“If you’ve got the truth you can demonstrate it. Talking doesn’t prove it.” ― Robert A. Heinlein,

The interview

Watching President Trump on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on June 7, I was struck by what happened. It was the perfect epitome of modern leadership. Who needs facts when you have power? Your authority is all you need. Every time Kristen Welker asked for evidence, only authority was asserted. She was supposed to wilt in the face of his authority. Failing to do so only invited rage. This exchange that ended the interview is a near-perfect specimen of proof by authority.

Here it is worth quoting at length.

Pressed on the $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund and his claim that January 6 defendants were victims of “dirty cops,” Trump asserted that FBI agents had ushered rioters into the Capitol:

WELKER: There’s no evidence of that, sir. There’s no evidence of that.

TRUMP: You had a bunch of dirty cops, and frankly, what they did was weaponization of our government.

WELKER: But sir, there’s no evidence of that. More than a thousand people pleaded guilty to crimes —

TRUMP: …Try looking at the tapes one time.

WELKER: Just to be very clear, there’s no evidence of what you’re saying…

TRUMP: There’s a lot of evidence… There’s tremendous evidence. There’s nothing but evidence.

WELKER: Well, it’s not been presented in a court of law.

TRUMP: The election was rigged. It was a dirty election… And it’s happening again right now in California.

WELKER: Do you have evidence to support that?

TRUMP: All I have to do is look. All I have to do is look.

WELKER: But that’s not evidence.

“All I have to do is look” is the entire epistemology of proof by authority compressed into seven words. The claim is true because the authority perceives it to be true; demonstration is beneath him. When the demand for evidence persisted, the response was not evidence but dominance:

TRUMP: They’re crooked just like you’re crooked, your press is crooked. And Meet the Press is crooked.

WELKER: To be fair, I’m not crooked. But let’s continue.

TRUMP: Really? Well, you play right into their hands then… You’re either crooked or you’re stupid.

Moments later, he tore off his microphone, declared, “You’re a one-sided crooked network. Sorry. Let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough,” and walked out. Asked for any evidence eight separate times, the President of the United States produced none. He produced insults, an assertion that looking is the same as proving, and finally a tantrum. The proof is non-existent. What exists is the power, and the power is the only authority that matters..

The same disease, closer to home

One of the great commandments of science is, ‘Mistrust arguments from authority.’ Too many such arguments have proved too painfully wrong. Authorities must prove their contentions like everybody else.” — Carl Sagan

Few leaders or experts can match Trump’s manic devotion to lying. The underlying mechanism is one I watched daily at work, and it helped push me to retire. The leadership I knew were “experts” in science. Some, even with actual accomplishments to point to used their position to dominate. They insisted their views be accepted even when wrong and refuted by evidence. They ignored evidence. When evidence was asked of them, they responded with power. Not really different from the way Trump responded to Welker. Just less colorful and childish. Who needs evidence when you’re in charge?

Most of the time the leaders are not promoting self-serving conspiracy theories as Trump does. I will touch on self-serving promotion of falsehoods below. They are telling us they are doing a great job and everything is going great, when this is not true. They are promoting their own success while suppressing any talk to the contrary. Most leaders will point to selective evidence to support their view. “The stock market is at an all time high.” Meanwhile any evidence to the contrary is ignored. At work this looked like only mentioning positive things while avoiding problems. This is not leadership. This is marketing. It almost always tips over into bullshit.

Many people submit to this even when what they see directly contradicts the claim. I saw it every day. The constant stream of bullshit, lies, and false claims promoted by leadership wears resistance out. Even when backed by no evidence and, often, no relevant expertise, This was corrosive to any responsilbe conduct. Being the one who said “there’s no evidence of that, sir” carried the same cost it carried for Welker. I was called out. Made an example of and singled out for punishment.. It is better for your career to support the lie. Accept the bullshit as the truth. Consequences of this are sure to be terrible.

Experts do it too

“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” — Richard Feynman

Acknowledged leaders in many technical fields practice a politer version of the same disease. I wrote recently about direct numerical simulation (DNS). In DNS, you almost never see evidence that a result is, in fact, a valid direct numerical simulation. Error analyses are almost never presented. When they are, the discussion concerns statistical convergence, almost never numerical convergence. You see a flow solution and a description of the method, but no estimate of the actual numerical error. The result is a worse facade: DNS presented as an exact solution. A perfectly good and detailed replacement for actual experiments. “All I have to do is look” (at the pretty turbulent flow field) is the implicit argument. It is no better coming from a chaired professor than from the President.

Any expert worth their salt should have evidence at their fingertips. Command of a field should include command of the evidence supporting your claims. Consider a maxim everyone accepts in principle: errors should be estimated. Every experimental standard says measurement and statistical uncertainties must be reported. In practice they rarely are. The standard is honored in name only, proof by authority with a peer-reviewed veneer.

The deeper problem for these leaders and experts is that evidence works against them. Often they cannot provide it because they do not have it; when they do have it, it undermines the claim. Politicians whose policies fail market a success that does not exist rather than change course. Experts who built reputations on their life’s work cannot admit the problems that remain, so they present that work as the final answer. The result is the same in both cases: declining legitimacy, suppressed progress, and eventual failure. Turbulence modeling and DNS are a clear example: decades of little real progress, while the experts promote their success and starve the work that could deliver actual breakthroughs.

Why now?

“In God we trust; all others must bring data.” — attributed to W. Edwards Deming

Why has this become so prevalent? I have theories rather than an answer. Part of it is the collapse of trust in experts. People increasingly see them as full of shit, and the experts’ own behavior keeps supplying the evidence (the one kind of evidence they reliably produce). Part of it is that the internet’s “do your own research” reflex goes unanswered by the gatekeepers. That reflex cuts both ways: it is healthy when it holds gatekeepers accountable. It is toxic when the gatekeepers are themselves the problem, because real standards are also what weed out the charlatans.

The current administration is the limiting case. It is an organization in which genuine expertise is an impediment to advancement, staffed top to bottom by charlatans, liars, or both. Where this kind of leadership takes hold, reality eventually collects its debt. It eventually collects that devt from society at large, savagely.

The Bottom Line

“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” — Bertrand Russell

Trump’s behavior is over the top and a hyperbolic manifestation of poor leadership. That is precisely the lesson: Trump-style leadership, while awful, is not an anomaly. It is not isolated. It reflects deeper societal problems. Leadership across our institutions is unfit for success, and it will produce decline in everything we allow it to touch.

When a simple request for evidence is met with fury, the weakness of this leadership is laid bare. That reaction is exactly why science isin decline: evidence yields clear conclusions. When those conclusions contradict what leaders want to project, the evidence is dismissed. Many leaders in our technical and scientific institutions push back against V&V for the same reason, the evidence it produces undermines the message they are selling.

The deeper problem is that a significant number of people will believe whatever a leader says, even when the evidence contradicts it. They do not need evidence, and they do not demand it. I saw this at Sandia, where most people accepted what leadership told them and ignored what they could see with their own eyes. Even when their lived experience opposed the leader, belief was granted. As I discovered, these leaders will not accept any resistance.

Trump is the hyperbolic version of the same story. Occam’s razor, applied to the record, points to a habitual liar, prone to outbursts and capable of criminal or criminal-adjacent conduct. He has a long history as a grifter, and a civil jury finding of sexual abuse. His followers ignore all of it and believe him on the strength of his business image and his position. The presidency compounds the effect, since people tend to take a president’s words at face value. The pattern repeats across society with business leaders like Elon Musk being a prime example. Their position is the only proof some people demand. We will get the outcomes we deserve.

The path to better leadership is to celebrate success while acknowledging and attacking problems. Problems are not solved by being ignored; they are solved by being confronted. This is the path we are failing to choose. Leaders who celebrate success and sidestep problems do not make the problems disappear. The problems remain, and they compound. Today’s leaders believe they can defer the hard problems to someone else. That is cowardice, and it is a road to ruin.

Transcript excerpts from NBC News, “Meet the Press,” June 7, 2026.

“What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.” — Christopher Hitchens