucrats – but also over scientists and experts. And if facts, those inconvenient truths, have the audacity to resist and stand in the way of the election's victor, then they must be bent to his will. Thus autocracy is born.
Trumpism offers a daily, hands-on demonstration of this drift, which has gone from denouncing "elites" to denying reality, from liberal democracy to its illiberal variant. Political theorist Raymond Aron once warned: "The less intelligence adheres to reality, the more it dreams of revolution," conservative or otherwise.
Trapped in a bubble of his own alternative reality, Donald Trump, fueled by his ego, holds his beliefs to be self-evident truths: There is no point in fighting climate change, as it was, after all, a Chinese invention to undermine the United States' industrial sector. Natural disasters are what they are: inevitable and unpredictable. It is permissible to doubt vaccines – all vaccines – and therefore forbidden to make them mandatory. Poor economic figures are just invented by ill-intentioned bureaucrats.
