Media Inadequate In Response To Trump’s Constant Lying
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He makes things up and is rarely confronted in a way that shuts down his lies. If there were thousands of Arabs rejoicing after 9/11 that Trump claims he saw on television, there would be footage. He says he knows the makeup of the lines he’s seen of Syrian refugees. Combine that with vague, impractical or non-existent policy solutions, and you’re nailing jello to a wall to deal with this carnival barker.
Trump also has a tendency to use his appearances on TV news to spout flagrant lies about a variety of topics. His statements aren’t false the way that, say, Marco Rubio’s claim that he can cut taxes by $12 trillion and still balance the budget is false. False claims of that variety are a long and distinguished tradition in American electoral politics, and it’s an established policy on programs like This Week to not challenge them too aggressively.
Trump’s lies, by contrast are more like something you’d hear a conspiracy theorist like Alex Jones trumpet. Stephanopoulos showed a clip of Trump claiming to have witnessed “thousands and thousands” of Muslims or Arab Americans in Jersey City, New Jersey, cheering in the streets on 9/11 in celebration of the attacks.
This is an odd thing for Trump to say, because it’s totally made up. No such celebrations took place in Jersey City on 9/11, so far as fact checkers from PolitiFact to the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler can tell. “You know, the police say that didn’t happen, and all those rumors have been on the internet for some time,” Stephanopoulos noted. “So did you misspeak yesterday?”
Trump doubled down: “It did happen. I saw it. … It was on television. I saw it. George, it did happen.”
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…On the one hand, Stephanopoulos is in an impossible situation here. Trump is repeating known falsehoods, but what’s Stephanopoulos going to do? Quote some of the statements from police confirming it didn’t happen? Note that the more durable urban legend concerned Paterson, New Jersey, where police responded to the rumors by going to the center of the city’s Middle Eastern community and saw only Muslims praying, with none celebrating? Raise the possibility that Trump actually saw footage of celebrations in East Jerusalem, which is, to be clear, not in New Jersey? Trump would only keep replying that he saw the celebrations with his own two eyes. The argument would be over before it began.
But this dynamic is generally why liars and conspiracy theorists aren’t allowed on respectable news programs. Producers know that when you put someone who’s likely to spew falsehoods and who’s impervious to all attempts to correct them on the air, that person is going to get a lot of opportunities to repeat his falsehoods, and it’ll be very hard if not impossible to debunk him. Viewers will get a healthy sampling of lies, and undoing that damage in the space allowed will be nigh impossible. As Jay Z once said, “A wise man told me don’t argue with fools, ’cause people from a distance can’t tell who is who.”
Trump, as Danniel Henniger pointed out in The Wall Street Journal, believes we’re in trouble with a capital T.
Trouble begins with a capital T. So does Trump.
