Lies and the Lying Liar Who Tells Them

On Friday, Bill Maher quipped "in case you missed (the Biden-Trump debated), so did one of the contestants."

“I think Democrats are being held to a different standard here.” @MollyJongFast says there’s too much focus on Biden’s debate performance and not on Trump’s egregious lies. pic.twitter.com/IqyxugddMX

— The Weekend on MSNBC (@TheWeekendMSNBC) June 30, 2024

CNN's great Daniel Dale did note that while Biden made at least nine false claims, Trump made more than thirty, including 

his assertions that some Democratic-led states allow babies to be executed after birth, that every legal scholar and everybody in general wanted Roe v. Wade overturned, that there were no terror attacks during his presidency, that Iran didn’t fund terror groups during his presidency, that the US has provided more aid to Ukraine than Europe has, that Biden for years referred to Black people as “super predators,” that Biden is planning to quadruple people’s taxes, that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi turned down 10,000 National Guard troops for the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, that Americans don’t pay the cost of his tariffs on China and other countries, that Europe accepts no American cars, that he is the president who got the Veterans Choice program through Congress, and that fraud marred the results of the 2020 election."best practice."

Yet it's difficult to focus on lies or other falsehoods because there is no video. Video drives cable news and television news in general because it's, well, visual, viewers like to see it, and interviews and discussions can be packaged around it. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to see it, it still makes a sound. But there is no one to talk about it, and talk about it, and talk about it, and.....

It would make for bad television and a trivial number of social media clicks. By contrast, if someone is videotaped slurring words, unable to complete a thought, speaking incoherently, or looking as if he is barely aware of where he is, people want to see it. Additionally, there is a sort of dog bites man to Trump lying whenever his lips move- it's what he has done for years and it's just another day in the life.

Donald Trump, as usual, rarely made an accurate claim. However, as Maher put it, "Trump told lie after lie after lie. He never would have gotten away with that if Joe Biden was there."

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