In Donald Trump’s imaginary world, Americans can’t venture out to buy a loaf of bread without getting shot, mugged or raped. Immigrants in a small Ohio town eat their neighbors’ cats and dogs. World War III and economic collapse are just around the corner. And kids head off to school only to return at day’s end having undergone gender reassignment surgery. The former president’s imaginary world is a dark, dystopian place, described by Trump in his rallies, interviews, social media posts and debate appearances to paint an alarming picture of America under the Biden-Harris administration.

It is a distorted, warped and, at times, absurdist portrait of a nation where the insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to deadly effect were merely peaceful protesters, and where unlucky boaters are faced with the unappealing choice between electrocution or a shark attack. His extreme caricatures also serve as another way for Trump to traffic in lies and misinformation, using an alternate reality of his own making to create an often terrifying — and, he seems to hope — politically devastating landscape for his political opponents.

Trump, for instance, regularly claims that Democrats favor abortions up until the day of birth — and, in some cases, even after birth. Speaking at the Sept. 10 presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris in Philadelphia, Trump falsely claimed that Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, has said “abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine.”

“He also says, ‘execution after birth’ — execution, no longer abortion because the baby is born — is okay,” Trump continued.

In fact, Walz has not said this, The Washington Post Fact Checker found, and “execution after birth” — or infanticide — is illegal in all states. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2021, nearly all abortions — 93.5 percent — occur at or before 13 weeks, and fewer than 1 percent were performed after 21 weeks.

World War III, too, is another all-but-certainty should Trump not be elected in November, the former president frequently claims. In July, before a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his private Mar-a-Lago Club, Trump told reporters that only his electoral victory could stave off another global conflagration. “If we win, it’ll be very simple. It’s all going to work out and very quickly,” Trump said. “If we don’t, you’re going to end up with major wars in the Middle East and maybe a Third World War. You are closer to a Third World War right now than at any time since the Second World War. You’ve never been so close, because we have incompetent people running our country.”

And this month, shortly after news that former Republican vice president Dick Cheney and his daughter, Liz Cheney, a former Republican congresswoman from Wyoming, planned to vote for Harris, Trump took to his Truth Social site to attack them. “I am the Peace President, and only I will stop World War III!” he claimed.

“He’s not the same candidate he was in 2016 or 2020,” said Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist who took note of Trump’s “imaginary world” in a post on X this month. “He’s far more diminished and untethered.”

“The percentage of time he’s spending in the real world versus his dystopian world is decreasing. He’s just not speaking about things that are true in this world that we all live in,” Rosenberg said. “It is true that economic hardships, border tragedies, and two new wars have broken out under Vice President Kamala Harris and four more years of her policies will only make the pain and suffering worse,” said Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary, in a statement. “President Trump speaks the hard truth about this reality and has an optimistic vision for the future to make America strong, safe, and prosperous again by securing the border, cutting taxes, bringing down inflation, and restoring peace around the world, like there was during his first term.”

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