According to the Washington Post fact-checkers, Donald Trump told over 30,000 lies during his presidency. During Thursday's ninety-minute presidential debate, CNN documented that he told over 30 lies.
During a speech at the United Nations in 2018, heads of state and delegates laughed at Trump.
Trump has been found liable for fraud and rape. He's also been convicted of 34 felonies.
Over and over again Trump has promised to weaponize the federal government against his political opponents.
During his presidential term, some members of Trump's cabinet discussed the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment.
You might be wondering why I'm rehashing some of the sordid history of this country's 45th president. It's because this happened during/after Thursday's debate.
- Trump said this about Biden "I’ve never seen anybody lie like this guy...everything he does is a lie.”
- Trump said that around the world Biden isn't respected.
- Trump called Biden’s actions “absolutely criminal” and falsely alleged that Biden “gets paid by China” and is a “Manchurian candidate.”
- Trump launched a groundless claim that Biden is weaponizing American justice against him. He called it "a system that was rigged and disgusting."
- Immediately after the debate, Republicans began calling on Biden's cabinet to invoke the 25th amendment.
There are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. These voters' confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that “they are all crooks,” and that “government is no good,” further leading them to think, “a plague on both your houses” and “the parties are like two kids in a school yard.” This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s – a distrust that has been stoked by Republican rhetoric at every turn.
Secondly, that kind of "he said/he said" leads to headlines like this one at The Hill: "Trump, Biden accuse each other of lying."Rather than fact-check which one was lying and which one was telling the truth, it's easier to just act as a stenographer and report that both candidates accused the other one of lying. In other words, projection lays the foundation for the media's obsession with bothsiderism. When one candidate has demonstrated that he's a serial liar, that's a win for him.
During a more sane time, you'd be reading this kind of analysis all over the media because Trump's projection of his own failures onto Biden is so obvious. But these are, indeed, crazy times. I'm hoping this helps shore up your sanity just a bit.
If only the media were engaged in bothsiderism, but that ship has now sailed. No, what really worries me is that Trump's pathological narcissist personality has been completely normalized, while the latent ageism that exists in American society has become fully activated against President Biden. A better headline to expose this fallacy would be CNN's "Biden's Stumbles Overshadow Trump's Lies."
ReplyDeleteAs Nancy has so astutely demonstrated, the amount of projection going on in that debate was off the charts. Trump was a cornered animal, unable to articulate any sort of coherent policy, but yet the most important thing to most people was that President Biden had a terribly off-night.
Personally, I think that we've gotten to point, and maybe have for some time now, where real human beings have become nothing but avatars for the wider population. When actual people show their faults, in the most human of ways, people panic and start to look for the next (perfect) embodiment of their ideals. I really wish we had a genuinely educated populace capable of critical thinking, rather than one that puts celebrity, wealth, and power (those things Donald Trump represents, even if it is an illusion) at the forefront. Yet, as the old proverb goes: "The most outrageous lie is more powerful than the quietest truth."