When confronted by one of his blatant falsehoods, Trump often doesn’t even attempt to back up what he said. He’ll simply reply that “many people say I’m right,” effectively denying the validity of what is usually known as “facts.” The president is responding to a claim of fact not by denying the fact, but by denying the claim that facts are supposed to have on an argument. “He isn’t telling (his opponent) that he’s got his facts wrong. He’s saying that as far as he is concerned facts, as most people understand the term, don’t matter. That they are indistinguishable from, and interchangeable with, opinion, and that statements of fact needn’t have any purchase against a man who is either sufficiently powerful to ignore them or sufficiently shameless to deny them – or, in his case, both.”Bret Stephen’s editor and columnist at the Wall Street Journal