In an era defined by polarized politics and performative leadership, few figures embody the philosophical concept of “bad faith” as completely as President Donald Trump. The term, famously explored by Jean-Paul Sartre in his 1943 work “Being and Nothingness”, describes the act of self-deception—of denying one’s own freedom and responsibility by clinging to a rigid, inauthentic identity. In Trump, we see this concept not as an abstract theory, but as a living, breathing blueprint for political and personal conduct.
Sartre argued that human beings are “condemned to be free.” We have the terrifying liberty to shape ourselves through our choices, yet we often flee from this responsibility. We pretend to be fixed entities—the “boss,” the “victim,” the “winner”—to avoid the anxiety of acknowledging that we could have acted differently. This is bad faith: choosing to believe one’s own lie to escape the burden of authenticity and truth.
Donald Trump operates almost exclusively within this realm. His refusal to ever admit error, to ever concede a misjudgment, is not merely stubbornness or strategy; it is a profound existential commitment to a fabricated self. From inflated crowd sizes and disputed election results to pandemic management and foreign policy, any suggestion of fallibility is met not with reflection, but with amplified denial. The persona of the infallible “stable genius” must be maintained at all costs, even when reality provides overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
This is where Sartre’s projection feels eerily prescient. The philosopher understood that the man in bad faith does not merely lie to others; he convinces himself. He becomes the role he plays so thoroughly that he loses the ability to distinguish the performance from the person. For Trump, admitting a mistake would shatter the entire edifice. It would force an acknowledgment that he is, like everyone else, a fallible being capable of error—a reality his constructed identity cannot tolerate.
The consequences of this psychological stance are not confined to the individual. When wielded by a person in power, bad faith becomes a tool of national gaslighting. It demands that institutions, the media, and the public participate in the delusion. It corrodes shared reality, replacing facts with “alternative facts,” and truth with “truthful hyperbole.” It frames accountability as persecution and criticism as disloyalty.
Sartre wrote that the man in bad faith “flees what he cannot flee, to flee what he can.” Trump flees from the simple, human capacity to be wrong—something he cannot actually escape—by instead fleeing into a world of perpetual grievance and self-aggrandizement. He has chosen his narrative, and in the Sartrean sense, he is trapped by it. His freedom is surrendered to the cage of his own making.
In observing Trump, we are not just watching a controversial politician. We are witnessing a classic, almost textbook case of existential bad faith played out on the world stage. It serves as a stark warning: when a leader is psychologically incapable of authenticity, of facing their own limitations, the very foundations of reasoned discourse and democratic trust are placed in jeopardy. Sartre gave us the framework to understand this phenomenon decades ago. Today, we are living with its most potent and damaging example.
