Every principled newspaper, broadcast and social medium should present a daily debunking of the barrage of lies spewing forth from the extreme right, i.e., Donald Trump, Fox News and its minnow rivals Newsmax and OANN, and the Republican Party. It could be labeled the “Exposé” segment.
This calls for adopting the same strategy that the election liars and their congressional mouthpieces employ so effectively. Their approach is to shout their lies loud and long enough so that people who don’t pay much attention to anything beyond their own universes will believe their poppycock. What the rest of us must do to neutralize the liars’ nauseating effect on the voting public is to shout out the truth loud and long enough.
Trump’s “Big Lie” about the supposedly “stolen” 2020 election is the prime example of how destructive constant, insidious vomiting of a falsehood can be. Seventy percent of Republicans claim to actually believe this nonsense despite zero evidence that the election was anything but fair. They conveniently ignore that fact that 62 courts found no evidence of election fraud and that even a laughable Arizona recount conducted by bumbling Big Lie devotees also came up empty. The Big Lie is the perfect place to begin countering with the Big Truth.
But the Big Lie is not the only domain where mini-Trumpkins like Kevin McCarthy, “Gym” Jordan, Paul Gosar, Teddy Cruz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and the rest of the corrupt cult lie to beat the band. Take the recent right-wing phony hysteria over the portion of the Inflation Reduction Act that authorizes the IRS to hire 87,000 new employees over the next decade. The ink had not yet dried on the bill before they began shrieking that 87,000 IRS agents armed with AR-15s were about to descend on Joe and Jane Sixpack in order to audit their taxes. This of course is contemptible claptrap and anyone who could read the bill knows it. Most of these new jobs will be in customer service, i.e., answering the phone when taxpayers call for assistance. This is another bit of right-wing twaddle that cries out for exposure as absolute rubbish. The media needs to shout stuff like this from the rooftops.
The Trump Cult is highly adept at spreading lies. When you add the hard right’s finely honed ability to fake frenzy and righteous indignation, the defenders of democracy and the legitimate media face multiple challenges. Kevin McCarthy has a Ph.D. in disingenuousness and his gang of charlatans is well-schooled in amplifying his mendacious messages. The task at hand is not to allow these scurrilous lies to stand unquestioned.
Dick Hermann
September 5, 2022
This calls for adopting the same strategy that the election liars and their congressional mouthpieces employ so effectively. Their approach is to shout their lies loud and long enough so that people who don’t pay much attention to anything beyond their own universes will believe their poppycock. What the rest of us must do to neutralize the liars’ nauseating effect on the voting public is to shout out the truth loud and long enough.
Trump’s “Big Lie” about the supposedly “stolen” 2020 election is the prime example of how destructive constant, insidious vomiting of a falsehood can be. Seventy percent of Republicans claim to actually believe this nonsense despite zero evidence that the election was anything but fair. They conveniently ignore that fact that 62 courts found no evidence of election fraud and that even a laughable Arizona recount conducted by bumbling Big Lie devotees also came up empty. The Big Lie is the perfect place to begin countering with the Big Truth.
But the Big Lie is not the only domain where mini-Trumpkins like Kevin McCarthy, “Gym” Jordan, Paul Gosar, Teddy Cruz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and the rest of the corrupt cult lie to beat the band. Take the recent right-wing phony hysteria over the portion of the Inflation Reduction Act that authorizes the IRS to hire 87,000 new employees over the next decade. The ink had not yet dried on the bill before they began shrieking that 87,000 IRS agents armed with AR-15s were about to descend on Joe and Jane Sixpack in order to audit their taxes. This of course is contemptible claptrap and anyone who could read the bill knows it. Most of these new jobs will be in customer service, i.e., answering the phone when taxpayers call for assistance. This is another bit of right-wing twaddle that cries out for exposure as absolute rubbish. The media needs to shout stuff like this from the rooftops.
The Trump Cult is highly adept at spreading lies. When you add the hard right’s finely honed ability to fake frenzy and righteous indignation, the defenders of democracy and the legitimate media face multiple challenges. Kevin McCarthy has a Ph.D. in disingenuousness and his gang of charlatans is well-schooled in amplifying his mendacious messages. The task at hand is not to allow these scurrilous lies to stand unquestioned.
Dick Hermann
September 5, 2022
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