America is still waiting to find out whether debate moderator Lester Holt will press Donald Trump on any of his lies, but over the weekend, four news outlets got ahead of Holt by doing some serious fact-checking—and in three cases, calling a lie a lie. About damn time, too. The New York Times, Washington Post, and Politico each took a rigorous look at Trump’s recent statements, while the Los Angeles Times took more of a greatest hits approach. And—for a moment—never mind the specific lies. Take a look at the pattern these outlets have finally gotten around to acknowledging.
According to the New York Times, “Donald J. Trump has unleashed a blizzard of falsehoods, exaggerations and outright lies in the general election,” and they see a pattern: “Virtually all of Mr. Trump’s falsehoods directly bolstered a powerful and self-aggrandizing narrative depicting him as a heroic savior for a nation menaced from every direction.” The Times’ look at Trump’s public statements from September 15-21 found “31 biggest whoppers, many of them uttered repeatedly” but excluded “dozens more” seen as less consequential.
Politico took a more inclusive approach, and found:
Some metrics on Trump’s statements this week:
- Number of appearances: six speeches, one town hall, seven TV interviews, zero press availabilities, 37 tweets
- Combined length of remarks (speeches, interviews): four hours, 43 minutes
- Raw number of misstatements, exaggerations, falsehoods: 87
- Rate: One untruth every 3.25 minutes
If, at this point, you’re asking “but what about Hillary Clinton,” never fear. Politico fact-checked her, as well, and concluded that “Trump’s mishandling of facts and propensity for exaggeration so greatly exceed Clinton’s as to make the comparison almost ludicrous.”
The Washington Post describes Trump as “a candidate who at times seems uniquely undeterred by facts,” while the Los Angeles Times chimes in with the assessment that “Never in modern presidential politics has a major candidate made false statements as routinely as Trump has.” Because of this, statement-by-statement fact checks just aren’t enough. These pieces reviewing Trump’s statements en masse and stepping back to say “whoa, these are not typical politician lies; something is different here” are needed. Because Trump is different and dangerous.
And the debate moderators, from Lester Holt to Chris Wallace, had better come prepared to say “actually, that’s not true.” If they can’t say that when a lie is slapping them in the face, what are they even contributing to the process?
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