Global Courant
WASHINGTON (AP) — The cherry tree folklore is too good to be true, but it’s no lie that George Washington had anything to do with the truth. “It is my opinion that the maxim applies no less to public than to private affairs, that honesty is the best policy,” he wrote in his farewell address.
A few decades later, another future president’s reputation earned him a familiar nickname: Honest Ab Lincoln.
Then there’s Donald Trump, who was questioned about business dealings in Moscow during his presidency. “I have Nothing to do with Russia,” he said in 2016. He switched stories when the facts came out about him decades-long effort to build a luxury tower over there to arise. “Everyone” had always known about it the projectsaid Trump, who suggested only a moron would drop something like that proposal simply because they wanted to serve their country as president.
“Why would I lose a lot of opportunities?” Trump said.
America has had impostors in the Oval Office before, but never anyone who has been so regularly at war with the truth, with so many various subjects. As a candidate and as president, Trump demonstrated a keen ability to use broadcasting and social media to amplify his contortions, finding notable success in convincing large segments of the American public.
As Trump seeks a second term as he challenges federal charges, the nation’s prospects for another campaign are fraught with falsehoods and disinformationand the not-impossible outcome that such a well-documented supplier as Trump could be sent back to the White House by an electorate that either believes or cares nothing about his untruths.
“This is a testing moment. We haven’t been in a situation like this,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Jamieson said that before Trump, the assumption was that certain lies — lies that undermine faith in democracy or the courts, for example — would disqualify a person seeking public office. “If saying the election was rigged isn’t in that category, what is?”
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As a candidate, Trump made misinformation a key campaign tactic, routinely using untruths to humiliate his rivals, as he did when he bizarrely claimed that Ted Cruz’s father may have played a role in Kennedy’s assassination. Cruz is now an unashamed Trump supporter.
As president, Trump misled Americans on economic indicators, about a Hurricaneabout climate change and about his past actions and encounters with foreign leaders. As he led the nation through the pandemic, he downplayed the severity of the coronavirus while condoning false cures.
In today’s fragmented information ecosystem, attempts by journalists to fact-check the president did not always reach those who accepted his words as truth. That could change, according to a Republican strategist who said he thinks his party is waking up to Trump’s alternate fact universe.
“To me, he’s kind of a tragic 77-year-old who’s totally out of touch with reality, kind of creating his own reality,” said Craig Fuller, who served in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush. Fuller said he believes the relatively large field of Republicans competing with Trump for GOP approval is a sign that many voters want a fairer alternative, even though a large field also increases Trump’s chances of winning.
“I think it’s almost too dangerous to think about it,” Fuller said when asked to envision a second term for Trump.
A message requesting comment from Trump’s campaign was not immediately responded to on Friday.
During his presidency, Trump lied so often – personal, op TVon Twitter – that summaries of his falsehoods quickly 100, then 1,000, then 10,000, then 30,000. A full one wikipedia page is specially made to keep track.
Elections and voting have long been the most common target from Trump untruths. He only won the 2016 race claimed it was rigged anyway, because he lost the popular vote. He stated that the 2020 race was already rigged before Election Day and said before the vote that the only way he could lose the election was through cheating. Evidence was never provided, and after the election, Trump’s claims were rejected by dozens of courts, including courts overseen by Trump-appointed judges.
It was Trump’s lies about democracy, and about the integrity of elections and the courts, which experts in voting, politics and history are most concerned about.
“It’s not the first step, it’s the 100th step on the road to despotism,” Jeffrey Engel, director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University, said of Trump’s attacks on the independence of the judiciary and law enforcement . “What shocks me is how open Trump is about it.”
Conflict between presidents, Congress and the courts is a fundamental part of American government, Engel said, and many presidents have obscured the truth about personal and public failings. But no one has openly defied another branch the way Trump has.
For months before the January 6 attack on the Capitol, Trump begged his supporters with a steady stream of false claims about rigged elections, mail-in voting and crowded ballot boxes. He then did little to disperse the violent mob that soon descended on the Capitol. The congressional investigation into the attack concluded that Trump involved in a conspiracy to nullify the election.
For activists working to strengthen American democracy, the deadly riot showed what happens when lies are allowed to take the place of truth.
“On January 6, we learned again how fragile our democracy is,” said Nathan Empsall, an Episcopal priest who leads Faithful America, a nonprofit religious organization who has criticized efforts to rewrite January 6 history. Remember, if we forget what happened, we may not be able to keep the line next time.”
While Trump did not create the factors that led to our current era of polarization and misinformation, he did exploit those factors, says Julian E. Zelizer, a historian and political scientist at Princeton University.
“I don’t know if Donald Trump is the chicken or the egg, but I know he is part of the cracker,” said Zelizer. “He entered politics at a time of social media and growing mistrust issues and he catalyzed them. He poured gasoline on the smoldering flames, and the statements he makes apparently need not be tied to reality because his believers like his version better.”
When Trump was charged in April in New York on charges that he falsified company records to hide hush money payments in an attempt to influence the 2016 election, many of his online supporters openly compared the scandal-ridden thrice-married magnate to Jesus Christwho Christians believe rose from the dead after his crucifixion.
His vocal online supporters have remained just as supportive following his federal indictment this month.
Trump may be emblematic of our current era of disinformation, but mistrust and political polarization cannot be attributed to any one individual and typically stem from deep social divisions and economic pressures, said Nealin Parker, executive director of Common Ground USA, a non-profit organization. for-profit organization studying ways to bridge America’s political divide.
“A lot of times people are looking for a silver bullet: If only we didn’t have this one political leader, we’d be fine,” Parker said. “But it does not work like that.”
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EDITOR’S NOTE — David Klepper has been covering misinformation for The Associated Press since 2019.
