Let me be real with you for a second. I am tired. Tired in my bones, tired in my soul, tired of turning on the news and watching journalists ask legitimate questions only to get slapped with the same two words: FAKE NEWS. It doesn't matter if the reporter has receipts. It doesn't matter if there's video evidence. It doesn't matter if the facts are sitting right there on the table. The moment anyone dares to push back, to question, to hold power accountable — out comes the label, like a magic eraser designed to wipe away truth.

 

But here's the thing: this isn't just political spin. What we are witnessing has a name. It's called gaslighting — and it's one of the most psychologically damaging tactics a person in power can use against the people they're supposed to serve.

 

Today, I want to break it all the way down. What gaslighting actually is, how this administration does it with breathtaking consistency, and most importantly — how you can protect your mind from it. Because your sanity matters. And so does the truth.

 

First: What Is Gaslighting?

The term comes from a 1944 film called Gaslight, in which a manipulative husband systematically makes his wife question her own perceptions — dimming the gas lights in their home and then denying it's happening — until she believes she's losing her mind. It's a form of psychological manipulation where someone causes another person to question their own memory, perception, and sanity.

 

In a personal relationship, gaslighting looks like a partner saying "that never happened" when you know it did, or "you're too sensitive" when your feelings are completely valid. In politics, gaslighting looks like an administration telling the public that what they're seeing with their own eyes is a lie — and that only the administration itself holds the truth.

 

 

The playbook, as author Amanda Carpenter outlined in her book Gaslighting America, tends to follow a predictable pattern: stake out outrageous territory, deny responsibility, create suspense around a coming "reveal," and then attack the most vulnerable critics. Sound familiar?

 

The Trump Administration's Gaslighting Playbook: By the Numbers

This isn't opinion. The receipts are real, and they are extensive. Let's walk through some of the most documented examples of how the current administration has systematically manipulated public perception.

1. "Fake News" as a Weapon Against Accountability

Trump didn't invent the term "fake news" — that phrase was originally used to describe actual misinformation online. But he weaponized it, turning it into a catch-all dismissal for any reporting that reflected poorly on him. According to the Freedom of the Press Foundation, Trump made over 215 anti-media posts on social media as of late 2025, targeting individual journalists and outlets almost exclusively in response to negative (but accurate) coverage.

 

The White House even launched an official "Media Bias Tracker" on WhiteHouse.gov, complete with a rotating "Media Offender of the Week" and an "Offender Hall of Shame." Reporters Without Borders (RSF) noted that the page labels journalists as "misleading" and "biased" with no factual breakdown or outside verification of why their reporting is incorrect. In other words: the government declared itself the sole arbiter of truth — a textbook gaslighting move.

 

 

The U.S. now ranks 57th out of 180 countries on the World Press Freedom Index — the lowest domestic press freedom ranking since the index began in 2002. That's not fake news. That's a fact.

2. The Immigration Numbers Don't Add Up

One of the administration's loudest claims has been that it is executing the greatest deportation operation in American history, targeting violent criminals and making communities safer. But independent data tells a different story.

 

According to PolitiFact's year-end review, which dubbed 2025 "The Year of the Lies," approximately 73 percent of people detained by ICE did not have criminal convictions. The administration consistently frames its enforcement as going after "the worst of the worst" — but the data shows the majority of those swept up are working people without criminal histories.

 

The gaslighting on the raw numbers is equally staggering. In an April 2025 press release, the Department of Homeland Security claimed its arrest and deportation figures had "already surpassed the entirety of Fiscal Year 2024." Researchers at TRAC (Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse) called that claim "preposterous," noting that the Biden administration's actual FY 2024 record of 272,000 removals was more than double what DHS was claiming for its first 100 days.

 

Then came October 2025, when DHS announced that over 2 million people had been removed from the country — including 1.6 million who "voluntarily self-deported." The Center for Migration Studies called this "a self-serving fantasy," stating a more realistic figure was about one-tenth of that claim.

 

Meanwhile, more than 1.6 million immigrants lost their legal status in Trump's first eleven months — people who had followed the rules, entered legally, and built lives here. The administration stripped their protections and then told the public it was only going after lawbreakers.

 

3. Silencing Journalists and Calling It Transparency

In February 2025, Associated Press reporters were indefinitely banned from the Oval Office and Air Force One pool — not because of inaccurate reporting, but because they continued using the term "Gulf of Mexico" instead of Trump's preferred "Gulf of America." That's gaslighting wrapped in petty authoritarianism: punishing accurate, factual language and framing the punishment as a matter of principle.

 

Media outlets that published unfavorable coverage were ejected from Pentagon press spaces and replaced almost entirely with outlets aligned with conservative viewpoints. CNN, The Washington Post, NPR, The New York Times, and NBC News were removed. In their place: Newsmax, Breitbart, One America News Network.

 

Then there is the treatment of individual journalists. When Bloomberg's Catherine Lucey asked a follow-up question about Jeffrey Epstein documents on Air Force One in November 2025, Trump's response was: "Quiet, piggy." Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the remark by saying the president "calls out fake news when he sees it."

 

That's the loop. Ask a legitimate question. Get insulted or dismissed. Have the insult justified as a defense of truth. Your question never gets answered — and you're left wondering if you did something wrong.

4. Health Misinformation Presented as "Fact"

PolitiFact's 2025 reporting flagged the administration's September press conference in which Trump and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared that pregnant women should not use Tylenol, citing unproven links to autism. As of late 2025, the White House website still listed this as a verified "fact" — even after medical experts and health organizations pushed back, noting the claim is not supported by scientific consensus.

 

When the government posts unverified, contested medical claims on an official website and labels them "facts," that is not healthcare communication. That is institutional gaslighting of the most dangerous kind.

5. Rewriting History Through Policy

The administration's executive orders targeting libraries, museums, and public education aimed at, as researchers at the Center for Racial and Disability Justice described it, presenting "a whitewashed, sanitized version of American history." When government institutions are used to reshape what the public learns about its own past — while labeling alternative accounts as dangerous or false — that is gaslighting at a societal scale.

 

Why This Works (And Why It's So Exhausting)

Here is the honest, painful truth about why gaslighting is so effective as a political weapon: it wears you down. It is designed to. When you are constantly defending objective reality, you don't have energy left to push for accountability. When you spend your days fact-checking statements that were obviously false on their face, the perpetrators have already moved on to the next cycle.

 

PolitiFact editor Katie Sanders put it plainly in a PBS interview at the end of 2025: "We worry that people are too numb to the drumbeat of misinformation. They have tuned it out. And that is very dangerous."

 

Gaslighting also works because it exploits a fundamental human discomfort: most of us don't want to believe our leaders are lying to us. It feels safer to think we misunderstood, or that the journalist got it wrong, or that there's more to the story. That instinct — to give the benefit of the doubt — is being used against us.

 

How to Protect Yourself: Spotting Gaslighting in Real Time

You don't have to be a political scientist or a journalist to see through it. Here are the signs to watch for — and the practices that will keep your discernment sharp.

Signs You're Being Gaslit by Those in Power

•       They deny saying things that are on video or in writing. Not "my words were taken out of context" — flat-out denial of documented statements.

•       They attack the messenger, not the message. When every critical voice is called a liar, a partisan, or mentally ill, that's a deflection — not a rebuttal.

•       They use vague, shifting language. "Many people are saying..." or "we'll see what happens" without ever anchoring to specifics makes it impossible to hold anyone accountable.

•       They claim your confusion is your problem. "You're misreading it." "That's not what that means." "You just don't understand how this works."

•       Official channels publish unverified claims as fact. When government websites list contested or false information without sourcing, your red flag should go up.

•       The story keeps changing — but the blame stays the same. Details shift, explanations evolve, but the designated villain (the media, Democrats, "the deep state") never changes.

 

Best Practices for Staying Grounded

1. Go to primary sources.

Don't just read headlines. Read the actual executive order. Watch the full press conference clip, not the 15-second social media cut. Look up the original data report. Primary sources are harder to spin.

2. Trust your memory.

If you remember a politician saying something, and they now deny it, look it up. We have transcripts. We have video. Your memory is not the problem.

3. Diversify your news sources — critically.

Read across ideological lines, but apply the same standard everywhere: What is the evidence? What is the source? What is missing from this story? Good journalism asks these questions regardless of who it makes uncomfortable.

4. Name what you're seeing.

Language matters. When you call a documented pattern of misleading the public "gaslighting" rather than just "politics," you're being precise. You're also giving others permission to trust their own perceptions.

5. Protect your emotional energy.

You do not have to consume every news cycle to be an informed citizen. Set intentional limits. Log off when you're overwhelmed. Your mental health is not a sacrifice you owe to anyone's news strategy.

6. Talk to your people.

Gaslighting thrives in isolation. When you share what you're noticing with people you trust, you reality-check each other. You feel less crazy. You become harder to manipulate.

7. Support independent journalism.

Subscribe to local newspapers. Support nonprofit news organizations. Tip a reporter whose work gave you real information. A free press is not a luxury — it is the infrastructure of an informed democracy.

 

The Bottom Line

Gaslighting is not a glitch in this administration's communication strategy. Based on everything the data, the press freedom indexes, the fact-checkers, and the historians are telling us — it is the strategy. The goal is to make you doubt yourself so thoroughly that you stop trusting your own judgment, stop demanding answers, and stop expecting accountability.

 

But here's what I know about us — about the not-so-common women and men reading this right now: we are not that easy to break. We've navigated gaslighting in our personal lives. We know what it feels like when someone tries to make us feel small for knowing what we know. And we know how to get back to solid ground.

 

Stay grounded. Stay curious. Trust the evidence. And for the love of everything — keep asking questions.

 

That's what they don't want you to do.

 

With love always,

The Not So Common Gal

 

Sources & Further Reading

Poynter: "The numbers that defined the Trump administration's attacks against the press in 2025" (January 2026)

PBS NewsHour: "Why PolitiFact has labeled 2025 the 'Year of the Lies'" (January 2026)

TRAC Reports: "Trump Claims on Immigration Enforcement: Rhetoric vs Reality"

Reporters Without Borders (RSF): "New White House Hall of Shame Webpage Expands Trump's War on the Press" (2025)

American Immigration Council: "Mass Deportation: Analyzing the Trump Administration's Attacks on Immigrants" (2025)

The Setonian: "Truth, According to Trump: When Criticism Becomes a Crime" (December 2025)

Center for Racial and Disability Justice / Medium: "Manufactured Confusion: Gaslighting as a Tool of Power in the Trump Administration" (April 2025)

Carpenter, Amanda. Gaslighting America: Why We Love It When Trump Lies to Us. HarperCollins, 2018.