American voters too often get a pass for their role in allowing lies and liars to thrive in US politics. However, if they bothered to spend a couple of minutes checking facts instead of looking at cat videos, someone like Donald Trump would have a much more difficult time deceiving them.
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C-SPAN viewers tuning in to watch a vote on the “Combating False Information Act” on Saturday got to see more than they bargained for.
As Sen. Gerald Mitchell (R-ID) cast his “no” vote, Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Tom Cotton (R-AR) could clearly be seen holding hands and kissing in the background.
While it seems unlikely that two married GOP senators would make out in the Senate chamber, you can easily verify that this happened by googling “Rubio and Cotton Kissing.”
Did you?
Then you will have figured out that this was, literally, fake news — used to make a real point.
You don’t have to be the most politically astute person to determine that no part of this story makes sense. And, even if you were not sure, then Google searches like, “Is the Senate in session?” or “Who are the senators of Idaho?” or “What is the ‘Combating False Information Act’?” would have quickly exposed our little story as a fabrication.
To make our point, we chose extreme exaggeration. However, it would have been easy, with a few tweaks, to craft a narrative that many readers would have believed… in part because they wanted to.
And that’s a real problem.
We routinely (and rightfully) criticize politicians for lying. Obviously, Donald Trump is in a league of his own in that category, but he is not alone.
Just as often, we have pointed out the media’s complicity in this deceit. While many news outlets simply have never figured out how to effectively cover these lies, others, especially Fox News, are playing a major role in spreading them.
However, there is one other group that makes this culture of lying possible… and that usually gets a pass (including from us): the American public.
With the world’s information at their fingertips, they routinely embrace narratives that appeal to them without questioning whether they are true.
It is this culture of willful ignorance that makes it so easy for politicians like Trump to rely on deceit rather than earn the support of voters with policy proposals that address the problems actually affecting them.
And, since he has demonstrated how easy it is for a habitual liar to rise to power, others have followed his lead.
And yet, it’s also true that dishonesty has always been a part of politics.
Politicians prior to Trump have told big lies… and were often aided by the media. Perhaps the best example from recent memory is the claim by former Republican President George W. Bush that Iraq was amassing weapons of mass destruction.
That particular lie led to a war that cost tens of thousands of people their lives and created even more instability in the Middle East.
However, in that case, it would have been very difficult for ordinary citizens to discern the truth on their own.
In addition, in the past, this dishonesty in politics primarily manifested itself as “spin,” i.e., taking a fact and tendentiously presenting it in a favorable (or unfavorable) light in an attempt to get the media to repeat your self-serving narrative.
For example, let’s say there is a poll that says 34 percent of Americans want Kamala Harris to be president. Conversely, only 17 percent want to see Trump return to the White House. In addition, 28 percent are “not sure,” and 21 percent want “someone else.”
In this case, the spin of the Trump campaign might be that only one-third of Americans want Harris to be president. Meanwhile, the Democrats’ campaign can say that “voters prefer Harris over Trump by a two-to-one margin.”
Both are factually correct if also misleading. That’s spin.
This will be one of the worst parts of Trump’s legacy. He has shown others how easy it is to lie to the American people and get away with it.
Trump, of course, has taken this to a whole new level by just making stuff up… and it worked.
That, in turn, has served as a blueprint for many others who have become much more brazen in their lies.
By the way, even though this editorial primarily focuses on Republicans, who are far more dishonest, it’s not as though Democrats are free from guilt. Just look at how long they told Americans that Joe Biden was fit for a second term in office until voters saw for themselves that this wasn’t the case.
To see how bad things are, let’s go back to our two lovebirds from the lede.
Here is a lie Cotton recently spread on X (formerly known as Twitter):
As border czar, Kamala allowed in *at least* 13,000 illegal aliens convicted of murder.
If you don’t want violent illegal aliens in your community—vote Trump.
— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) September 28, 2024
That statement — “As border czar, Kamala allowed in *at least* 13,000 illegal aliens convicted of murder” — undoubtedly rang true to Republicans (and anybody who watches Fox News). Yet it is just as wrong as our counterfactual “claim” that Cotton made out with Rubio.
What Cotton is referring to is a list of noncitizens with murder convictions currently residing in the United States — but not detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
While that number is indeed just above 13,000, these are people who entered the US at some point in the past few decades (including during Trump’s time in office).
Therefore, “Kamala” — who is not the “border czar” and is not currently the president — did not “allow in *at least* 13,000 illegal aliens convicted of murder.”
In addition, just because these people are not being detained by ICE, it doesn’t mean that they are roaming free. Many of them are simply incarcerated elsewhere (and they weren’t known murderers when they entered the country).
It’s not overly difficult to check whether Cotton’s tweet is true… and many others of Trump’s and the GOP’s false claims are even easier to refute.
Then here is Rubio employing another one of the right’s favorite tactics: If you don’t like something, just claim that it is “fake.”
Another fake jobs report out from Biden-Harris government today
16 of the last 17 reports have been significantly revised downwards after media helps them with their fake headlines
But all the fake numbers in the world aren’t going to fool people dealing with the Biden-Harris…
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) October 4, 2024
It’s all fake to Rubio.
However, here is what William Beach, a Trump-appointed former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which releases these figures, said about that statement by Rubio.
“The numbers aren’t faked, there is no way they can be faked,” he told Axios. “Folks who say this don’t know enough about how the revisions work.”
In both cases, one might think that US senators would know better… and they probably do.
However, why bother crafting a convoluted, favorable narrative when gullible voters will just accept any old lie?
And that’s on the voters themselves.
If they don’t bother to do a minimal amount of fact-checking on their own, they shouldn’t be surprised if they keep being lied to. In fact, for many of them, that’s probably more convenient because they will not be forced to question their views.
This will be one of the worst parts of Trump’s legacy. He has shown others how easy it is to lie to the American people and get away with it.
In the past, politicians tended to be more careful. They might have carefully phrased a statement to give themselves an out later; for example, when Bill Clinton claimed that he “did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.” (The key to this deceptive declaration was what kinds of behavior could be defined as “sexual relations.”)
Trump has shown that this kind of careful deceit is not necessary and that, when it comes to lying to the American people, you don’t have to use a scalpel… a sledgehammer will do just fine.
We see this not only on Election Day but in poll after poll.
As we pointed out once again this week, half of all voters will believe a convenient falsehood over an inconvenient (for them) truth when it comes to the economy… whether that’s erroneously thinking that the US economy is in a recession, that the unemployment rate is at a 50-year high, or that the stock market is in decline.
In each case, the reality is the exact opposite, and takes only a few clicks online to determine the truth.
It is truly appalling that so many Americans do not take that time.
If they did, the country would be in much better shape.
In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often funny analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
