Trumping the Truth

In case you missed it, last weekend the Trump team, this time Donald Trump himself, cited another terror attack that didn’t happen.  At his Florida rally, Trump mentioned a supposed terror event in Sweden related to immigrants, leaving the Swedish embassy, a former Prime Minister, and largely the nation of Sweden as a whole wondering what Trump was talking about.  This is the third time he or his team members have fabricated a terror-related event supposedly connected to immigrants or refugees.  And this is just another blatant lie or falsehood in what has become a seemingly impossible list to keep up with.

But it isn’t just as simple as not telling the truth.  There are a number of very important things at play here, so buckle up.

Before diving in, here is some background.  We seem to have entered into a post-truth world.  Many are describing “post-truth” as a time where the facts are not deemed important, but rather emotions, feelings, or beliefs are what are given merit.  This sentiment was illustrated perfectly almost a year ago with an infamous interview with Newt Gingrich.  Gingrich made a number of audacious claims, including that feelings are as equally “fact” as facts, and summed up his position, and this new post-truth era, well when he said, “Liberals have a whole set of statistics which theoretically may be right, but it’s not where human beings are.”  That is the world in which we now find ourselves.  So what are we to do?

Well, there is no great way to say this, especially without alienating a large portion of people, but we have to start with not believing anything Trump or his team says without verifying it through other reliable sources.  As a general rule, it’s good to practice this with any new information, but with Donald Trump it’s a requirement.  (Here’s a great guide to help when trying to sort through what is real and what is not.)  Donald Trump is simply not trustworthy.  Whether he intentionally lies or simply speaks incorrectly could be debated, but the fact that he doesn’t tell the truth cannot.  If this upsets you and makes you want to quit reading, I ask that you will stick with me for a minute.  Or better yet, head over to factcheck.org and read for yourself what an unbiased and independent fact checking organization has to say about the claims that Trump makes.  This is not simply a “leftist attack on the president” or just “someone still upset about losing the election.”

Trump has been telling documented lies and falsehoods for decades, and we have no reason to assume that this pattern is going to change any time soon.  He and his team are essentially launching a full-fledged attack on the truth.  He specifically intends to mislead and has no concern for the facts or reality.  Yet Trump constantly criticizes the “dishonest media,” claiming they make things up and do not cite sources.  Sadly, many people believe these dishonest words and, without doing any research of their own, simply buy into the notion that the media is biased and is constantly operating with an agenda that is out to get them.  But the reality is that this is not what the mainstream media does, this is precisely what Trump does.

It is Trump and his team that cannot support or verify a great deal of what they say (nor do they attempt to), not the media.  He is constantly fabricating false claims (or “alternative facts”) that have no basis in reality.  His rally in Florida a week ago was full of falsehoods (read more here), as were the majority of his campaign speeches, and also the recent CPAC speech.  In fact, Politifact, an independent, objective, non-partisan, and Pulitzer Prize-winning organization/site, gave the cumulative mass of his misstatements on the campaign trail the award for the 2015 Lie of the Year.  Furthermore, 70% of what Politifact has reviewed of what Trump has said has been deemed ‘mostly false,’ ‘false,’ or a ‘pants on fire’ blatant lie.  That means a mere 30% of what our President says is at least half true.  And worse yet, only 16% of what he says is mostly or completely true!  That is absolutely shocking and should be of great concern to all people who are living in the country that this man is now governing.

And the scary thing is that this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Trump and lies.  There are countless more issues that could be brought up.  Even just since taking office, he has made a myriad of blatantly false claims, often repeating them, including statements about jobs that are supposedly staying in the country because of him, the Carrier deal, the number of people impacted by his travel ban, the notion of voter fraud, the lies of the media, terror attacks that go unreported, that the NY times is failing, the murder rate, the cost of a wall, his administration’s relationship with Russia (which is still being untangled), how well things are going at the white house, the number of people at his inauguration, and his margin of victory in the election that he keeps. bringing. up.

**Seriously, Don.  Can I call you Don?  It’s over.  You won.  Not by a lot, and you lost the popular vote by 2.5M votes, but you won.  This is pretty obvious and we all know this because you’re currently the President.  Now let it go.**

Let’s look further at the electoral margin of victory claim.  As frustrating as it is that Trump continues to go back to how “big” his victory was, it provides a great example of why you cannot trust him or the supposed information he has.  Trump was “given” the information that he had the “greatest electoral college win since Reagan.”  That sure sounds like a great statistic.  And it is one that I’m sure Trump likes a lot and is very proud of, especially since he repeats it constantly.  The only problem with it is that it is laughably incorrect.

After months of Trump boasting about this, a reporter finally confronted Trump directly with the facts that expose his statement as a lie.  As the reporter points out, Obama, whose numbers shouldn’t be too hard to find, or simply remember, since he won the most recent prior election, had 332 votes in 2012 and 365 in 2008.  Both of those are obviously more than what Trump had.  Trump was quick to interrupt the reporter in his usual, disrespectful style and say that he meant among Republicans.  Certainly that would fix things, right?  Well, George H.W. Bush had 426 in 1988.  As in 122 electoral votes (or 40%) more than Trump.

So the reporter, after reading the facts, poses the very important and pertinent question, “Why should Americans trust you when you accuse the information they receive as being fake when you are providing information that is (fake)?”  Trump’s answer?  “Well, I don’t know.  I was given this information. I don’t know, I was just given, we had a very, very big margin.”  Wow.  Does that inspire confidence for you?  Does that sound like an answer a President should give?  When Trump’s lie is exposed, he first deflects the blame to someone else instead of taking responsibility (“I was given this information”) and then resorts to simply repeating the lie, despite facts having just been read that prove it false.

Obama’s 365?  That was big.  George H.W.’s 426?  Yuuge.  But Trump’s meager 304?  Well, since 1972, only George W. in his two elections came in under 304.  And, historically, that electoral result actually comes in at 46th out of 58, meaning it was one of the more narrow margins of victory to have occurred.  But that is a comparatively fantastic showing versus the result of the popular vote, in which Trump places 47th out of 49.  That’s right, he had the 3rd worst percentage of the popular vote in history.  But he, of course, would prefer to continue to tell you how much he won by and that it was a “substantial victory,” because, well, praising themselves is what narcissists do.  And if they are willing to lie about the small, simple, and easily verifiable (or easily discredited) things, what will they do about matters that are more sensitive or complicated?

The point here and what this clearly depicts is that Trump and his team simply cannot be trusted.  As has been demonstrated in everything from his speeches to Kellyanne Conway’s interviews or Sean Spicer’s press briefings, they are not afraid of lying or of being caught.  Just look at his own words to Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly when confronted the blatantly inaccurate and racially suggestive things he retweeted. “Hey, Bill, Bill, am I gonna check every statistic? I get millions and millions of people @RealDonaldTrump, by the way.”  Or look at his first Presidential tv interview with ABC in which Trump, after being confronted with facts that he doesn’t like about the lack of voter fraud, says, “You know what’s important?  Millions of people agree with me when I say that.”  Donald Trump is not worried about the truth and never has been.  He only cares if you believe him.  And sadly, at least up until now, it seems that many people do.

The second main thing to note from all of this is that reliable sources do not include Fox News, Breitbart News, InfoWars, tiny independent and unchecked “news” sites, or anyone on the Trump team.  Trump claims he got his “information” about Sweden from Fox News.  If Sweden and a former prime minister of Sweden have no idea what Trump is talking about and mock him after repeating something he saw on Fox News, perhaps you should think twice before you trust anything from Fox News.

But this is not a first offense for Fox (who is comparatively far more trustworthy than Breitbart and InfoWars).  Nor is it the first time Trump has spread information after watching something on Fox.  This is just another instance in a long list of offenses where Fox News has been a portrayer of false or misleading news.  They, like Trump, come in at 69% ‘mostly false’ or worse according to what Politifact has reviewed.  Just as a frame of reference for where Fox sits among other major networks, they are by far the worst offender.  NBC doesn’t do particularly well, with 41% of their statements coming in as ‘mostly false’ or worse.  That said, they have only 20% as ‘false’ or ‘pants on fire,’ where Fox has 38%.  ABC checks in at 35% ‘mostly false’ or worse (19% true), and CNN, a network Trump loves to call dishonest and liars, has only 25% ‘mostly false’ or worse with a whopping 54% coming in as ‘true’ or ‘mostly true,’ which is by far the most reliable of the major networks and certainly much better than Trump.  And just because it needs to be mentioned, Rush Limbaugh is most certainly not a reliable source.  Rush is actually the biggest transgressor of all, which is not surprising given his tendency for the dramatic, with 81% of what he says coming back as ‘mostly false’ or worse and an astounding 57% found to be ‘false’ or ‘pants on fire.’

Finally, I really hope that people will begin to see that Trump and his team want you to be afraid.  This is now the third fake claim by the Trump team about an immigrant-related terror attack.  There is no data to support their claims of the risks associated with immigrants and refugees (in fact, the data shows the opposite), and the consistent claims that refugees are flooding in without being vetted are just plain false.  For instance, the annual chance of being murdered by somebody other than a foreign-born terrorist was 252.9 times greater than the chance of dying in a terrorist attack committed by a foreign-born terrorist.  But these verifiable facts are thrown out the window by Trump and his team.  He would much rather tell you how much danger you’re in, because fear is one of Trump’s biggest weapons, and creating disproportional and irrational fear (fear mongering) is a frequent tactic of his (and news outlets like Fox & Breitbart) to keep you on his side.

Why?  Because fear mobilizes and unifies people.  Trump used fear frequently in his campaign to gain momentum.  He constantly played on people’s worst fears, he exaggerated risks of violence, terrorism, the loss of freedoms, voter fraud, the left, the media, etc. and makes hyperbolic and inaccurate statements about those things in order to stir up emotion and incite anger.  He hoped that the anger would lead to action and entrench people in their devotion toward himself as he championed himself as the only thing that could save them.

This tactic is a common theme in authoritarian rulers, which is exactly what Trump is trying to be.  An authoritarian will create confusion and chaos, lash out at and try to discredit and suppress the media in order to generate doubt, and then speak broadly of all of the “dangers” and “threats” out there that are poised to hurt you.  He wants you to think the threats and dangers out there are much greater than they really are, and he wants you to believe that he is the only person you can trust and the only thing that can save you.  This is precisely what Trump has been doing and what he continues to do.  The more he can get you to be afraid of everyone/everything but him (Muslims, inner cities, murder rates, immigrants, refugees, Mexicans, liberals, the news media…you see the pattern?), the more power he has.  And egomaniacs like Donald Trump loves to have power.

For just one specific example (though there are a plethora to choose from) we’ll look at how Trump talks about the murder rate.  The statistics clearly show that violent crime has, as a whole, been trending down for years.  But if you listen to Trump, he claims it is the highest it has been in 47 years.  He has been claiming this since his campaign, and despite being presented multiple times with facts to prove this wrong, he has shown no sign of backing down.  Because Trump operates by appealing to your emotions and trying to generate a belief, no matter how wrong it is, he has no use for honesty or for the truth.  The only thing he wants is your blind and unquestioning support.  And in order to earn this, the truth becomes his enemy rather than his ally.

So what do we do with a president who has chosen to reject fact and ignore reality?  And how do we move forward and still try to maintain bearings as much of our society ventures into a post-truth era?  I leave you with the following suggestions, or, perhaps, challenges.

1. Do not take anything Donald Trump (or his team, or sources like Fox News, Breitbart, InfoWars, etc.) says at face value.  We have to be better than to allow our leaders to intentionally misinform us and mislead us, and, as the facts show, the vast majority of what he says is inaccurate. 
2. Instead, find trustworthy, reliable sources from which to get your information and determine the truth.  I highly recommend utilizing allsides.com.  They not only have a section where they show you what sources are typically associated with which bias or slant, but they also present information from both sides so you can gather the full scope of what is being said and try to determine what is accurate. 
3. Use factcheck.org or politifact.com to double-check what you hear or read.  Both of these independent sites simply exist to decipher the truth and do all of the research that you and I don’t have time to do. 
4. If you find that a source is consistently inaccurate in what it says (that it is verifiably inaccurate—not that it presents information that doesn’t fit well within your paradigm), whether it is a random blog, a news outlet, or the White House, stop trusting it.  
5. Finally, don’t give into Trump’s fear mongering.  If Trump is trying to make you afraid of something, there is probably an underlying motive for him.  Take the time to look into it a littler further and you’ll probably find that there isn’t a rational or logical reason to fear whatever it is.

We have to stand up for truth.  We need to take pride in being informed and educated, in not blindly following any leader or news source, and standing against misinformation.  The truth is one of the few things worth pursuing in life.  Our entire societal foundation is built on the idea that there is truth, but Trump and the post-truth era are currently trying to undermine this.  If we let ourselves replace truth with emotions or feelings, which are easily misguided, we lose everything.  We must instead strive to discover and protect the truth, for without it, we, as well as all significance and the ability to interact, discuss, or have meaning, are lost.