The Trump administration got caught attempting to commit fake math last week. It didn’t succeed.

Here’s what happened: Every year, the president is required to send Congress a budget proposal, to lay out his wish list for taxes and spending. President Trump ordered up a plan that would lower taxes, increase military spending and balance the budget within 10 years, all without cutting Social Security or Medicare.

And that’s what his budget director, Mick Mulvaney, delivered. But to meet his boss’s unrealistic goals, Mulvaney produced a document that didn’t make much sense.

To reach Trump’s target, Mulvaney assumed that the economy will grow by an average of 3 percent a year for the next decade, a rate higher than any mainstream forecast. And he cut spending deeply on almost every non-defense function, from cancer research to Medicaid and other programs for the poor.

Even Republicans said the cuts were unrealistic.

“Meals on Wheels, even for some of us who are considered to be fiscal hawks, may be a bridge too far,” said Mark Meadows, chairman of the achingly conservative House Freedom Caucus.

Then it got worse. Budget experts noticed an oddity in Mulvaney’s arithmetic. The proposal estimated that his 3 percent growth in the economy would produce more than $2 trillion in increased tax revenue, helping to balance the budget. Most of that growth, in the administration’s view, would be produced by the big tax cuts it’s seeking.

But the budget didn’t mention the revenue that would be lost by the tax cuts — a number that could reach, oh, $2 trillion or so. Instead, it listed the tax cuts as “revenue neutral,” meaning they’d produce as much revenue as they lost — thanks, of course, to 3 percent growth.

In short, the White House counted the same $2 trillion twice — once to pay for the tax cuts and once to reduce the deficit.

Of course, the Trump administration and its allies have had problems with arithmetic before.

Trump officials have contested the government’s estimates of unemployment — except when the number goes down, in which case they claim credit for the change.

They’ve claimed that Trump was the victim of widespread vote fraud on Election Day, despite the absence of evidence, arithmetical or otherwise. They’re even spending federal money to investigate the problem.

And the president still thinks he drew the largest crowds in history to his inauguration, even though photographs and calculations prove him wrong.

This refusal to accept that 2+2=4 isn’t ordinary political spin or the quirk of a former real estate developer who once promoted a 58-story building as offering 68 floors. The Trump administration’s war on math is just one front in a broader war on facts — including the new practice of dismissing any negative report as “fake news.”

And it’s strategic. It’s aimed at avoiding accountability.

Trump’s proudest claim, now that he’s president, is that he’s keeping the promises he made to voters in his campaign. Only he isn’t. His unrealistic budget plan won’t produce a balanced budget. The health care bill he backs won’t cover everyone, won’t reduce their costs, and won’t protect Medicaid. The tax cuts he said would benefit the middle class would flow mostly to the wealthy instead.

What’s an embattled president to do when he can’t deliver? Attack the scorekeepers — whether they are journalists, the CBO, or the budgeters.

Most people, however, aren’t buying what Trump’s selling.

Being president, as Trump has complained, is harder than being a real estate promoter. There’s far more scrutiny.

Doyle McManus is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times.