Authoritarian types like flattery and try to mold how the world views them. The Soviet Union long adjusted photos to remove those who had fallen into disfavor and make their latest dictator appear especially heroic. Trump has taken Soviet photo adjustment to absurd new lows.
After enduring decades of jibes and abuse from Americans and in particular "Spy" magazine editor Graydon Carter called him a “short-fingered vulgarian” in 1988, Trump's allegedly short stubby fingers became a national joke in the 1980s and 1990s and Trump is now obsessed by his finger length.
The tech website Gizmodo reported this week that it found at least three retouched photographs on Trump’s social media pages since October, including two in the past few days, in which Trumps's body and face have been slimmed, his face and neck wrinkles tightened, his hair cleaned up — “and in one of the strangest alterations, Trump’s fingers have been made slightly longer.”
Comparing the original photographs to the doctored ones, Gizmodo speculates that Trump aides have been using Photoshop or Facetune and finds it “especially weird that his fingers have been made longer, which might lead one to believe that the president has had some input in these alterations.”
Why the need for Trump to extend himself now? Perhaps it’s involuntary. Pinocchio’s nose grows when he lies; Trump’s fingers might do the same. Or maybe the digitally altered digits reflect the broader state of Trump’s truthfulness. As things worsen for Trump — legal troubles, Democrats taking the House, the wavering economy and administration chaos — he has deployed ever more flimflam. Glenn Kessler’s Post fact-checking team this week reported that the president’s production of false or misleading claims has nearly tripled, to a rate of 16.5 per day in his second year from 5.9 during his first year. The 82 days on which Trump did not publicly declare a falsehood “were often days when the president golfed.”
Facetune, then, is a metaphor for Trump’s presidency. He created the illusion of a border crisis. He created the illusion of economic success. He created the illusion of a tax cut for the middle class. He’s trying to create the illusion that others are to blame for the shutdown. And now his team is creating actual illusions by posting doctored images of him (even as he accuses the media of being “fake”).
 |
