Will Trump Get His Potemkin Statistics?
In 2013, ahead of a scheduled visit from President Vladimir Putin to the small Russian town of Suzdal, local officials worried that he would be disappointed by the dilapidated buildings. In a modern revival of Grigory Potemkin’s possibly apocryphal deception of Catherine the Great, they slapped exterior wallpaper onto buildings, hoping to hide the decaying concrete behind illustrations of charming village homes. It was intended as a comforting myth to keep Putin happy.