Two Sisters (On the Terrace), Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1881

Author Tim O’Brien in a recent Vanity Fair article recounted an incident that occurred while he was researching his 2005 book, Trump Nation: The Art of Being the Donald. O’Brien was riding with Trump on his airplane to LA. He spied the painting “Two Sisters” on the wall and asked the Donald if it was an original. To which Trump affirmed that it was. From Chicago, O’Brien challenged Trump, because the original hangs in the Chicago Art Institute and has since 1933 or thirteen years before Trump was born. On the return flight Trump introduced the painting to O’Brien again, as an original and as if the previous day’s conversation had never occurred. Time passed, Trump was elected president and in his first post-election interview with Sixty Minutes, the fake Renoir can be seen in the background of his Trump Tower apartment. This story is comical, but is also emblematic of Trump’s sad and bizarre essence. The very arbitrator of fake news is the biggest fake of them all.