I've Never Seen So Many Lies in All My Years Covering US Elections
To borrow one of Donald Trump’s favorite phrases: the GOP nominee lies “like nobody’s seen before."
Donald Trump punctuates his carnival barker boasts and smears with superlative variants of “like nobody’s ever seen before.” As usual, he tells on himself.
It turns out the phrase both illustrates and describes the fathomless dishonesty of his attempt to win back the White House.
That Trump presents fiction as fact, flavored by racism, cruelty, and grift, no longer surprises anyone. His lurid slanders against Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, stand out mainly because they have terrorized an entire community.
“The most vicious, despicable, lie-filled campaign I’ve ever seen,” as Republican dissident Sarah Longwell put it on CNN last week. I’ve followed campaigns longer than Sarah and can confirm that no one’s seen anything like it.
But the lies run deeper than individual false assertions or the dystopian visions Trump invents about our vibrant country and its world-leading economy. They infect core GOP messages on subjects from taxes to inflation, from health insurance to debt.
Well before Trump seized control, Republicans had sealed themselves in a worldview that doesn’t fit 21st-century Americans or the modern world. It’s a political cul-de-sac from which deceit offers the only escape.
Republicans champion the grievances and resentments of a shrinking white Christian minority as the nation grows steadily more diverse. They decry economic conditions that their policies would plainly worsen.
Hobbled by unpopular, self-defeating impulses, they struggle to fund government programs their core supporters depend on. They cannot govern and lie about Democratic opponents who can.
Consider some examples:
Debt
As is typical, Trump and his party campaign against debt and deficits. But their pre-eminent priority, cutting taxes, requires more federal borrowing.
The last four Republican presidents left office with higher deficits (as a percentage of GDP) than they inherited; the last four Democrats left – or, in the case of Biden, is expected to leave – with lower deficits. Trump’s new tax-cutting proposals would blast giant craters in the budget, endangering the Social Security and Medicare benefits he claims he’ll protect.
Trump covers those contradictions with two lies: First, he claims that lower taxes actually increase revenue through economic growth, and second, he says budget cuts can yield vast savings without touching Social Security and Medicare. Republican leaders want to cut those popular retirement programs but fear that represents political suicide.
Inflation
Seizing on voter frustration, Trump claims that Vice President Kamala Harris “cast the tie-breaking vote that created America’s inflation,” the “worst inflation we’ve ever had.” Those are another two lies; recent inflation is not our worst (prices rose faster in the late 1970s and early 1980s), and the American Rescue Plan Harris put over the top didn’t cause it (pandemic disruptions did, worldwide; the ARP somewhat exacerbated it here in the US).
Inflation has since started to return to normal levels, but Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, keep lying about it in plain sight. In Pennsylvania, Vance complained that a dozen eggs now cost “around $4” even though the national average is $3.20 – as illustrated by the price sign just behind him offering a dozen for $2.99.
Moreover, Trump’s signature economic policy – sweeping import tariffs – would inflate prices again. Trump conceals that inconvenient truth with the lie that foreign importers, not US consumers, pay tariffs.
Abortion
Republicans have achieved their decades-long goal of overturning the constitutional right to abortion. Trump sealed it by stacking the Supreme Court with three anti-abortion justices.
But most voters support abortion rights. Trump tries to cover the problem with transparently absurd lies, claiming that Democrats sought the same goal (they didn’t) and that they hold the “radical” view that babies can be executed after birth (they don’t).
Healthcare
Republicans uniformly opposed the creation of the Affordable Care Act. At then-President Trump’s behest, they came within one vote of killing it in 2017. They failed because the ACA had grown too popular, especially its provision guaranteeing affordable insurance coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.
So now Trump lies about it, insisting he “saved” the ACA from collapse. Vance claims their administration would improve it by cutting insurance regulations. In fact, the regulations he cites are the ones protecting those with pre-existing conditions.
Crime
Trump and Republicans want to blame Biden-Harris policies for a violent “crime wave.” But the truth doesn’t support it, so they lie.
Crime spiked during the 2020-2021 pandemic years under both Trump and Biden; neither president caused it. But now that FBI data show crime rates falling, Trump claims fraud.
Immigration
With illegal border crossings down lately, tempering the impact of his signature issue, Trump has amplified his dishonest sensationalism. Beyond the Springfield pet-eating fantasy, Vance cries “murder” about a fatal car crash involving a Haitian immigrant driver though the victim’s father, calling it a tragic accident, beseeched him to stop. Vance calls the Springfield Haitians “illegal” even though they entered the US legally.
Even worse is the larger story of Trump’s demagogic vow to arrest and deport immigrants by the millions. Pulling that off – a horrifying prospect on humanitarian grounds – would aggravate multiple problems he purports to solve. It would cause labor shortages, which would damage the economy and worsen inflation, and deprive Social Security and Medicare of tax revenue needed to finance benefits.
Lies about his legal troubles complete the damning picture. Trump conjures Biden-directed “lawfare” to explain charges against him and his allies in the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection.
In fact, the prosecutions resulted from attempts to overturn the country’s free and fair 2020 election. It was a crime nobody’s ever seen before.
ICYMI from Zeteo…
What messages the US is giving to the world : If you have enough money and power, you can lie, kill, ethnically cleanse entire population and you will be rewarded !!!
But Biden lied before the UN…so does the entire West, media, politicians, etc., sick of the whole damn thing! The slaughter of Palestinians and Lebanese today is so intolerable. The American media: absolute trash!