CNN —
Donald Trump is deploying his typical political behavior in the final stages of a vicious campaign.
In an explosion of misinformation that distorts the facts, the former president is accusing Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden’s White House of the very violations he is accused of.
Following Hurricane Helen, and with another storm on the horizon, President Trump is falsely claiming the White House is diverting disaster relief to unrelated immigration programs. While this is false, Trump repurposed FEMA funds to finance tough immigration policies during his presidency.
Republican candidates often claim their legal troubles are evidence of Democratic election interference. But he is the person who in 2020 attempted to subvert the will of voters in the most blatant attempt to overturn an election in American history.
President Trump also accused the Biden administration of weaponizing justice against him. But in 2020, the then-president took to Twitter in the middle of the night to call for the jailing of his political opponents, warned that Biden should not be allowed to run for president, and asked, “Where have all the arrests gone?” .
Given his attempts to crush democracy and steal Biden’s victory four years ago, the former president said Sunday in Wisconsin that if he doesn’t win in November, “some say there will never be an election.” It was useful to warn him that there was a problem. Also. ”
On Monday on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, the former president, whose administration is famous for “alternative facts” and who told thousands of documented lies during his time in office, said more about his Democratic opponent than ever before. Making one of his brazen complaints, he said of Mr. Harris: , “Everything she says is a lie, an absolute lie.”
It’s not necessarily news that President Trump is often far removed from reality. And many politicians lie. The fact-checking industry is proof of that. Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, for example, is under pressure to answer questionable statements about his military record and whether he was in Hong Kong during China’s 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. And the Minnesota governor made false claims on Sunday as well. The former president’s stance on abortion and the state of the economy upon leaving office in January 2021.
But no modern politician has built his presidency on more outrageous lies than Trump. And the former president never hid what he was up to. In one of the most revealing moments of his political career, before the 2018 Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Kansas City, the 45th president told his supporters that he was the only person he trusted. He said that it is a source of real-world information that can be used. “Stay with us. Don’t believe these people’s nonsense and fake news,” Trump said. “What you see and read is not what is actually happening.”
And the name of the former president’s social media network, “Truth Social,” is a deliberate attempt to rebrand falsehoods as fact.
As the election approaches, the Republican candidate has unleashed a torrent of disinformation that is astonishing even by his own standards.
For example, in one of the most extraordinary moments in presidential debate history, he falsely claimed that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were “eating dogs.” People who came in. They’re eating cats…they’re eating the pets of the people who live there. ”
President Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” last month and appeared to legitimize the former president’s falsehoods that he had previously amplified. “If I had to create a story that would make the American media actually focus on the suffering of the American people, that’s what I would do,” Vance told Dana Bash.
In times of disaster, misinformation can have dangerous consequences, and President Trump seems willing to take that risk.
The former president has made multiple false statements about the Biden administration’s hurricane response, including that Democrats ignored victims in Republican districts in North Carolina and that Biden responded to a call from Georgia’s Republican governor. It also included unsubstantiated claims that there was no such thing.
He also claims that while the federal government is sending billions of dollars overseas, it is only providing $750 to Americans who lost their homes in Hurricane Helen. FEMA explains that the $750 is just an immediate advance payment that can help survivors cover basic needs such as food, water, baby formula and emergency supplies. People can apply for other assistance, for example, for up to $42,500 in home repairs.
Harris on Monday accused the former president of spreading “a lot of misinformation” about the help available to Helen survivors. “This is extremely irresponsible. It’s about him, not you,” she said.
So why is Trump so comfortable spouting falsehoods that are so easily debunked?
Some of it is characteristic of a personality defined by boastfulness and defiance of rules applied to others. Mr. Trump made a name for himself as a bluffing real estate fraudster who sold exaggerations, and during his life in the New York tabloids of the 1980s, he discovered that the bigger the lie, the harder it is to dismiss it. did.
However, as he entered politics, his manipulation of the truth took on a more sinister character. In the first hours of his administration, Trump’s absurd claims about the size of his inauguration crowd were widely ridiculed. But in retrospect, this farce featuring the first White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, was a harbinger of an administration that would deny facts as a tool of political power. The seeds of deception planted in January 2017 blossomed into a disinformation blitzkrieg during the coronavirus pandemic, clearly aimed at covering up President Trump’s leadership failures. They also foretold the outright lies he would spread after losing the 2020 election to Biden.
Voters who voted for Trump responded to his populism and eradication of elites, and many genuinely believe that Trump is a response to the Democratic Party’s march to the left. President Trump’s “America First” foreign policy appeals to many Americans tired of foreign wars, and his messages on illegal immigration and the economy may shock liberals, but what’s more? Convincing millions of Americans.
Trump’s accusations against what the “establishment” considers to be true are not a bug; they are the golden key to his appeal.
But former presidents can multiply their power by weaving an alternate reality, and with the help of conservative media, they can generate articles of faith that bond with their supporters. I also understand what you can do.
One example is the story he spun about how he was illegally removed from power after the last election. Republican politicians must embrace this new orthodoxy to protect their careers. For example, during last week’s vice presidential debate, Vance refused to say his boss lost in 2020.
Republicans who challenge this false reality will be ostracized, including former Vice President Mike Pence, who denied President Trump’s false claim that he had the constitutional authority to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and Harris, who rejected President Trump’s false claims that he had the constitutional authority to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Like former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, who endorsed the candidate. And I campaigned with her last week.
The still-persistent belief that Mr. Trump was tricked from power four years ago has prompted baseless insinuations that this election was not free and fair, prompting him to revisit the Constitution after the election in November. There are growing concerns that a similar crisis may occur.
What appears to be an obvious lie can have political consequences in a closely contested election.
Both Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris are stalling in the polls, but they are chasing voters who may not habitually pay attention to politics. So, for example, the false narrative that immigrants eat pets could feed into existing fears about immigrants. Similarly, Trump’s claims that Harris is a communist, Marxist, and fascist, while contradictory and upsetting to objective historical considerations, have appealed to some voters. might convince you that she is extreme and somehow un-American. The message echoes Trump’s attempts to denounce Harris’ racial identity after falsely claiming that she “happened to be black” for political expediency.
The former president’s lies are not just a way for him to subvert the checks and balances that normally constrain presidential power. They also corrode the proper functioning of the American government.
Thanks to President Trump’s fraud claims, many Americans now have deep doubts about the integrity of our electoral system, which is fundamental to the central idea of democracy: that voters choose their leaders. His constant attacks on the integrity of the judicial system threaten the rule of law. Attempts to undermine trust in political, scientific, judicial, and media institutions are aimed at authorities that President Trump respects, such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who consolidated his position in power by discrediting his country’s accountability institutions. This is a common method used by believers.
An erosion of trust in government will make it harder to solve America’s problems, such as the overwhelming and outdated asylum system and flawed economy that both presidential candidates have lamented. And although the election campaign is nearing its final stages after a series of false statements and mean-spirited personal attacks, if President Trump regains the White House next month, there is a strong possibility that the second administration will be even more extreme than the first. It suggests that.
