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Donald Trump... Devaluing the Profession of Political Fraud

“A true liar is not someone who lies once, but someone who makes people doubt the truthfulness of truth itself.”

Throughout history, the profession of deception and fraud required a certain degree of intelligence. A con artist would spend years learning how to conceal a lie within a half-truth, how to weave the threads of his narrative with enough precision to avoid being exposed too quickly. He understood that credibility was his only capital; once it was lost, his career was over, and he became nothing more than a clown telling stories in cafés.

But since Donald Trump returned to the White House, the world has discovered that even con artists can feel insulted. The man has not merely redefined politics; he has redefined lying itself, to the point where the profession of fraud now appears, by comparison, to be a conservative craft that respects its own rules more than he respects the rules of politics.

In the Middle East, people no longer go to sleep with one piece of news only to wake up to its opposite. A statement speaks of imminent peace, followed by a threat of war. A phone call is said to have changed the face of the region, only for it to emerge that the other party had never even heard of it. A truce is celebrated in the morning, only to turn into a new wave of bombardment by evening. Sanctions are announced and then frozen. Negotiations begin before they have ended, and end before they have begun.

It is as though the entire region has become a vast theatre whose scripts are written not by statesmen, but by authors of detective novels who love surprises more than they love the truth.

The problem is no longer that Trump exaggerates; exaggeration has been part of the language of politics since the dawn of history. The problem is that he has turned exaggeration into a method of governing, and words into a substitute for facts.

He does not always appear concerned with whether the narrative is true, so much as with ensuring that it remains the narrative being circulated. In his world, the news that dominates the headlines matters more than the news that actually happened, and the image created before the cameras is more valuable than the results achieved on the ground.

Thus, the Middle East has found itself living to the rhythm of statements that can barely survive a few hours when tested against reality. Iran hears the language of fire, only to be invited to dialogue. Israel is granted unlimited support, then suddenly asked to exercise restraint. Gaza is promised an imminent humanitarian breakthrough, only to awaken to another round of tragedy. Lebanon lives between promises and warnings, Syria between reassurances and military messages, while the Gulf watches the Strait of Hormuz as though it were an hourglass whose grains are slowly running out.

Meanwhile, the world waits to discover which tweet or statement might ignite the next spark.

And all of this is merely one side of the paradox.

The traditional con artist tries to convince his victim once. In this new politics, however, entire peoples are asked to believe again every morning, no matter how thoroughly yesterday's lies may have been exposed. It is as though memory itself is no longer an element in the formation of public opinion, but a burden that must be discarded.

The cruellest irony is that this method harms not only adversaries; it devours trust in the entire international system. When an official statement can change within hours, and politics becomes a chain of contradictory messages, allies begin questioning before enemies do: Which version is the real one? Which promise can be relied upon? Which threat should be taken seriously?

And therein lies the danger.

Wars do not always erupt because of bad intentions. More often than we care to admit, they erupt because of miscalculation. If the parties lose the ability to distinguish between a genuine threat and a propagandistic one, between a serious initiative and a media manoeuvre, the margin for error widens—and firing the bullet becomes easier than taking it back.

For years, the Middle East has lived in a state of political exhaustion—not only because of the number of wars, but because of the number of conflicting narratives surrounding them. Every side declares victory before the battle begins, and every side declares peace while preparing the instruments of war. The ordinary citizen has become incapable of knowing where truth ends and the media spectacle begins.

If the great con artists who filled the pages of history were to return today, they might stand in astonishment before this spectacle. They understood that the success of a deception depended on its rarity. Once deception became a daily routine, it lost its value. Even lying requires economy in its use; otherwise, it loses its effect.

But when everything becomes subject to change at any moment, lying itself loses its aura and becomes nothing more than noise.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of this style is that it leaves no one a winner. Adversaries become more aggressive because they do not trust the promises. Allies grow more anxious because they do not trust the guarantees. Markets tremble because investors do not know which statement will still be standing by the end of the week. And peoples pay the price because they are the last to know and the first to suffer the consequences of political adventures.

Politics, however harsh it may be, ultimately depends on a minimum degree of predictability. But when it becomes built on permanent surprises, it turns into crisis management rather than the creation of solutions.

The difference between a statesman and a maker of headlines is that the former is held accountable for results, while the latter is content simply to keep his name at the top of the news.

In Conclusion:

History may have exaggerated in describing certain politicians as masters of deception, but our age has introduced a different model: one that does not merely alter the facts, but changes the narrative surrounding them whenever necessary.

Here, the problem is no longer whether the man is truthful or dishonest, but the effect of this style on a world already sitting atop a barrel of crises.

The profession of deception and fraud, for all its ugliness, once operated according to precise rules. But when politics itself becomes a theatre of daily contradictions, even con artists may find themselves compelled to defend the reputation of their profession.

In a world where words steadily lose their value and promises lose their weight, the most dangerous thing is not the spread of lies, but people's gradual acceptance of them—until they stop searching for the truth altogether.

At that point, the loser is neither an adversary nor an ally, but politics itself, along with the trust upon which relations between nations depend. And the Middle East becomes captive once again to a cycle of postponed promises, recurring crises, and truths lost amid the noise.