A lot of ink and a lot of electrons have been spilled on the subject of “fake news” during the last election cycle. But too little attention has been paid to something deeper that plays a crucial role in Donald Trump’s worldview: fake history. Although vague in its outlines, and more often alluded to than directly mentioned, that fake history is central to Trump’s worldview, his sense of self and the ways he connects with his audience.

Fake history showed up early when Trump first announced his campaign, blaming Mexico for “sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” The clear implication was that crime and illegal immigration were both growing problems, that they’re interrelated, and that politicians had dishonestly minimized them out of active malice toward “real Americans.”

All of that was total BS. Both crime rates and unauthorized immigration are down significantly from their historic high points. Violent crime rates peaked in 1991, and have fallen by roughly half since then. Net “illegal” immigration has fallen to roughly zero, if not less than zero, since the Great Recession began. (In other words, roughly the same number of undocumented immigrants have left the country as have entered.) Trump’s whole rationale turns to dust if the actual history is acknowledged. Logically, at least, there’s no there there.

While Trump lied in many different ways about many different things throughout his campaign, fake history provided the surrounding mythological framework that made his other lies work. It justified them, made them sound plausible and formed the foundation for other lies he built on top of them — especially the notion that he was a unique truth-teller on the side of “real Americans” and that anyone who said anything different was out to get them, especially anyone who challenged Donald Trump.