Source: French to English Tester Published on: 2026-04-08
Source: The Conversation – in French– By Christophe Premat, Professor, Canadian and Cultural Studies, Stockholm University
What else is there to say about Donald Trump? For nearly a decade, books, investigations, and testimonies have followed one another in an attempt to grasp an extraordinary political figure. WithThe Trump case. Portrait of an impostorpublished inÉditions Écosociétéin 2025,the Québécois essayist Alain Royoffers a psychopolitical reading of the Trump phenomenon.
Published in 2025, the work relies on abundant documentation and an immersion in a Trump rally to examine the emergence of this phenomenon. As the writer reminds us at the beginning of his work, Trump himself did not believe in his 2016 electoral victory.
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It is from this paradox that Roy analyses the manner in which theTrumpismwas less the product of a structured political project than the result of an opportunistic dynamic, fueled by the flaws of the media system, distrust of the elites, and the power of simplistic narratives capable of capturing an electorate in search of rupture.
This article is part of our seriesBooks That Matter, in which experts from different fields discuss or analyze the works they consider relevant. These books are the ones, among all, that they select when it comes time to understand the transformations and upheavals of our era.
The book is organized around three structuring notions: lying, narcissism, and destructiveness. This triptych allows Roy to propose a coherent analysis of a political personality who seems, at first glance, to escape all rationality.
Lie until it becomes true
First, lying is not an accident; it constitutes the core ofTrumpian device. The image ofself-made manis a matter offictional constructioncarefully maintained. Donald Trump presents himself as the archetype of individual success, while in reality he inherits afamily real estate empireand goes through, over the decades, bankruptcies and restructurings.
When Trump hammers that the 2020 elections were stolen, he is practicing“big lie”. This concept refers to the idea that a lie can eventually be accepted if it is repeated enough and if it takes on such a scale that people come to think it is tooenormousto be completely false.
Roy’s work has the merit of gathering facts to allow understanding of this dynamic of lies: according to The Washington Post, Trump is said to have uttered30,573 lies during his first presidential termor more than 21 per day.
Stamp one’s surname as often as possible
Next, narcissism appears as a key element. It is not simply a character trait, but a psychic structure marked by an incessant quest for recognition. The signature and the desire to privatize the external world bear witness to this according to Alain Roy:Trump Tower,Trump Castle, Trump Air,Trump University,Trump Vodka, Trump Steak.
Trump’s narcissism manifests in an obsessive concern with image and in the immediate reaction to any criticism, perceived as a personal attack. Public speeches, often improvised and centered on himself, illustrate this inability to step outside of oneself and to integrate contradiction within a democratic framework.
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Undermining the counterpowers of democracy
Finally, thedestructivenessilluminates Trump’s relationship to power. Roy shows that some decisions or statements are aimed less at building than at confronting, or even disrupting.
Repeated attacks against institutions, the media, or electoral processes are part of a logic of permanent confrontation. From this perspective, power is no longer a space for regulation but a battleground where conflict becomes an end in itself, at the risk of eroding the very foundations of the democratic framework.
Thetweetthen replaces all the power mechanisms that do not interest him, hence this childlike and personalized vision of political connections.
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Deception as a mode of political existence
One of the most stimulating theses of the book is that Trump should not be understood as an anomaly, but as asuccessful imposture. Far from being marginalized by its contradictions, it transforms them into a political resource. Its failures become proofs of resilience, its outrages markers of authenticity, itsliesmobilization tools.
As Roy wrote, “Trump has occasionally justified these boasts by saying they were the product of ‘truthful hyperbole.’ However, the notion of ‘truthful hyperbole’ is a contradiction in terms […] it is just another deceitful conception among all those he tirelessly produces.”
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This formula of “veridical hyperbole” clearly illuminates the functioning of his discourse: it allows exaggeration to be transformed into a guarantee of authenticity, by shifting the question of truth towards that of impact. The accuracy of the facts does not matter; what counts is the story’s ability to convince and mobilize.
In this perspective, Donald Trump embodies a mutation of contemporary political discourse, where factual coherence gives way tonarrative effectiveness.
A democracy put to the test
The major interest of the book lies precisely in this shift of perspective: Donald Trump does not appear only as a problematic individual, but as a revealer ofcontemporary democratic fragilities. The question that runs through the work is then less about his personality than about the conditions that made his rise to power possible. How can such a character impose himself durably in a system supposed to rely on institutional and informational safeguards?
Roy shows that this rise takes place within a context marked by a growing distrust of the elites, a profound transformation of media ecosystems, and an increasingly pronounced political polarization. These dynamics, far from being unique to the United States, outline a broader framework in which thetransgressive figuresfind a favorable ground.
The paradox comes from the fact that Trump was able to awaken a deep nationalist sentiment while he himself would have wanted to be part of the New York elite by boasting about his fortune to show his worth and power. “When one considers the way Donald Trump behaved in the “business jungle“we thus get the impression that all his deals were carried out less to get rich.”
Trump 2.0: the radicalization of a logic
Recent news gives a particular resonance to the essay. In his speeches, Roy mentions the emergence of a“Trump 2.0”, driven by a logic of revenge and now better structured politically. This is a new phase, more coherent in its objectives and more openly asserted in its methods.
This evolution extends and intensifies the dynamics already at work during Donald Trump’s first term. The progression by “small steps,” the questioning of institutions, and the assertion of a will to power are now part of aprojectmore systematic, less improvised and more organized.
Why this book matters today
By proposing a cross-sectional reading, at the crossroads of psychology, politics, and culture, the work allows for grasping the coherence of a phenomenon often reduced to its excesses. From this perspective, understanding Trump is less about hunting down an individual drift than analyzing the conditions that allowed his emergence: the erasure of politics as a space of rational mediation, in favor of a relationship to power of the typequasi-religious, structured by transgression, belief, and the embodiment of a collective destiny in the figure of the leader.
Finally, the book invites us to rethink contemporary democracies as unstable balances, exposed to dynamics of extreme personalization. In this respect, the interest it generates already goes beyond the Francophone framework. Onetranslation into Swedishis being prepared, a sign that the questions raised by Roy find aechoin other political contexts. This upcoming circulation confirms the broader scope of the work: beyond the case of Donald Trump, it offers tools to think about contemporary transformations of power and the reconfigurations of the democratic bond.
Christophe Premat states that he participated in organizing an online conference on March 20, 2026, with Alain Roy. This conference is part of the activities of the Canadian Studies Center of Stockholm University, in collaboration with Dalecarlia University (https://www.su.se/enheter/centrum-for-kanadastudier/kalender/kalenderartiklar/2026-03-13-understanding-the-trump-phenomenon—a-conversation-with-the-canadian-author-alain-roy). This event notably aimed to announce the upcoming publication in Swedish of Alain Roy’s book dedicated to the Trump phenomenon, in a translation by Mats Forsgren published by Fri Tanke editions.
–ref. The Trump case: understanding the imposture to consider democratic fragility –https://theconversation.com/the-trump-case-understanding-the-imposture-to-think-about-democratic-fragility-279803