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Trump would have stalked off the stage, the clear winner in the liar sweepstakes. Instead, Haley and DeSantis argued between themselves for two exhausting and boring hours about who had lied most about this position or that policy.
Haley repeatedly referred viewers to DeSantisLies.com to check her opponents’ alleged prevarications, warning Drake University students: “Don’t turn this into a drinking game because you will be overserved by the end of the night.”
Such playfulness around the subject of lying is worrisome, as though lying is a prank, a harmless game of hyperbole. It risks normalizing deceit.
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But lies are rarely harmless. Beyond disrespecting objective fact, lies undermine trust, which is essential to a properly functioning republic. Powerful liars like Trump count on this. He has never been coy about his ambitions for greater control over the country, and his demands for loyalty are legendary. He has made clear his disdain for the truth-tellers and for anyone who would contradict him.
Follow this authorKathleen Parker's opinionsFollow
Trump’s biggest lie, of course, is that he won the 2020 presidential election and that it was stolen. And anyone disputing this falsehood is a liar. When journalists attempt to point this out, their reports are dismissed as “fake news.” Trump is married to “his truth,” the cloyingly popular idea that “your truth” and “my truth” are distinct and subjective.
This seems a good time to mention that “my truth” has become a trigger phrase for me. In the absence of a convenient safety zone, good Samaritans should direct me, when I hear it, to the nearest wine bar, where I shall find relief in the company of others who prefer to think about higher truths. (Lower truths will do in a pinch.)
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Joking aside, the vulnerability of a nation divided by the very meaning of truth can’t be overstated. When a proven liar reaches the most powerful office in the world, we’re in a world of trouble.
In his novel “1984,” George Orwell wrote: “And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed — if all records told the same tale — then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’”
We got our first taste of Orwellian doublespeak from the Trump administration when presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway explained an epic discrepancy between the White House’s version of Trump’s inauguration audience — the largest in American history — and what our own eyes could see.
“You’re saying it’s a falsehood,” she told Chuck Todd of NBC News, “and they’re giving — our press secretary, Sean Spicer, gave alternative facts to that.”
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The thing about alternative facts is, apparently, they love to go forth and multiply. Fast-forward to 2024, and we hear an echo from Harvard University. Describing the serial plagiarism of its now-former president Claudine Gay, Harvard used the term “duplicate language.” Ah, I see. She didn’t steal another’s work; she merely duplicated some language.
Gay’s relatively sparse academic résumé consisted of 11 peer-reviewed articles, which included several passages that were nearly identical to passages in other people’s published works. Other statements from Harvard referred to Gay’s plagiarism as “missteps.”
A misstep is when President Biden trips on a sandbag. Lifting somebody else’s words is plagiarism. Such doublespeak sanitizes truth to make it less potent. People are supposed to feel that what Gay did wasn’t so bad. Needless to say, plagiarism and doublespeak don’t wash in academia (until now) or the media. There are consequences for both, as well as for fabrications, as we’ve seen on occasion. Obviously, there ought to be consequences for presidents, too. If not, we’re dealing with a dictator whose truth must be accepted. Or else?
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This is the precipice upon which we teeter while Trump leads the Republican fold. I will never understand how people either know he’s a liar and accept it or are too blinded by their truth to see what’s in front of their noses. Do his supporters not care about the truth — at all?
Not once this cycle has Trump appeared onstage to debate his challengers. He’s the ghost candidate who materializes and speaks at his own events, where he can be in total control. This is not, my friends, the democratic way.
What’s he hiding? Or, what is he hiding from? Scrutiny, that’s what. The follow-up question. Challenges to the sovereignty of “his truth,” which isn’t mine, for the record. But you knew that.
Trump, a former reality TV showman, can be entertaining at times, but a second round in the White House would be no joke. Polling has shown that Haley would soundly defeat Biden in the general election, while Trump lost to Biden in 2020 fair and square. Why would this November be different? Trump isn’t more popular than he was before.
If Trump cared about his country half as much as he cares about himself, he’d drop out and let Haley’s comet soar. But he would rather destroy everything in his path than surrender his ego to the rabble that still dares to demand truth.
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It’s a good thing Donald Trump doesn’t do campaign debates anymore. He couldn’t have survived Wednesday night’s liar-liar-pants-on-fire name-calling extravaganza between runner-up Nikki Haley, former ambassador to the United Nations and former governor of South Carolina, and third-place Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida.
Trump would have stalked off the stage, the clear winner in the liar sweepstakes. Instead, Haley and DeSantis argued between themselves for two exhausting and boring hours about who had lied most about this position or that policy.
Haley repeatedly referred viewers to DeSantisLies.com to check her opponents’ alleged prevarications, warning Drake University students: “Don’t turn this into a drinking game because you will be overserved by the end of the night.”
Such playfulness around the subject of lying is worrisome, as though lying is a prank, a harmless game of hyperbole. It risks normalizing deceit.
But lies are rarely harmless. Beyond disrespecting objective fact, lies undermine trust, which is essential to a properly functioning republic. Powerful liars like Trump count on this. He has never been coy about his ambitions for greater control over the country, and his demands for loyalty are legendary. He has made clear his disdain for the truth-tellers and for anyone who would contradict him.
Trump’s biggest lie, of course, is that he won the 2020 presidential election and that it was stolen. And anyone disputing this falsehood is a liar. When journalists attempt to point this out, their reports are dismissed as “fake news.” Trump is married to “his truth,” the cloyingly popular idea that “your truth” and “my truth” are distinct and subjective.
This seems a good time to mention that “my truth” has become a trigger phrase for me. In the absence of a convenient safety zone, good Samaritans should direct me, when I hear it, to the nearest wine bar, where I shall find relief in the company of others who prefer to think about higher truths. (Lower truths will do in a pinch.)
Joking aside, the vulnerability of a nation divided by the very meaning of truth can’t be overstated. When a proven liar reaches the most powerful office in the world, we’re in a world of trouble.
In his novel “1984,” George Orwell wrote: “And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed — if all records told the same tale — then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’”
We got our first taste of Orwellian doublespeak from the Trump administration when presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway explained an epic discrepancy between the White House’s version of Trump’s inauguration audience — the largest in American history — and what our own eyes could see.
“You’re saying it’s a falsehood,” she told Chuck Todd of NBC News, “and they’re giving — our press secretary, Sean Spicer, gave alternative facts to that.”
The thing about alternative facts is, apparently, they love to go forth and multiply. Fast-forward to 2024, and we hear an echo from Harvard University. Describing the serial plagiarism of its now-former president Claudine Gay, Harvard used the term “duplicate language.” Ah, I see. She didn’t steal another’s work; she merely duplicated some language.
Gay’s relatively sparse academic résumé consisted of 11 peer-reviewed articles, which included several passages that were nearly identical to passages in other people’s published works. Other statements from Harvard referred to Gay’s plagiarism as “missteps.”
A misstep is when President Biden trips on a sandbag. Lifting somebody else’s words is plagiarism. Such doublespeak sanitizes truth to make it less potent. People are supposed to feel that what Gay did wasn’t so bad. Needless to say, plagiarism and doublespeak don’t wash in academia (until now) or the media. There are consequences for both, as well as for fabrications, as we’ve seen on occasion. Obviously, there ought to be consequences for presidents, too. If not, we’re dealing with a dictator whose truth must be accepted. Or else?
This is the precipice upon which we teeter while Trump leads the Republican fold. I will never understand how people either know he’s a liar and accept it or are too blinded by their truth to see what’s in front of their noses. Do his supporters not care about the truth — at all?
Not once this cycle has Trump appeared onstage to debate his challengers. He’s the ghost candidate who materializes and speaks at his own events, where he can be in total control. This is not, my friends, the democratic way.
What’s he hiding? Or, what is he hiding from? Scrutiny, that’s what. The follow-up question. Challenges to the sovereignty of “his truth,” which isn’t mine, for the record. But you knew that.
Trump, a former reality TV showman, can be entertaining at times, but a second round in the White House would be no joke. Polling has shown that Haley would soundly defeat Biden in the general election, while Trump lost to Biden in 2020 fair and square. Why would this November be different? Trump isn’t more popular than he was before.
If Trump cared about his country half as much as he cares about himself, he’d drop out and let Haley’s comet soar. But he would rather destroy everything in his path than surrender his ego to the rabble that still dares to demand truth.
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