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Did Trump mock a disabled reporter, or did your eyes, and the Hollywood elite make you think he did?

The questions are endless, and the answers, unless you're paying very close attention -- all the time -- can require significant effort to ascertain. Reality is becoming hazy in the era of Trump. And that's no accident.

The fact is Trump has become America's gaslighter in chief.

If you've never heard the term, prepare to learn it and live with it every day. Unless Trump starts behaving in a radically different way after he becomes President, gaslighting will become one of the words of 2017.

That's only the beginning. He uses a variety of truth-blurring techniques. His goal is to exert power and control by creating doubts about what is real and what isn't, distracting her as he attempts to steal precious jewels.

Now Trump has brought it to the United States. The techniques include saying and doing things and then denying it, blaming others for misunderstanding, disparaging their concerns as oversensitivity, claiming outrageous statements were jokes or misunderstandings, and other forms of twilighting the truth.

When Trump says something that outrages a portion of the population and pleases one segment, he can have it both ways. Voters eager for a tough guy president may be happy with the bully, while those who don't like it might be appeased by the denial. In the end, few people can keep up with all the facts all the time. And as he tries to undercut the credibility of serious journalists, he makes it even harder for everyone else to find an easy path to the truth.

He's just getting started, but compared with the man he admires so much, he's a rank amateur at gaslighting.

In Russia, the truth became a matter of opinion under a strategy implemented by a clever aide to President Vladimir Putin, Vladislav Surkov. Surkov, who has a background in the arts, orchestrated a kind of political theater in Russia, creating a gauzy faade where no one knew which group was a creation of the government and which wasn't.

The challenge will be a steep one for journalists and for all Americans, when so much of what comes from the next president has to be checked and double-checked. The first step is to establish when there is a gaslighting operation in progress.

Then comes the battle to hold on to the facts.

Read the rest here:
Donald Trump is 'gaslighting' all of us(Opinion) - CNN.com