Now that the players have been clearly established, it’s time for the political media to turn to the issues.
And when writing about those issues, it’s imperative that journalists point out the most salient characteristic of the Republican platform: That it’s almost entirely based on lies.
This is not hyperbole. Just listen to Trump’s semi-coherent news conference on Thursday (transcript parts one, two and three.) It was lie after lie after lie. The fact checks (by the New York Times, the Associated Press, and MSNBC) barely scratched the surface.
As it happens, the Trumpian vision for the future is most effectively summarized in one handy document, the official Republican platform.
It is a litany of lies — about the border, immigration, the economy, energy, our international standing, the military, you name it.
It’s one thing when a party makes unlikely campaign promises. That’s normal. But it’s another when the underlying premises beneath those promises is wildly deceitful.
Political journalists at our most powerful news organizations are strongly averse to taking sides in a partisan dispute. They don’t want to be accused of bias. Their bosses tell them to afflict both sides. They consider themselves above the fray.
But when one of the two political parties’ entire argument is so obviously deceitful, from start to finish, it’s not right for journalists to treat them alike.
While the “fact checks” are well intentioned, they aren’t enough. Every article or broadcast segment about where Trump stands on the issues should make it clear that his entire pitch is built on an edifice of lies.
And if those lies are gaining traction in the public sphere, the media has an obligation to correct them. Anything else is dishonest.
This is Not Normal
And let’s be clear: This is not normal behavior for a political party, not even for Republicans.
The 2016 Republican platform, like the ones before, was a more-or-less traditional document, stressing age-old Republican values including a reaffirmation of “the Constitution’s fundamental principles: limited government, separation of powers, individual liberty, and the rule of law.”
There was no platform in 2020; the party literally couldn’t find the words to describe Trump’s vision of government, so it just didn’t.
By contrast, this new Trumpified and truncated 2024 iteration is based on 20 all-caps MAGA talking points from “STOP THE MIGRANT INVASION” to “REBUILD OUR CITIES” to “END THE WEAPONIZATION OF GOVERNMENT AGAINST THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.”
The core argument is here:
America needs determined Republican Leadership at every level of Government to address the core threats to our very survival: Our disastrously Open Border, our weakened Economy, crippling restrictions on American Energy Production, our depleted Military, attacks on the American System of Justice, and much more.
Lie after lie after lie.
Just as with Trump’s stump speeches, the platform is centered around lies about immigration and immigrants:
Republicans offer an aggressive plan to stop the open-border policies that have opened the floodgates to a tidal wave of illegal Aliens, deadly drugs, and Migrant Crime.
But the border is not open. It is “more fortified than it’s ever been.” There were an estimated 57,000 illegal crossings in July, down from their all-time high of 250,000, marking the lowest monthly figure since 2020. There is no wave of migrant crime. And the vast majority of fentanyl is smuggled into the country not across a porous border but through official ports of entry.
Similarly, despite one day of concerning news this week, the economy is not “weak”. Inflation has not “crushed the middle class”. Indeed, as CNBC reported in June, “Americans have seen their buying power rise for a year amid falling inflation and a strong job market.” The U.S. economy is far outpacing its peers.
There are no “crippling restrictions” on American energy production. For better or worse, domestic oil and gas production are at a record high – as are profits for oil companies.
The platform lies about the U.S.’s international standing: “The Biden administration’s weak Foreign Policy has made us less safe and a laughingstock all over the World.” It’s Trump who made the U.S. a literal laughingstock; foreign officials — at least those from allied countries – are freaked out about the possibility of his return.
Our military is hardly “depleted” – the U.S. spends more on its military than the next nine countries combined.
And some of the lies are worse than just lies, they are projection – accusing the Biden administration of doing precisely what Trump himself wants to do going forward. This is most obviously the case in the platform’s commitment to “stop the Radical Left Democrats’ Weaponization of Government and its Assault on American Liberty.” It’s Trump who has promised “retribution” should he regain office; his platform vows to “hold accountable those who have misused the power of Government to unjustly prosecute their Political Opponents.”
Finally there are the lies of omission. The word “abortion” appeared 35 times in the 2016 platform (h/t CNN). It only appears once this time around, and includes language that at first glance would leave decisions about abortion to the states:
We believe that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees that no person can be denied Life or Liberty without Due Process, and that the States are, therefore, free to pass Laws protecting those Rights.
But as the 19th News reported, the platform actually “supports states establishing fetal personhood through the Constitution’s 14th Amendment,” which “would have the practical effect of prohibiting abortion at all stages of pregnancy.”
A Campaign of Deception
Trump and the Republican Party aren’t so much trying to persuade as they’re trying to deceive. These are not disputes about policy. These are deceptive incitements.
Indeed, there is very little in terms of actual, detailed policy proposals in the platform – or in Trump’s stump speeches — just broad strokes with no details, based on lies.
And yes, it’s all still operative. “I haven’t recalibrated strategy at all,” Trump said at his news conference on Thursday. “It’s the same policies: open borders weak on crime.”
(Violent crime is actually near a 50-year low.)
Journalist Joe Conason, author of the new book The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers, and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism put the lies in context in a recent interview with the Washington Monthly, saying:
Deception is central to the contemporary right for two reasons. One is that they’ve discovered, over a long period, that it is highly profitable to mobilize people’s fears and resentments around mythical issues. You can pull in vast sums of money from the right-wing base. The second reason is that facts don’t work for them. It is very hard, at this point, to make arguments on behalf of their positions that are fact-based. They push lies, conspiracy theories, fantastical inventions that support their ideological positions. To take one example, there is an idea that the minimum wage costs jobs. Not true. It’s been debunked. No respectable economist believes it. Or if you cut taxes, you’ll generate economic growth. Not true. It’s been disproven over again. So, they rely on falsehoods.
That’s the message that American political reporters should be conveying to the public. Doing anything short of that is journalist malpractice. It’s aiding and abetting liars.
Very well put, Dan, as usual.
I will never understand the knee-jerk compulsion of the mainstream media to find almost limitless euphemisms for the word “lie” when writing about the GOP. I subscribe to the Columbia Journalism Review, and I have yet to find any legitimate basis for this odd phenomenon.
I only know what you’ve accurately noted, and that is that when someone says something that’s 180° from the truth in my profession (law), we call that a lie.
So what specifically can we do to get political reporters and both media and print journalists to hold Trump to account and press him for honest and direct answers to their questions?
Call them on it. Remind them of their role in a healthy democracy – that discerning and describing what is true and what is not is part of the job.
Well Done! Clear, precise summary.
Eight years after Trump was elected (and, not to mention the thirteen years since Trump started his birtherism game), many in the media cannot bring themselves to use the words “lie” and “liar.” What apparently suffices are words like, “untruthful, false, misspoke, and not altogether correct,” among many.
Dan, we all know why these journal-less’ do this: everything from corporate greed to garner clicks and eyeballs to direct orders from on high from the corporatized C-suites and editorial desks). Anything to keep their readers, watchers and listeners angry and agitated. Kind of “Big Brother” in reverse.
Unfortunately, getting the real, truthful, unvarnished news is nigh near impossible these days, save for the relative handful of blogs, newsletters, videos and other media from investigative journalists and folks like you. It’s really a constant, daily vetting process but it takes work, effort and perseverence if we want the truth…not unlike eschewing the fast food and ultra-processed food, sugar and other crapified foods that keep us fat and unhealthy.
Keep up the good work. People are noticing.
13 million illegal aliens = an open border Not a lie. Trumps solution was much better
Inflation has hurt me, Im middle class Not a lie Insurance, food, fuel, housing are way higher
Energy Independence VS Buying oil from adversaries (a negative thing), not a lie, but a smart solution to lower energy costs, which lowers costs across the board, builds jobs, will help lower inflation.
INFLATION IS DOWN!
READ THE FACTS.
Great reporting here. Keep sounding the alarm. Let’s all keep Vigilant in fact finding.
Also-my humble opinions-
1.Human beings are not “illegal aliens”
2.There have never been “open borders” – not that simple;
3.Inflation in this current Admin.was mostly born from the disastrous policies
of the Trump administration’s response to
Covid pandemic, corporate greed
I have to disagree. For years Republicans have been running on lies about their opponents as well as what their policy proposals really are and what those policies will actually do — put more $$ into the pockets of the ultra rich.Supply side tax cuts that magically pay for themselves coupled with a promise to balance the budget have been their biggest policy proposal scam since Reagan. I never saw the MSM explain that those tax cuts (mostly for the rich) have always exploded the deficit and debt. Republicans have been big climate denier leaders. The Bush administration lied us into a war, Poppy Bush and his pals from the Reagan administration lied their fannie’s off about their illegal, blatantly unconstitutional, reckless and idiotic Iran Contra conspiracy. And never forget Tricky Dick.
Republicans had their wordsmith Frank Luntz coming up with innocuous-sounding labels such as “privatization” for their middle class-destroying plans. They lied about Clinton and Obama’s healthcare plans and their goal of totally profitizing our system. Ditto for Social Security. Then there were all the lies about Democrats — Swiftboating of John Kerry, Whitewater, Filegate, Travelgate, Chinagate — and for me the most vicious, cruel and totally insane slander of them all, that the Clintons had murdered Vince Foster one of their closest friends. Behind the scenes they had an army of dirty tricksters like Roger Stone, Roger Ailes (who held run Poppy’s campaigns), Lee Atwater, his acolyte Karl Rove. Now Trump has Steve Bannon and his henchman Peter Schweizer etc. etc.
Trump is the result of all those lies and the numbing effect they have had on the media as well as the American people. The big change with Trump is that he doesn’t have a wordsmith (propagandist) like Luntz to make his lies appear anodyne, normal proposals and he doesn’t have the discipline to follow his advice if he did have someone like that.
Agreed. The economic model peddled by Republicans — the rising tide will lift all boats — has always been a con. Why has it worked all this time? First, corporations seized control of the legislative process (see Lewis Powell memo). Second, the Supreme Court equated money with speech (Buckley v. Valeo); the inevitable result is that Big Money largely determines who gets to and stays in power and to shape legislation. And, third, Republicans — helped by an Infotainment Complex driven by its own profit motive — perfected the art of distracting voters with culture-war issues. Do that for 40 or 50 years and, as you say, someone like Trump is the inevitable result.