Trump consistency about being inconsistent seems almost calculated to destroy the accountability that comes with being interviewed. It has already managed to displace the usual policy wonkery and debate of issues with something showier and more grand. A Trump political rally seeks to focus collective emotions, not make reasoned cases for one set of policies over another. To borrow a page from the rhetoricians, Trump rejects logos (the appeal to reason) when making his pitch and goes directly to pathos (the appeal to emotion) as he strives to elicit tears, laughter, and ultimately agreement from his supporters.

In dismissing logic and consistency for pure emotion, Trump has created a powerful reality-distortion field in both politics and journalism. The field doesn’t actually permit Trump to “get away with” lying in interviews: If you query his supporters, most will concede their man’s many fibs. In their minds, though, the “truth” matters less than what’s in Trump’s heart. It’s not that truth and fact don’t matter to them—it’s that truth and facts don’t matter enough to affect whether you want to vote for him. In an environment in which political success is almost totally detached from information, the “truth-finding” interview is becoming one of the first casualties.

By rejecting the authority of the press to judge him, Trump has debilitated if not destroyed the power of the interview, befuddling a press corps that still believes it can bring him down with one more gotcha, one more “Pinocchio“, one more “Pants On Fire“ from the fact-checkers. Trump is laughing at them now.