The Trump campaign is terrified of fact-checking at the debates.
xConway: "And I really don't appreciate campaigns thinking it is the job of the media to go and be these virtual fact-checkers..." pic.twitter.com/jgbV9ReFgS
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) September 25, 2016Because Trump is a pathological liar. So pathological that he doesn’t even know or care what the truth is.
xTrump's not a liar. He says what he needs 2 be true at any particular moment. He believes it. It is the nature of his psychological problem.
— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) September 25, 2016It’s his nature.
xTrump only spoke for 30 minutes. https://t.co/AjPaPXGzqu
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) September 25, 2016Canadian journalist Dale has been documenting Trump’s daily tally of lies. Check his Twitter feed for regular updates. And anyone else paying attention can update as regularly as Trump speaks.
xFootnote on Trump falsehoods: FOUR lies on Iraq were in one interview w @HowardKurtz, who challenged zero of them https://t.co/i46KKVpZEx
— Alex Burns (@alexburnsNYT) September 25, 2016Trump’s lies are the basis of his campaign:
An examination by The Washington Post of one week of Trump’s speeches, tweets and interviews show a candidate who not only continues to rely heavily on thinly sourced or entirely unsubstantiated claims but also uses them to paint a strikingly bleak portrait of an impoverished America, overrun by illegal immigrants, criminals and terrorists — all designed to set up his theme that he is specially suited to “make America great again.”
Trump’s lies are one of his defining features:
All politicians bend the truth to fit their purposes, including Hillary Clinton. But Donald J. Trump has unleashed a blizzard of falsehoods, exaggerations and outright lies in the general election, peppering his speeches, interviews and Twitter posts with untruths so frequent that they can seem flighty or random — even compulsive.
However, a closer examination, over the course of a week, revealed an unmistakable pattern: Virtually all of Mr. Trump’s falsehoods directly bolstered a powerful and self-aggrandizing narrative depicting him as a heroic savior for a nation menaced from every direction. Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist, described the practice as creating “an unreality bubble that he surrounds himself with.”
The New York Times closely tracked Mr. Trump’s public statements from Sept. 15-21, and assembled a list of his 31 biggest whoppers, many of them uttered repeatedly. This total excludes dozens more: Untruths that appeared to be mere hyperbole or humor, or delivered purely for effect, or what could generously be called rounding errors. Mr. Trump’s campaign, which dismissed this compilation as “silly,” offered responses on every point, but in none of the following instances did the responses support his assertions.
They are unprecedented for a presidential nominee:
Never in modern presidential politics has a major candidate made false statements as routinely as Trump has. Over and over, independent researchers have examined what the Republican nominee says and concluded it was not the truth — but “pants on fire” (PolitiFact) or “four Pinocchios” (Washington Post Fact Checker).
xThe essence of a con man is that those who are getting conned dont know it. https://t.co/dSIE1n9XVm?
— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) September 25, 2016Trump’s entire creation myth is nothing but lies. Because he doesn’t know anything about policy, because he makes up factually dishonest narratives and believes them, his reflexive response to every question is to bluster about greatness, assuming that people take for granted that he’s a success story. But he isn’t.
xNEW VIDEO: @realDonaldTrump is a failed businessman.#TrumpBusinessFail#TrumpTaxespic.twitter.com/XpcMviDdq0
— Peter Daou (@peterdaou) September 24, 2016The only thing he ever sold was a book written by someone else. Which is one of many reasons we will never see his tax returns. And the reason his campaign is desperate to prevent debate moderators from calling him on his easily proven lies:
Hours after the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times published separate stories outlining the lies Donald Trump has told during his presidential campaign, Trump’s campaign spokesperson told ABC’s “This Week” that it isn’t the media’s job to factcheck the presidential debate.
“I really don’t appreciate the campaigns thinking it is the job of the media to go and be these virtual fact-checkers,” Kellyanne Conway said, in an apparent attempted jab at the Clinton campaign. She also opposed debate moderators questioning the candidates’ truthfulness in any way.
Of course, Conway also was busy following Trump’s lead.
xConway continues misleading on Trump and birtherism on @ThisWeekABC: pic.twitter.com/QBVYRarrh5
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) September 25, 2016Which is why fact-checking terrifies the Trump team. And at least one debate moderator already has made clear that he will do all he can to protect Trump.
xChris Wallace: Trump has an "easier challenge" at debate because for him it's about how he acts https://t.co/hrJsv4bVpS
— Media Matters (@mmfa) September 25, 2016Because Wallace himself has made clear that it’s about how Trump acts rather than whether what he says is true:
KURTZ: I understand that and I think it's the right approach, not making it about you, on the other hand, there is a lot on your shoulders, both in terms of the question selection, but also as they go at it, let’s say Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, what do you do if they make assertions that you know to be untrue?
WALLACE: That's not my job. I do not believe it is my job to be a truth squad. It's up to the other person to catch them on that. I certainly am going to try to maintain some reasonable semblance of equal time. If one of them is filibustering, I'm going to try to break in respectfully and give the other person a chance to talk. But I want it to be about them -- I want it to be as much of a debate, people often talk that it’s simultaneous news conferences.
Hillary Clinton may call Trump on his lies, but he will just respond with more. And Trump desperately wants the debate moderators to do what Wallace already says he’ll do, and that’s to let his lies fly, so viewers will just see an argument rather than one candidate lying and the other trying to call attention to it.
There will be fact-checking after the debates, and some in the media will do their job with dignity. But the debates themselves are when maybe a hundred million people will be watching. Will the other two moderators act as journalists, or will they simply do Trump’s bidding and let lies go unchallenged?