Former President Donald Trump during the debate against President Joe Biden on June 27, 2024, in Atlanta. Photo: Jack Gruber/USA TODAY / USA TODAY NETWORK via IMAGN
The Republican party under the malign influence of former President Donald Trump has become the party of lies and conspiracies. From QAnon and birtherism to the Big Lie about the 2020 election, the GOP has become a veritable factory of falsehoods, slander, and disinformation.
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All the lies did was make the emergency response that much harder, sowing distrust among the people who most needed the help — but that was the goal of the lies.
The only credit that Trump wants is for himself. He has to discredit everyone else, even if that means harming people who support him. Remember that Trump said “I alone can fix” the nation’s problems. That means he is the only source of salvation.
Getting people to accept his lies is how Trump tests loyalty. He can tell the most outlandish lies — like how his 2017 inauguration had the largest crowd ever — in part to protect his ego but also to test how far people will go to support him. At first, his lying was met with a mixture of bemused tolerance, but over time the lies grew bolder and bolder, culminating in the lie about the 2020 election result.
But the only source of truth in the Republican party now is Donald Trump, a notorious liar who is exhibiting signs of cognitive decline. The truth is what Donald Trump says it is. If Trump says that he won in 2020, Republicans will back him up. If he says that schools are performing gender assignment surgeries without parental consent, no one will push back. If he says the federal government is spending money on undocumented immigrants that it should be spending on Americans, Republicans will just swallow it (unless it’s their district that’s getting hurt).
The overall effect isn’t just flooding the nation with lies. Trump and his fellow Republicans are systematically destroying the nation’s belief in truth and in experts. Medical experts already took a hit during the pandemic. But now, by creating demonstrably gaudy lies, every expert — and truth itself — is under siege.
“[W]hat feels novel in the aftermath of this month’s hurricanes is how the people doing the lying aren’t even trying to hide the provenance of their bullshit,” Charlie Warzel wrote in The Atlantic. “Similarly, those sharing the lies are happy to admit that they do not care whether what they’re pushing is real or not.”
Thus, we have a vice presidential candidate saying, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.” Vance was talking about pet-eating Haitians, but it could apply to anything that comes out of his mouth. (Not that he’s been overly concerned about suffering Americans, especially women, based on his voting record.)
The upshot is that we now have a significant segment of society that distrusts its basic institutions: government, medicine, schools. That’s intentional on the part of Republicans, of course. They want to control all of the institutions so that they comport solely with the party’s view.
So the lies to undermine the institutions, indeed reality itself, will never stop.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears,” George Orwell wrote in 1984. “It was their final, most essential command.” It is the command that Trump and the Republican party now demand of its adherents.
Unfortunately, even if Trump loses the election — which he will never acknowledge — Truth will remain irreparably damaged, and with it, Democracy itself.
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