The Republican War on Truth
I don’t often stop to issue corrections, but in my last newsletter I said many of the men sent to CECOT were living illegally in the United States when I meant to say living legally in the United States. Most of you probably picked up on the intended meaning, but my apologies for the error.
Donald Trump’s entrance to national politics was far earlier than most realize. Eyeing the presidency for decades, it’s quite rare you hear about his failed 2000 campaign to win the nomination of the Reform Party. Trump withdrew before the primaries, which ultimately selected notorious racist Pat Buchanan as their candidate. Buchanan would not break half a million votes nationwide.
But it was the election of Barack Obama that led to Trump’s ascendancy on the national scene. This was not because of any policy stances, but because Donald Trump fully bought into and became the leading proponent of the racist lie that Barack Obama was not born in the United States.
In a 2011 interview, Donald Trump said he had sent a team of investigators to Honolulu to look into Obama’s birth. He said no one there recalled growing up with him. That was a lie. He said his investigators had uncovered interesting things which he wasn’t willing to reveal yet. This was another lie. Obama made his records public. People who grew up with him gave interviews. Newspaper announcements of his birth were uncovered.
Barack Obama was indisputably born in the United States. But the Republican Party learned something from birtherism - facts did not matter to their base at all. Ironically, the “facts don’t care about your feelings” crowd did not care about facts. In fact, the phrase is completely inverted. They would believe what their leaders told them as long as it supported what they already felt.
Also in 2011, Obama humiliated Trump over his extreme devotion to birtherism - a nonsensical and racist conspiracy theory which was easily disproven. Trump was furious. That night set into motion the past 10 years, with the United States paying the price for Trump’s vengeance over being laughed at.
His first inauguration was lightly attended compared to Obama’s. Still larger than most inaugurations, Trump could not stand the idea of having fewer people there to see him than Obama’s record-breaking inauguration crowds.
The solution was easy. Press Secretary Sean Spicer, on the very first day of his job, announced that Trump’s inauguration was the highest attended in history. This was a lie. When it was pointed out that this was obviously not true, Trump and the Republican Party knew what they had to do - hold to the lie no matter what factual evidence came to light.
And ever since, this has been the primary tactic of the Republican Party when facts and data do not support what they want to do.
Donald Trump today has taken control of the Washington DC police department and pledged to send the National Guard to the area to address the high crime rate. Pete Hegseth and Pam Bondi have both issued statements about the need to address violence in DC. These are lies.
Crime in Washington DC is at a THIRTY year low. There have been many discussions on what caused crime to surge in the United States and then suddenly start to fall. If you want to blow your mind, the graph of violent crime and the graph of atmospheric lead from gasoline follow each other almost exactly on a 23-year lag time. It’s highly likely the crime rate keeps falling because gasoline companies are no longer poisoning our brains.
The Republicans have been lying about crime in cities for decades now. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy keeps talking about how scared he is to ride on the subway in New York City. Subway crime is low and still falling. When confronted with this data, Duffy simply lied and said the numbers were not true. Facts do not care about his feelings. And his feelings about the subway are what we are basing policy on.
The last jobs report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics was not great. Our idiotic trade wars and tax increases via tariffs are catching up to the economy, and the result is what every economist in the world already knew would happen - trade wars and tariffs are horrible ideas.
A rational actor would realize this and adjust their stance. Rationality has long been abandoned in the Republican Party. Trump previously said positive jobs numbers under both Obama and Biden were lies. Facing no repercussions for that, Trump said the recent jobs report was also a lie and fired the head of BLS. His pick to replace them is Ej Antoni, a sycophant from the Heritage Foundation (the group that gave us Project 2025). Antoni already has a history of saying the BLS numbers are fake.
You may recall that during the Covid pandemic, Trump frequently said we needed to stop testing for Covid so the numbers would be lower. This was obviously an insanely irrational response designed solely to make him look better. Few in our national media ever described it as such.
That tactic is now being used for nearly every piece of data that does not support the Republican position.
Trump is ending the data collection of atmospheric CO2 because he does not like what that data says.
Trump does not believe climate change exists, once calling it a “Chinese hoax.” Hence, we are now altering PAST climate reports to reflect the Republican belief that the amount of greenhouse gases being dumped into the atmosphere is just fine. (The gasoline companies did the exact same thing for DECADES to defend the amount of lead they were putting into the air.) Another public database of climate reports has been eliminated.
Not liking the idea that the public could see how much money this administration is ACTUALLY spending and the comically incompetent actions of USDS (Doge), the Trump administration simply killed public access to that information. It’s temporarily been restored by the courts.
A national database of police misconduct was formed during the Biden administration. Uncomfortable with people knowing about police misconduct, Trump took the database down.
RFK Jr. has been on an absolute rampage, eliminating tracking of health data which does not support the conspiracy theories he believes in.
Last month Trump said his uncle taught Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, at MIT and that his uncle told him interesting stories of what he was like as a student. Trump’s uncle, who did teach at MIT, died in 1985. Ted Kaczynski was identified as the Unabomber a decade later. He also never attended MIT.
The White House's response to these lies? Attacking the reporter for asking the question and saying that John Trump taught at MIT, which no one disputed.
As normal, no one in the White House Press Corps followed up or pressed them for an explanation of Trump’s lie.
Whether through fear or support, most in our national media have failed in describing this war on fact. They will equivocate with words like “misstatement.” What these things are lies. Willful lies to support the truth because so often, the truth undermines what the Republican position is.
We do not have to accept this and you should not.
When concerns about crime are brought up by Republicans, the immediate response should be that they elected a convicted felon and that crime across the nation is approaching all-time lows where they haven’t already been reached. When someone tells a story about the president’s uncle teaching the Unabomber, the IMMEDIATE response needs to be “that is a lie. Why are you lying about it?” Concerns about crime in DC should be responded to with the fact that the worst mass crime in the history of DC was the January 6th, 2021 attack. The party SO concerned about crime in DC has supported the pardons of the men who broke into the capital looking to murder members of our government to keep Trump in office.
Do not let these statements go unchallenged. Because we already know where that leads.
What is the cost of lies? It's not that we'll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all. What can we do then? What else is left but to abandon even the hope of truth and content ourselves instead with stories?
— Valery Legasov, Chernobly
Thank you for supporting my work. Please consider sharing these updates or giving a donation.