In The Face Of Coordinated Trump Lies, We Have To Hold The Line On Reality
Republicans have launched a coordinated disinformation campaign seeking to justify retribution for Trump’s conviction. The media, people of influence, and everyday Americans have to uphold truth.
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Since Donald Trump entered politics, he has shamelessly raged against America’s democratic norms like an orange bull in a china shop. A key component of Trump’s authoritarian endeavor is an effort to distort the lens through which we collectively perceive reality.
When he became president, he ran an administration defined by corruption, negligence, authoritarian tendencies, and dishonesty - telling over 30,000 lies while in office. We watched as the Republican Party twisted itself into Trumpian sycophancy, becoming a loyal arm of a man who would go on to launch a lie-incited insurrection targeting American democracy.
Now, after a jury of Donald Trump’s peers made him the first convicted felon former president, Republicans remain assembled behind him in a loyal phalanx. As I wrote last week, Republicans are spewing nefarious lies targeting our justice system and seeking to justify an agenda of retribution.
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wrote an excellent debunking of this Republican disinformation campaign after Trump’s conviction. In spite of what Republicans are saying, President Biden had nothing to do with the NY trial, the jury was not biased, and Judge Juan Merchan was more than fair. That hasn’t stopped Republicans from baselessly attacking the justice system.First off, if the Justice Department was truly being weaponized by Biden, wouldn’t he have protected his son, Hunter Biden, from prosecution? Trump would have, but Biden didn’t. The lies crumble under the weight of even the slightest bit of scrutiny. But the sheer volume and coordination of these lies makes them more effective than they should be.
This is part of a calculated strategy, and it’s not just about Trump’s re-election bid.
A key tactic of this right-wing disinformation campaign, and these campaigns more generally, is to falsely depict their political targets as amoral, partisan, and self-interested. Of course, it’s projection, accusing the other side of their own behavior. But they do this to frame any accountability they face as corrupt and to justify future attacks on those who facilitated that accountability. It’s why Trump attacks the media, his political opponents, and now, arbiters of the law.
What we’re seeing is a foundation of disinformation being laid to justify authoritarianism in a second Trump term. Republicans are falsely accusing Biden of weaponizing the justice system to justify their plans to actually weaponize the justice system. They are seeking free reign to use the tools of law to target their political “enemies.”
The New York Times has documented these dangerous calls to jail Trump’s political opponents from Republicans and right-wing figures. Vice Presidential hopefuls and Republican lawmakers have called for revenge or, as Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) put it, to “fight fire with fire.”
Right-wing figures like Steve Bannon have called for President Biden and Democrats to be prosecuted by state Attorneys General, red state District Attorneys, and, in the case of a second Trump presidency, by Trump’s future DOJ. In a conversation with far-right commentator Tim Pool, Trump ally Laura Loomer went even further: “Not just jail, they should get the death penalty.”
Trump himself has long made his campaign about retribution and the prosecution of his political targets, including explicitly promising he will appoint a Special Prosecutor to “go after” President Biden. On Newsmax on Tuesday night, he doubled down on this post-conviction: "So, you know, it’s a terrible, terrible path that they’re leading us to, and it’s very possible that it’s going to have to happen to them.”
Trump and his allies are falsely accusing President Biden of overseeing an authoritarian regime that’s targeting his political enemies without merit while promising to create that exact same system.
The stakes could not be higher. We know exactly why they’re spreading these lies, so those of us in the media, people of influence, and everyday Americans have to do all that we can to combat this disinformation.
We have to hold the line on reality.
When it comes to us in the media, just because Trump and his allies are confidently lying about his convictions doesn’t mean we have to accept these narratives or reframe the discourse within their parameters. The trial was fair. The charges were legit. Truth is truth.
MSNBC has been doing this very well, but CNN, on the other hand, has platformed some who are pushing Trump’s talking points - which led conservative lawyer George Conway to call out the network live on air.
A good moment for both networks last week was when MSNBC and CNN streamed Trump's post-conviction remarks at Trump Tower live. Both networks cut away from Trump’s remarks and immediately dove into fact-checks of his lies.
Network news, commentators, and print journalists have to escalate their prioritization of truth. When presented with these lies, fact-check them right in the moment. Republicans exploit the objectivity of journalists who would be willing to present their claims without context. Whether in writing or on the air, don’t let a lie slide.
Right-wing outlets like Fox News are fully bought into the false narrative, so it’s critical that those in the mainstream media step it up.
I know this can prove challenging, especially in our fragmented media environment where everyone exists within their own individualized algorithmic reality on social media. But this makes it especially important. Mainstream media hasn’t lost its influence. They’re still watched and read by millions of people. They set the tone and can influence the social media creators who are reaching the millions of Americans that cable news networks and print media no longer reach.
When Republicans and the right-wing ecosystem flood all platforms with coordinated talking points and disinformation, it’s able to break through more effectively than the truth. There is no equivalent ecosystem for liberals, in spite of false claims of a “liberal media.” In the absence of that, those of us who don’t believe in authoritarian insanity need to forcefully defend democracy.
In the face of this overwhelming right-wing disinformation, we have to push the truth as ferociously as they push their lies. Equivocating or pretending any of Trump’s narratives are anything other than lawless lies will only fuel his authoritarian movement. We have to tell it like it is.
As I wrote in my first article in this newsletter, journalism should act as American democracy’s immune system, rejecting the sickness of authoritarianism. Like the antibodies we develop after infection or immunization from a virus, journalists should recognize the historical patterns of authoritarianism, inform voters of its corrosive impacts, and trigger the public to mobilize against it.
At this moment in American history, we’re teetering on the brink of electing a convicted felon who is hell-bent on twisting the US government into a tool of the far-right that will implement his extremist agenda and seek retribution against his targets.
We have to tell the American people about this with clarity, as often as we can and as forcefully as we can, before we make a mistake that we can’t undo.
For more specifics on what we can do to combat disinformation as individuals, check out one of my articles, where I dive more into the anatomy of right-wing disinformation campaigns and media literacy tactics we can utilize to be better arbiters of information.
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