It's the lies, stupid

For my title, I'm borrowing a phrase from when James Carville said, "It's the economy, stupid." That's because the Trump/Vance campaign is pretty much entirely based on lies. That hit home to me when CNN's Daniel Dale recently pointed out that Trump told at least 40 lies during two speeches this week. That is in line with how Dale categorized Trump's performance during his debate with Harris.

No major presidential candidate before Donald Trump has ever lied with this kind of frequency. A remarkably large chunk of what he said tonight was just not true, and this wasn’t like little exaggeration, political spin. A lot of his false claims were untethered to reality.

The most common lies told by Trump/Vance have to do with immigration. But they also tell blatant lies about the economy, tariffs, FEMA, crime, abortion, and schools. Those were all documented recently by David Corn, who makes an important point when he writes that Trump is running a disinformation campaign (emphasis mine).

Trump’s dishonesty goes further than the usual campaign lying. He concocts and promotes utterly false narratives to shape voters’ perceptions of fundamental realities. His campaign is a full-fledged project to pervert how Americans view the nation and the world, an extensive propaganda campaign designed to fire up fears and intensify anxieties...

Trump is not merely heading a campaign fueled by the routine lies of politics. He is endeavoring to use these and other lies to create an alternative reality for millions so they will vote on the basis of a false understanding of the world.

This is why it is so difficult (and perhaps pointless) to have conversations with MAGA people. It's not as if you can simply debunk a lie. It is that they are actually living in an alternate reality created by lies.

So what happens when Trump or Vance are confronted with the fact that they're lying? Trump just brushes it off as "fake news." But Vance has taken a different approach. For example, during the VP debate, Walz asked Vance a basic question: "Did [Trump] lose the 2020 election?" Here's how the senator from Ohio responded:

Tim, I'm focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 COVID situation?...

Obviously, Donald Trump and I think that there were problems in 2020. We've talked about it. I'm happy to talk about it further. But you guys attack us for not believing in democracy. The most sacred right under the United States democracy is the First Amendment. You yourself have said there's no First Amendment right to misinformation. Kamala Harris wants to use the power of government and big tech to silence people from speaking their minds. That is a threat to democracy that will long outlive this present political moment. I would like Democrats and Republicans to both reject censorship.

You can read a good fact check about what Walz said here. And Kamala Harris has never suggested that we should use the power of the government to silence people from speaking their minds.  

But it's important to note how Vance responded when challenged by Walz about the Big Lie. He pivoted to censorship. He did the same thing when challenged by Lulu Garcia-Navarro. 

What Vance is telling us is that he and Trump will lie in order to create an alternate reality. When challenged, he'll cry "censorship."  That's rich coming from the guy who wants the government to "seize the institutions of the left" and implement "a de-woke-ification program.” So no, Vance has zero respect for democracy or the First Amendment. He simply wants to lie with abandon. 

So what happens when politicians create an alternative reality based on lies. Here's what Peter Pomerantsev wrote back in 2014 in a piece titled "Russia and the Menace of Unreality: How Vladimir Putin is revolutionizing information warfare" (emphasis mine)

The new Russia doesn’t just deal in the petty disinformation, forgeries, lies, leaks, and cyber-sabotage usually associated with information warfare. It reinvents reality, creating mass hallucinations that then translate into political action... insisting on the lie, the Kremlin intimidates others by showing that it is in control of defining ‘reality.’ This is why it’s so important for Moscow to do away with truth. If nothing is true, then anything is possible.

 A place where nothing is true and anything is possible is ripe for totalitarianism, as Hannah Arendt warned.

What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed...If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer.

 That is why Trump/Vance pose the biggest threat to democracy that we've seen in generations.