Portland residents are resorting to unconventional protest tactics against President Donald Trump's National Guard deployment.

President Donald Trump, officials from his administration and a huge swath of the Republican Party lie as easily as they breathe.

Americans are perpetually bombarded with fabrications and fabulist nonsense from the president's mouth, from behind the podium at the White House briefing room, from podcasts, from Fox News hits and from the halls of Congress.

Like no administration before it, including Trump's previous one, this gang of dissemblers is bullishly creating an alternate reality and a disinformation shield impenetrable to facts. So the question for Americans amid this onslaught of propaganda is simple: Whose reality are you going to live in, yours or Donald Trump's?

The lying from Trump and his administration is absurd and overwhelming

In Trump's world, Democratic-led cities are war zones, prices are down, inflation is down, he has personally ended an ever-increasing number of wars, nobody cares about the Jeffrey Epstein files, his approval ratings are skyrocketing, and the country is "hotter" and more unified than ever.

In the real world, there are no cities burning to the ground (crime, in fact, is down considerably in Democratic-led cities), prices are up, inflation is up, Trump isn't the war-ender he claims to be, a strong majority of Americans want the Epstein files released, Trump's approval ratings are in the toilet and Gallup recently found that only 29% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the country.

When you have a president, his Cabinet, members of his party and the entire right-wing media complex telling you up is down, it's a problem. There's nothing wrong with not trusting everything the government says or does, but not being able to trust ANYTHING the government says or does puts democracy in a wicked bind.

It's safer to assume everything Trump tells you is a lie

The examples are omnipresent.

On Oct. 16, Trump held an event at the White House where he said, "Drug prices are coming down 400%, 200%, 600%, numbers that nobody's ever seen before."

First, those numbers are mathematically impossible, as they would mean drug companies are paying people to take their drugs. But beyond that, no, there's nothing to suggest drug prices are poised to drop dramatically.

Trump has also claimed credit for bringing in more than "$17 trillion" in investment in the United States, a fiction contradicted by the White House's own website, which claims $8.8 trillion in U.S. and foreign investments, a number most agree is grossly exaggerated.

On Oct. 5, Trump said: "Portland is burning to the ground, it's insurrectionists all over the place." Again, that's a fiction concocted in the mind of a paranoid 79-year-old man who believes what he wants to believe. Portland is a largely peaceful city, as evidenced by television and social media clips, firsthand accounts from residents and the simple fact that if a U.S. city had burned to the ground THERE WOULD BE WIDESPREAD NEWS COVERAGE BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE A PRETTY BIG DEAL!

Vaccine lies, government shutdown lies, lies about Democrats

On Sept. 21, Trump wildly claimed that "a little child" gets pumped full of "a vat of 80 different vaccines." Utter B.S. The American Academy of Pediatrics' vaccine schedule, if you include the COVID-19 vaccine, recommends a total of 12 vaccines.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, on Oct. 5, wrote on social media: "As a condition for ending the Democrat shutdown, Democrats want hospitals paid MORE to treat illegal aliens than American citizens." That, according to a thorough PolitiFact fact-check, is utterly false, with the fact-check noting that, among many other things, "immigrants in the country illegally are not eligible to receive Medicaid."

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt recently told Fox News, while smiling and somehow not bursting into flames: "The Democrat Party's main constituency is made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens and violent criminals."

C'mon, folks. That's garbage, and most Americans have the good sense to know it.

GOP's fearmongering and dishonesty insult our intelligence

On Oct. 17, Speaker Johnson described the "No Kings" protests planned for the next day like this: "We refer to it by its more accurate description ‒ the Hate America Rally. ... You're gonna bring together the Marxists, the socialists, the antifa advocates, the anarchists and the pro-Hamas wing of the far-left Democratic Party. That is the modern Democratic Party."

Shut up, dude, nobody's buying your nonsense. And anyone who has stopped paying attention to reality a long time ago.

Back in August, White House ghoul Stephen Miller called protesters in Washington, DC, "stupid White hippies" who are "all over 90 years old."

Now, in the reality of Trump-world, they're radical terrorists and anti-fascist super-soldiers, I guess.

JD Vance talks out of both sides of his mouth when it comes to 'extremism'

The same people who wanted to fire any liberal who dared mention the fatal shooting of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk are out there now excusing a pack of "young Republicans" - some of them in their 20s and 30s - whose wildly racist and Hitler-loving text messages were uncovered.

"I really don't want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke ‒ telling a very offensive, stupid joke ‒ is cause to ruin their lives," Vice President JD Vance said.

Is he kidding us here? Days after Kirk's death in September, Vance said that "we have to talk about this incredibly destructive movement of left-wing extremism that has grown up over the last few years and, I believe, is part of the reason why Charlie was killed by an assassin's bullet."

But you're cool with Republicans casually texting about gas chambers?

Aren't you tired of all the lying? That's exactly what they want.

I can do this all day, because the lying and the misinformation shoot out of this administration like water from a firehose.

They are unquenchably dishonest. They are also childish. When a HuffPost reporter recently asked White House officials who suggested Budapest, Hungary, as the site for an upcoming meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Leavitt responded, "Your mom did," while White House Communications Director Steven Cheung wrote back, "Your mom."

Our tax dollars are paying these people to lie to us and act like juvenile jackasses.

Take a seat in actual reality. Things will work out better here.

If you believe in objective reality, if you're able to use facts to reach sound conclusions, you can clearly see what they're doing. They're spinning a web of fantasy that keeps their rabid base in a constant state of anger and agitation while trying to delude Americans into thinking Trump is succeeding magnificently.

He's not. At all.

If you're going to pick a reality to inhabit, I recommend the one that's real because the one Trump and Co. have ginned up is a propaganda palace that will, invariably, come crashing down under the weight of its own hogwash.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk

Lying Trump, GOP create their own reality. Which one do you choose to live in? | Opinion