"Post-truth" has become shorthand for a political landscape untethered from objective reality, defined by Oxford Dictionaries as circumstances where "objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief," few figures embody its essence more profoundly than Hillary Clinton. Far from the bombastic exaggerations often attributed to Donald Trump, Clinton's brand of post-truth operates on a subtler, more insidious level: the deliberate social construction of realities that bend facts to fit ideological moulds. While Trump, for all his bluster, emerges as a hard-nosed realist, grounded in transactional pragmatism and unfiltered assessments of the world as he sees it, Clinton plays the long game of narrative engineering, reshaping truths about gender, power, and accountability to sustain Leftist progressive hegemony. This distinction isn't mere semantics; it's a window into how post-truth erodes discourse, with Clinton as its high priestess, wielding Yale-honed rhetoric to prioritise constructed "lived experiences" over empirical anchors.
Post-truth didn't erupt fully formed in 2016; it simmered in the cauldron of identity politics and elite relativism that Clinton has long championed. Consider her recent appearance on MSNBC's Morning Joe in late September 2025, where she lamented the erosion of a "truth-based reality," insisting that "facts and evidence must matter again." In the same breath, she decried finger-pointing, only to pivot seamlessly to blaming Republicans for America's woes, embodying the very contradiction she ostensibly opposes. This isn't a gaffe; it's tactical incoherence, a smokescreen that keeps opponents dissecting her words while she advances agendas unmoored from consistency. More damningly, her call for empirical rigour rings hollow against her longstanding affirmation that gender is fluid, a man can "become" a woman through self-identification, biology be damned. Here lies the heart of Clinton's post-truth ethos: Social constructivism, the philosophical underpinning that views reality not as discovered but as built through discourse, power structures, and collective agreement. Gender, in this view, isn't a biological fact but a malleable narrative, reconstructed to empower marginalised identities, even if it means sidelining scientific evidence on chromosomes, hormones, and physiology.
This social construction game isn't new for Clinton; it's woven into her career tapestry. As Secretary of State, she navigated the Benghazi fallout by emphasising "narratives" over timelines, famously retorting "What difference at this point does it make?" when pressed on factual discrepancies. In her 2016 campaign, she positioned herself as a guardian of truth against Trump's "alternative facts," yet her own record brimmed with relativism: Dismissing email scandals as overblown, while decrying opacity in others, or championing women's rights globally, while aligning with regimes that subjugate them. Fast-forward to 2025, and the pattern persists. Weeks after conservative activist Charlie Kirk's assassination, allegedly ignited by inflammatory rhetoric against "white male Christians," a demographic Clinton herself targeted in the same Morning Joe interview as responsible for "so much damage," she wonders aloud how politics strays from America's "founding principles." Yet Clinton treats the Constitution as a "living document," pliable to progressive whims, reinterpreting free speech to curb "hate" or Second Amendment rights amid gun debates. This isn't hypocrisy; it's strategic reconstruction, where principles are fluid tools for power, not fixed stars.
Contrast this with Donald Trump, often vilified as the post-truth poster child for his hyperbolic claims and fact-check fodder. Yet Trump's style is that of a hard-nosed realist: A New York real estate tycoon turned politician who speaks bluntly about the world as he perceives it, unfiltered by elite decorum. His infamous "Mexico isn't sending their best" line in 2015 wasn't a constructed narrative but a raw, if inflammatory, assessment of border realities, backed by data on crime and migration patterns, even if under-stated. Trump's "America First" mantra reflects pragmatic realism: Trade deals renegotiated for tangible wins (e.g., USMCA), foreign policy as deal-making, and economic boasts grounded in pre-COVID growth metrics. Fact-checkers like PolitiFact rated him "Mostly False" or worse far more often than Clinton, 83% of his statements versus her 28% in 2016, but Trump's falsehoods stem from exaggeration, not existential redefinition. He doesn't claim reality is socially constructed; he asserts it bluntly, often clashing with progressive constructs like climate alarmism (dismissing it as a "hoax" based on economic realism) or gender ideology (mocking it as "woke" overreach). Trump's post-2024 tenure, marked by "Warp Speed" reflections and Ukraine scepticism, underscores this: Hard bargains over idealistic narratives.
Why does Clinton eclipse Trump in post-truth profundity? Because her approach isn't mere lying, it's epistemological warfare. Social constructivism, popularised in academia and infused into policy via Clinton's orbit (e.g., her advocacy for "gender equality" as a UN rallying cry), posits that truths like sex or merit are products of power dynamics, ripe for deconstruction and rebuilding. Trump's "lies" are tactical bluffs in a zero-sum game; Clinton's are foundational shifts, enabling policies that redefine bathrooms, sports, and prisons to accommodate constructed identities, often at the expense of women's safety. Her 2025 critiques of RFK Jr.'s "crackpot ideas" on vaccines, while ignoring her own administration's mixed messaging, further illustrate this: Truth as a tool for control, not discovery. Trump, conversely, operates in a realist paradigm: Facts may bend to his ego, but they exist independently, deals close, walls build (or not), economies boom or bust on measurable terms.
The stakes transcend partisanship. In a post-truth world dominated by Clinton's ilk, discourse devolves into competing constructions, eroding shared reality. Trump's realism, flaws notwithstanding, anchors debate in tangible outcomes: Jobs created, borders secured, enemies deterred. As G.K. Chesterton warned, the modern mind dismantles signposts then laments the lost path, Clinton's project in microcosm. Young conservatives, take heed: Expose these constructs not for applause, but to reclaim truth's solidity. For in the social construction game, the house always wins, unless realists like Trump force a recount.
https://www.theblaze.com/columns/opinion/truth-is-whatever-hillary-says-today