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Last Wednesday, television viewers across the country tuned in to a prime-time address on the economy by President Donald J. Trump. It was an 18-minute journey into an alternate reality, littered with falsehoods and exaggerations.

Speaking at a carnival barker’s clip and often shouting at viewers (“Why is he yelling at us?” wondered conservative talk radio host Erick Erickson on X), Mr. Trump employed what linguists call a “Gish gallop.” It’s a rhetorical technique in which a person throws out so many claims in a debate that their opponent can’t possibly address all the falsehoods in the allotted time. Or, in the context of an argument on social media, opponents must spend inordinate amounts of time researching and refuting each claim, causing those with more important things to do to simply give up — creating a false sense of legitimacy for the Gish galloper.

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But even this flood-the-brain strategy could not obscure the fact that much of what Mr.........

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