Donald Trump seems to be at war with the truth more often than any other U.S. president.
Folklore about the cherry tree is too good to be true, but it’s not a lie that George Washington liked the truth. “Honesty is the best policy,” he said in his farewell speech, “and I think this is true in both public and private life.”
A few decades later, another future president became known for telling the truth, which gave him the nickname “Honest Abe.”
Then there’s Donald Trump, who was asked about his business deals in Moscow while he was president. In 2016, he said, “I have nothing to do with Russia.” When people found out that he had been trying for decades to build a luxury tower there, he changed his story. Trump said that “everyone” had always known about the project and that only a fool would drop such a plan just because they wanted to be president of the United States.
“Why should I miss out on so many chances?” Trump replied.
America has had liars in the White House before, but never one who fought the truth so often and about so many different things. As a candidate and as president, Trump was very good at using broadcast and social media to spread his lies, and he was very successful at getting large parts of the American public to believe them.
Trump is running for a second term while fighting federal and state charges. The country faces the possibility of another campaign full of lies and false information, and he could be re-elected by voters who either believe his lies or don’t care.
“This is an important test. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who runs the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, said, “We’ve never been in a situation like this before.” Jamieson said that before Trump, it was thought that certain lies, like ones that hurt people’s trust in democracy or the courts, would keep a person from running for public office. “If saying the election was fixed doesn’t fit into that category, then what does?”
As a candidate, Trump made spreading false information a big part of his campaign. For example, he often said that Ted Cruz’s father may have had something to do with the Kennedy assassination, which was not true. Cruz now backs Trump without any regrets.
As president, Trump lied to the American people about the economy, a hurricane, climate change, and his actions and meetings with foreign leaders in the past. While he was in charge of the country during the pandemic, he downplayed how bad the coronavirus was and supported fake cures.
In the fragmented information ecosystem of today, it wasn’t always easy for journalists to reach the people who believed what the president said. One Republican strategist said he thinks his party is waking up to Trump’s world of “alternative facts.” This may be changing.
Craig Fuller, who worked in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, said, “He’s kind of a tragic 77-year-old man who has no idea what’s going on in the real world and kind of makes up his own.” Fuller said that he thinks the fact that there are a lot of Republicans running against Trump for the GOP endorsement is a sign that voters want a more honest choice, even though it also makes Trump’s chances of winning better.
When asked to think about a second Trump term, Fuller said, “I think it’s almost too dangerous to think about.”
On Friday, a message sent to Trump’s campaign asking for a comment was not answered right away.
During his presidency, Trump lied so much in person, on TV, and on Twitter that the number of lies he told quickly reached 100, then 1,000, then 10,000, and then 30,000. A whole page on Wikipedia was made just for keeping track.
Trump has been telling lies about elections and voting for a long time. He won the 2016 election, but he said it was rigged because he didn’t get the most votes. Even before Election Day, he said that the 2020 race was fixed and that the only way he could lose was if someone cheated. No proof was ever given, and after the election, Trump’s claims were shot down by dozens of courts, including some whose judges Trump had chosen.
Experts on voting, politics, and history are most worried about Trump’s lies about democracy and the fairness of elections and the courts.
Jeffrey Engel, director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University, said of Trump’s attacks on judicial independence and law enforcement, “It’s not the first step, it’s the 100th step on the road to despotism.” “What surprises me is how straightforward Trump is about it.”
Engel said that disagreements between presidents, Congress, and the courts are a core part of the American government, and that many presidents have tried to hide the truth about their own and other people’s mistakes. But no one has openly gone against another branch like Trump has.
Trump told his supporters for months before the attack on the Capitol on January 6 that elections were rigged, that people could vote by mail, and that ballot boxes were full. Then, he didn’t do much to stop the angry crowd from coming to the Capitol. The investigation by Congress into the attack found that Trump was part of a plot to change the election results.
The deadly riot showed people who work to improve American democracy what happens when lies are allowed to stand in for the truth.
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Nathan Empsall, an Episcopal priest who leads Faithful America, a non-profit religious group that has criticized attempts to rewrite the history of January 6, said, “On January 6, we learned again how fragile our democracy is.” “If we don’t remember that, if we forget what happened, we might not be able to hold the line next time.”
Julian E. Zelizer, a historian and political scientist at Princeton University, said that while Trump didn’t start the era of polarization and fake news we’re in now, he did use it to his advantage.
Zelizer said, “I don’t know if Donald Trump is the chicken or the egg, but I do know that he’s part of the scramble.” “He got into politics at a time when social media and mistrust were getting worse, and he made them worse. He added fuel to the fire, and it seems like the things he says don’t need to be based in reality because his followers like his version better.”
When Trump was charged with falsifying business records to hide hush money payments and try to influence the 2016 election, he was arraigned in April in New York. Many of his online supporters openly compared the scandal-ridden, three-time-married tycoon to Jesus Christ, who Christians believe rose from the dead after being crucified.
Even after he was charged by the federal government this month, his vocal online supporters have stayed with him.
Nealin Parker, executive director of Common Ground USA, a non-profit that looks into ways to bridge America’s political divide, says that distrust and political polarization aren’t caused by just one person. Instead, they’re usually caused by deep social cracks and economic pressures, she says.
“People often look for a silver bullet: if we didn’t have this one political leader, everything would be fine “Parker told us. “But it doesn’t work that way.”