Critics of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign often complain about the way the media has reported on his candidacy. It is not just the incessant coverage that riles them. It’s the perceived lack of fact-checking. Trump is known for making outlandish and dubious claims with little connection to the truth. The press corps, these critics argue, allows him to float along in a perpetual state of unreality. The truth is, Trump is routinely fact-checked. It’s just that he makes so many statements in such a rapid and continuous fashion that it becomes virtually impossible to keep up…. The Huffington Post assigned five and a half reporters to look into a roughly 12,000-word transcript of Trump’s town hall event on CNN the night before. It took us hours, but in all, we found 71 separate instances in which Trump made a claim that was either inaccurate, misleading or deeply questionable. That’s basically one falsehood every 169 words (counting the words uttered by moderator Anderson Cooper), or 1.16 falsehoods every minute (the town hall lasted an hour, including commercial breaks). [Ed. note: Emphasis mine]
Steal a thousand bucks, and you’d best be prepared to do some jail time if you’re caught. Steal a few hundred million, and you get your mug on the cover of Forbes magazine and the hero treatment on CNBC and Fox Business Network.
The same can be said for dishonesty. Tell one or two egregious lies here and there, and some enterprising fact-checker will bust you in no time flat. Toss out lies like a manure spreader during spring planting and fact-checkers will very likely give up because they can’t keep up with the rapid-fire prevaricating.
So it is with Donald Trump, who cares for the truth only insofar as it can be manipulated to his advantage. Honesty and veracity aren’t issues- not merely because he’s completely devoid of integrity, but because his campaign is being made up on the fly. He can’t speak to issues because he clearly hasn’t bothered to study them in depth, but he knows that if he speaks forcefully and with conviction, his (undemanding, low-information, reactionary) supporters won’t concern themselves with the truth that their candidate is an inveterate, pathological liar. Nor will they be alarmed that his speech patterns mimic those of a 6th-grader.
If Americans can be bothered to demand honesty and integrity from the politicians they support, we can’t claim to be surprised when they continue to be dishonest and disingenuous once they take office. A leopard doesn’t change his stripes, eh?
Not that the American Sheeple care about being lied to…as long as the deception and dishonesty mean they’re being told what they want to hear.
