The last episode of This American Life[1] really nails it to the wall:
> The bully lie is different. It doesn't try to convince you. It doesn't present evidence. It just tells you to pick a side. So when the president said that diversity programs caused the plane crash over the Potomac, when he called the president of Ukraine a dictator without elections, he didn't lay out a set of facts to make his case. He wasn't interested in rebuttal.
> When he does this kind of thing, Masha writes, he's "asserting control over reality itself" and splitting the country into those who agree to live in his reality and those who resist and become his enemies by insisting on facts.
I think in addition to that, he has learned that his behaviour is rewarded with unprecedented social and media exposure and share of the social consciousness, and when all everyone talks about is Trump, it in some way legitimizes whatever he says by nature of choking out everything else. This has basically only escalated based on everything he has done so far in his second term. Even if whatever he said is dumb and doesn't work or he is wrong, it doesn't matter because that story is buried under the stories covering the 10 other outrageous things he has said since. Whenever he says something absurd, he is inviting everyone to join him in his reality, and everyone hops in.
I think institutional trust is too low, the media cycle moves too fast and people are too divided for facts to matter much in this environment.
> The bully lie is different. It doesn't try to convince you. It doesn't present evidence. It just tells you to pick a side. So when the president said that diversity programs caused the plane crash over the Potomac, when he called the president of Ukraine a dictator without elections, he didn't lay out a set of facts to make his case. He wasn't interested in rebuttal.
> When he does this kind of thing, Masha writes, he's "asserting control over reality itself" and splitting the country into those who agree to live in his reality and those who resist and become his enemies by insisting on facts.
[1] https://www.thisamericanlife.org/855/transcript