Scope of Trump's falsehoods unprecedented for a modern presidential candidate
Michael Finnegan
latimes.com
Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Jackson, Mississippi.
Donald Trump says that taxes in the United States are higher than almost anywhere else on earth. They’re not.
He says he opposed the Iraq war from the start. He didn’t.
Now, after years of spreading the lie that President Obama was born in Africa, Trump says that Hillary Clinton did it first ( untrue) and that he’s the one who put the controversy to rest (also untrue).
Never in modern presidential politics has a major candidate made false statements as routinely as Trump has. Over and over, independent researchers have examined what the Republican nominee says and concluded it was not the truth — but “pants on fire” (PolitiFact) or “four Pinocchios” (Washington Post Fact Checker).
Trump’s candidacy was premised on upending a dishonest establishment that has rigged American political and economic life, so many of his loyalists are willing to overlook his lies, as long as he rankles the powerful, said Republican strategist Rob Stutzman.“It gives him not only license, but incentive to spin fantasy, because no one expects him to tell the truth,” said Stutzman, who worked against Trump during the primaries. “They believe they’re getting lied to constantly, so if their hero tells lies in order to strike back, they don’t care.”
Still, Trump’s pattern of saying things that are provably false has no doubt contributed to his high unfavorable ratings. It also has forced journalists to grapple with how aggressive they should be in correcting candidates’ inaccurate statements, particularly in the presidential debates that start Monday.
At a time of deep public mistrust of the news media, the arbitration of statements of fact, long seen as one of reporters’ most basic duties, runs the risk of being perceived as partisan bias.
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