Republicans continue to ignore history with their lies about what they claim are “accomplishments” during the failed first term of Donald Trump, the convicted felon, court -adjudicated sexual predator/rapit and proven con artist/fraud used as their candidate for president for three straight presidential elections.
Trump never won the popular vote in any of thos elections, not even the one he won in a gerrymandered electoral college or the one he lost to Joe Biden in 2020 and should lose to Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday of next week.
Republicans have tried to rewrite the four years of Trump’s presidency as a time of unparalleled peace, prosperity and tranquility: “the strongest economy in history,” as Senator Katie Britt of Alabama put it during the Republican National Convention. The difference between Trump and Biden? “President Trump honored the Constitution,” said Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota. Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia offered Mr. Trump’s first term as an example of “common-sense conservative leadership.”
The record of what Mr. Trump actually did in office bears little resemblance to that description. Under his leadership, the country lurched from one crisis to the next, from the migrant families separated at the border to the sudden spike in prices caused by his trade war with China to the reckless mismanagement of the Covid pandemic. And he showed, over and over, how little respect he has for the Constitution and those who take an oath to defend it.
For Americans who may have forgotten that time, or pushed it from memory, we offer this timeline of his presidency. Mr. Trump’s first term was a warning about what he will do with the power of his office — unless American voters reject him.
The Times continues to report the terrorisn Trump brngs to the political world, unlike Amazon billiobaire Jeff Bezos, who pullled the plug on an editorial endorseent of Harris by the paper’s unanimous editorial board beause he put his desire for federao contracts above his respobsibility oof the legendary newspaper he now owns.
Bezos, however, has at least let the paper’s columnsts continue to report on the lies and crimes of Donald John †rump.
The Washington Post counted 30,573 “false or misleading claims” during Trump’s presidency. From 2011, when Trump was spreading “birther” lies about President Barack Obama, until February 2024, PolitiFact checked 1,000 statements by Trump and assigned three-quarters of them to the “false” side of the organization’s Truth-O-Meter, where they registered “mostly false,” “false” or “pants on fire.”
“Pants on fire” statements, according to PolitiFact’s definition, are “not just false but ridiculous.” The label comes from the schoolyard taunt: “Liar, liar/ Pants on fire.” The Washington Post’s Fact Checker blog uses a “Pinocchio” rating system, invoking the classic storybook character.
Embedded in these childhood references is a fond wish for consequence: that lying might set clothing alight or make a nose grow long. That liars would have to pay.
Instead, what happens?
After saying FEMA spent money on “illegal migrants” that should have gone to hurricane victims, Trump was hit with a swift and merciless “pants on fire” rating; stern and thorough fact checks in the New York Times, CNN, NBC and The Washington Post; and a strongly worded White House statement.
Bam!
And then he repeated the lie.
“Liars must pay a price,” media critic Parker Molloy wrote recently. She argued that reporters have a responsibility not just to refute the lie but also to call out the liar. “Every article about [Sen. JD] Vance should mention his willingness to spread xenophobic misinformation,” she wrote, referring to lies about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. “Every piece on Trump should reference his history of transgender fearmongering. These lies should color all future coverage of these candidates, becoming an integral part of their political identity.”
I agree, but I want something simpler. Something that doesn’t burden reporters and become rote with repetition. Something that sticks to the liar himself.
Say, a letter grade — like the one the NRA uses to indicate which politicians are pro-gun. A color code — like the one the State Department uses to indicate which countries are dangerous for travelers. A running score — like the one banks use to assess our credit.
Politicians should have a credibility score.
A high credibility score would be a badge of honor; a low one would function as a warning to voters.
The details and the methodology would be up to an independent board, a rotating panel of professional fact-checkers who have signed on to the (actual) codes and principles of the (real) International Fact-Checking Network.
I’m not saying it would be easy. Scoring would have to be transparent and impartial, and factor in both the liar’s intention and the lie’s repercussions. We’d need policies for sarcasm, hyperbole, spin and misstatement.
In fact-checking Trump’s Pennsylvania speeches, Dale, for example, ignored the impossible promises, unbelievable boasts and flights of fanciful fabrication — such as when the Republican nominee claimed he’d told a staffer that women were planning to vote for him to prevent “hundreds of thousands” of migrants from robbing the shops on Madison Avenue. I don’t even know what you’d call a statement like that, with no facts in it to check. Fiction?
In his first campaign for office in 2017, Trump claimed thata he could “shoot someone down on Fifth Avenue in New York and I would not lose any votes.”
Within his cult of MAGA Maniacs, he is right.
Next week, the voters have their say about whether or not Donald Trump should return t the White House and competed his promise to run the nati9n oike a dictator a proven Fascist or end his reign of terror on our democracy and our way of lifel
Let’s hope they wiill put patriotism above party and leave the convicted felon to a Justice Department who has more work to convict him for all of his crimes and lock him away for the rest of his pathetic, toxic life.