How cute: The Washington Post has noticed that lying is a theme in the Republican presidential primary. Only … the trend article by Jenna Johnson and David Fahrenthold seems to suggest that the phenomenon is isolated to the “outsider” candidates. And sure, Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Carly Fiorina offer rich material on the lying front, but it’s not just them.
“Word is,” Trump said last month on Twitter, “that Ford Motor, because of my constant badgering at packed events, is going to cancel their deal to go to Mexico and stay in U.S.”
It didn’t.
“Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says, ‘We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain,’ ” said former tech executive Carly Fiorina during the second GOP debate, suggesting that she had seen such a video.
She hadn’t.
“I’m not going to say it is a mistake, so forget about it,” said retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, asked about his claims that he had received a scholarship offer from West Point, when he hadn’t actually applied to the school.
Lies, lies, and also lies. BUT. Marco Rubio lied about his personal finances, dismissing a question touching on his history of mixing personal and business expenses as “discredited attacks” less than two weeks before he bowed to pressure and released some of the credit card records in question. Rubio has also racked up a history of lying about his tax plan. Rubio, at the very least, has earned his place in any story about how Republican candidates tend to lie. But really, if you look closely at what any of these candidates are saying about their tax plans vs. what their tax plans would actually do, you’ll find they’re all lying their asses off.