It’s been years since there were any real checks on Republican candidates’ ability to lie. Trump is just the first to take full advantage of the situation (via):
Politicians are quickly learning that they can say just about anything and get away with it. Along with vindication, apology and suffering, there now exists a fourth way forward for the politician spewing whoppers: Blame the backlash on media bias and walk away a hero.
[….]In all of these cases, the candidates doubled or tripled down when pestered by reporters and fact-checkers and insisted they’d been victimized by biased media.
Cacti
And the more fascist the statement, the more seriously you should be taken by the librul media.
Paul in KY
It’s Goebbels/Hitler’s tactic of the ‘big lie’ come to American politics.
rikyrah
Higher Education only for the elite?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2015/11/24/college-enrollment-rates-are-dropping-especially-among-low-income-students/
goblue72
Democrats need to start insinuating that some people say that Trump sleeps with goats. And that Mickey Kaus may be the pimp.
debbie
No, he’s not. Carly has Trump beat with that lie about seeing the film of an aborted fetus lying on a table, kicking its little legs.
rikyrah
No, only White Men Republicans can be ‘post-truth’.
You will NEVER EVER convince me that Candidate Barack Obama would have been allowed to become the ‘ Post-Truth’ Candidate.
I simply don’t believe it.
Hell, I don’t believe that Hillary Clinton would be allowed to be a ‘post-truth’ candidate.
They would roll it into her ‘ untrustworthy’ meme.
They certainly wouldn’t be throwing their hands up in the air, and ‘ oh well, we can’t do anything about it.’, like they’ve done with Trump.
scav
Are they really expected to fact-check all their retweets, all their words and moreover, check the veracity of things they use as bases for their actions — now or in the White House? I mean, come on.
Turgidson
Yeah, I mean, this isn’t new.
Mittens’ entire campaign was based on easily-refuted lies about Obama and vacuous “me businessman, me fix economy” platitudes backed by unfathomably regressive and damaging tax and fiscal plans. The media could barely be bothered to notice, and aside from perhaps the “please proceed” moment, scrutiny of Mittens’ lies had basically no effect on how the election turned out.
Trump is taking the same Gish Gallop strategy, ditching the genteel exterior Mittens and the Granny Starver kept up, and burying the needle. And the demented, rage drunk GOP base loves every minute of it. The more the media tries to scrutinize Trump, the more loyal his braindead dipshit brigades get. The question is whether that strategy can win GOP primaries in bluer states that tend to vote for the less-insane guy, and then whether it can command a majority in a general election. I say the answers are probably, and probably not. The collective post-Paris freakout has me wondering if this country is getting ready to really go off the deep end next November, but I’m not convinced we’re at that point…yet.
gogol's wife
You left off the first part of the sentence, per Dostoevsky, “If there is no God.” But glad to see Fyodor Mikhailovich make it to the front page.
dedc79
Meatloaf?!
How about some George Jones:
trollhattan
Jim Carroll reference!
The lie machine is only warming up. Sweet lord, what do they have in store for Hillary in the general?
Germy
GOP presidential candidates making shit up, RW commenters trolling my local news making shit up…. it’s liars all the way down.
Is it too late for the social justice kittens calendar?
NotMax
Much as they may want to make it so, Nineteen Eighty-Four is not an instruction manual.
dedc79
Take it away, Chris Christie:
trollhattan
@dedc79:
Found it.
The whole album still kills, today.
MattF
Well, ‘reality-based’ vs. ‘we make our own reality’ goes back at least to GWB. And if any of the Republicans gets elected president, the media will welcome their new overlords, as they have in the past.
JustRuss
@rikyrah: For how this applies (or doesn’t) to Democrats, google “Al Gore 2000”. Lyingist liar EVAR, according to our liberal media.
peach flavored shampoo
@dedc79: So printed evidence can now be dismissed by a hazy memory, eh? Isn’t writing something down the CURE for a potentially hazy memory?
Yes, these guys have figured out that truth is for chumps. Only a matter of time before Trump “remembers” Hillary has been convicted of child molestation, and its the librul DA office who’s covered the whole thing up.
dedc79
@peach flavored shampoo: Yes how dare they confront a candidate for president with his own words from when he was a candidate for state office. Why can’t they just let him be entirely unprincipled in peace?
Tim C.
@rikyrah: This.
One of the reasons the establishment Media is freaking out about Donald is that becomes totally obvious that the GOP base is mostly composed of crazy assholes. The Republicans have been allowed to have it both ways for a long time so that the cool kids can be above it all ans proclaim “Both Sides Do It.” A Trump or Cruz nomination takes the mask off.
goblue72
@rikyrah: The story and data don’t delineate enrollment in nonprofit/public colleges vs. for-profit colleges. The for-profit have tended to target poorer students (and bigger percentages of poor students attend for-profit colleges than higher income students). Obama has made it clear that he wanted to kill the diploma mills – and rightly so. And a number of those types of schools have been forced to tighten standard or just close shop.
Frankly, I’d also want to see the data broken out between nonprofit and public colleges as well. A lot of states cut the budgets of their state colleges and universities during the Great Recession and the public colleges often raised tuition over that period of time – by a LOT. (And in some states, the trend of cutting education budgets and raising tuitions proceeded the Great Recession).
The trend is troubling overall, but the data in that story is so broad, that it is difficult to determine what exactly is going on – and thus difficult to figure out a practical solution.
Turgidson
@Tim C.:
They’re powering through as best they can. Ron “Severe Dementia” Fournier is blaming pretty much all of the world’s ills on Obama’s failure to leeeeeeaaad. Prominent NYT journalist Maggie Haberman is saying Trump’s followers have some “similarities” to Obama’s in 2008. And they’re, generally, sticking to the notion that Trump is merely “controversial” and not a race-bating liar.
I have no hope whatsoever that the media will hit an “enough is enough” moment and start covering Trump the way a reckless neo-fascist like him deserves to be covered. They’re buried as deeply in their “both sides do it” bubble as the GOP is in their unskewed, imaginary alternate reality.
Hoodie
I once worked for a manager who compulsively lied. He would lie even when he did not need to do so to get what he wanted. I remember asking a colleague why someone would gratuitously lie like that, and his theory was that lying like that provides ego gratification because being able to get away with a lie when everyone knows it as such is a manifestation of power. While many Americans are probably dumb enough to buy Trump’s bullshit, I think a sizeable number of his supporters really don’t believe the lies reflect actual facts but rather enjoy the authoritarian thrill they get from the fact that he never retracts or apologizes when called out on his lies. If Trump can get away with his lies, so do they, thus making them feel powerful or, at least, less powerless. All the fact checkers in the world won’t help with this particular psychosis.
Turgidson
@Hoodie:
I think this is pretty much right, but I think his supporters probably do believe the shit he’s saying more often than not, or at least aren’t concerned with whether it’s true or not. They love Trump for saying whatever the fuck he wants and never backing off any of it. The substance of his claims is secondary to his nonstop show of certitude and assholery.
goblue72
@Tim C.: The right wing is playing chess while we keep playing checkers. They’ve locked up Congress, the Governorships, the state legislatures and the courts. All we got is the Presidency and the municipal offices in the big cities. We have a narrow opening to undo the great gerrymander come 2020, but we lose that and we are completely hosed for another 20 years.
At some point, the roulette wheel will turn and they will luck into the White House. At that point, game over because they will control all the pieces on the board. Meanwhile, we win the White House and all we get is more gridlock.
As long as white people are the majority of voters during midterms, and as long as white people continue to prefer the GOP over Democrats by the roughly 55%-60% voter preference they are at, we will continue to be stuck in this pattern.
Its sucky but it is what it is. This is politics, not civics. This is about power, not policy. And we need a bit more ruthlessness on our side to take back power.
Hillary Clinton’s bouts of amoral power-hungry-ness is probably one of the few things I like about her. Just wish she was less ham-fisted about it and could pull the trick the Big Dog was able to – he was as power hungry as the next guy in DC, but managed to fool everyone into thing he was just a huggable Bubba.
At least until the nation’s voters become close to majority-minority. In 2050 or whatever.
goblue72
Comment stuck in moderation. No links included. And no reference that I can see to the phallus enhancement drug that shall not be named.
catclub
@peach flavored shampoo:
This kind of stuff is what makes me wonder again if Trump is not doing the whole thing as a stunt.
Some blame can be on NBC for not extending his contract.
gene108
@peach flavored shampoo:
I doubt Hillary is a child molester. She’s a frigid bitch. She couldn’t even keep Bill satisfied in the White House, so the whole Monica impeachment thing happened.
Now Bill banging some high school chicks I could see.
Anyway the liberal media has conveniently swept the murder of Vince Foster and the Clintons cocaine smuggling operation under the rug for all these years. It wouldn’t surprise me, if Bill’s affairs with hot high school cheerleaders were also buried by the liberal media and Hillary’s murder of those slutty sixteen year old girls to hush things up.
trollhattan
@goblue72:
Did you at any time name an establishment dedicated to games of chance and soforth?
trollhattan
@gene108:
Reasonable people can disagree on how slutty they were but that they were sluts and needed to be “dealt with” is established fact. QED, Trump shall lead us, amen.
goblue72
@trollhattan: Oi. I’m gonna need a list of the Bad Words.
Turgidson
@goblue72:
I’m comfortable with Hillary as the nominee in large part because she is going to give as good as she gets when she’s up against whatever vile hairball the GOP process barfs up. And frankly, if she has to campaign dirty, so be it. Those guys are dangerously insane and must be kept away from the codes and the Supreme Court. All manner of Atwater/Rovian ratfking and dirty tricks should be in play if that’s what it takes to keep these demented lunatics out of the White House.
They’re such pathetic clowns that it shouldn’t have to come to that, but it very well may. Hillary won’t be afraid to hit below the belt if need be. Ironic that this trait was one of the things I found most distasteful in 2008 when I was for Obama, but am most grateful for now.
gene108
@goblue72:
More money would not hurt.
It is not a coincidence that the GOP’s recent surge occurred after the SCOTUS gutted campaign finance laws.
There are a lot of rich people willing to spend a lot of money to get their way during elections, and as what happened in 2009, with rise of the Taxed Enough Aready Party, in between election cycles.
The first teabagger protests, on April 15, 2009, got 24/7 coverage by Fox News, even though the turn out was relatively small for a mass movement. Then the rest of the media decided if Fox is paying these demonstrations so much attention they must be news worthy and all of a sudden there’s a “mass movement” forged by Fox News and the Koch brothers.
What we need to figure out is how to address the money imbalance between liberals and conservatives. We’ll never match them dollar for dollar, as there seem to be no liberal billionaires with money to burn, but we need to get people convinced that government is not the problem and can do good things for them.
goblue72
@gene108: I do not disagree. Money in politics is a HUGE problem. And its in the self-interest of the wealthy to support Republicans. Republicans promise to cut taxes and cut regulations. Two things that accrue WAY bigger benefits to the wealthy.
Democrats are going to raise taxes on the rich and increase regulation of corporations. Two things which hit the wealthy where it hurts.
The rest of the stuff – all the culture war, xenophobia crap – is just a means to trick the rubes into voting in favor of aristocracy.
BillinGlendaleCA
@goblue72: You said the name of a game of chance, r**** wheel.
Citizen_X
@Turgidson:
The principle was summed up by Mussolini’s old slogan: “Believe, obey, fight!”
Bill Arnold
@goblue72:
In the early 2000s there was an added twist; a real estate bubble for the 99%, to disguise the tax cuts for the affluent.
Brachiator
When Trump was spreading lies about Muslim American reaction to 911, he brushed off the TV host’s objections as PC. In short, the media lies to protect the delicate sensibilities of nonwhites, while Trump is boldly telling the truth in a way that only a big white man talking to big white people can do.
It is despicable, but that’s where we are.
Bill Arnold
@Brachiator:
I recall people at the time conflating video of cheering (of 911 attacks) in the Middle East with protests in the U.S.. Perhaps it was acerbated by Fox News-style deliberately misleading editing. (And if FN was involved, it may well have been video of something else.)
Brachiator
@goblue72:
To the contrary, the early tyrants were wealthy citizens who appealed directly to the masses.
Trump claims that he understands how Bush and the Koch brothers operate. He admits that he is from that group, but that he has pledged his loyalty to the lesser folk. Classic Tyrant move.
Brachiator
@Bill Arnold:
No, we have moved beyond this. Trump and others specifically claimed that they saw with their own eyes Muslim Americans in New Jersey cheering the falling towers. This is a deliberate slander designed to imply that Muslim Americans are not loyal patriotic citizens, but unassimilated aliens who hate America and openly applaud its destruction. And obviously, these traitors would welcome terrorists with open arms.
We saw this before with the demonization of Japanese Americans, leading to the clamor that they be put away in camps because none of them could be trusted.
Ironically, I was reading an article in the November 23 edition of The New Yorker this morning. You know who actually called the destruction of the towers “awesome!”
The good white members of the Westboro Church.
Trump, Carson and these other fools seemed to miss this, the real people who hate America, who ooze hate.
Bill Arnold
@Brachiator:
His own eyes saw it, on television. Has he ever said that he saw it in person? The transcript I read is ambiguous but does finish with
Brachiator
@Bill Arnold: Trump has had opportunities to clarify what he has said, but it comes down to him insisting that Muslim Americans cheered the falling towers.
Now, he can weasel whether he is speaking as an eye witness. But he cannot weasel around the slanderous claim that thousands of Muslim Americans were cheering and applauding the death of their fellow citizens.
Bill Arnold
@Brachiator:
Sure he can, if he says he saw it on TV and there is deceptively-edited video from the time. But I bet he won’t because he believes that admitting error is weakness, something that only “losers” do.
Brachiator
@Bill Arnold:
That’s just it. Trump never backs down, especially if the lie is outrageous.
Trump cannot blame a deceptively edited video, because this would suggest that he, a great man, can be suckered, made a fool of, is just another rube. But Trump is stuck in the role of the man who never backs down.
He’s never backed down from his birther BS and vicious fools love him all the more for it. He can’t back down here. Oddly enough, this makes him vulnerable. If he is not just laughed at, but abandoned by losing votes and support, he is doomed.
Heliopause
Let’s be clear about what you mean here. The MSM is in fact trying very hard (by their standards) to call out the various Trumpisms, in fact, I’m now seeing the L-word (lie) and the F-word (fascist) turning up in MSM reporting, which is practically unheard of. Like the rest of us they thought Trump was funny at first but now they are genuinely starting to freak out at his staying power in the polls. CNN et al want a conservative Daddy-President, but a “respectable” one.
If by “checks” on lying you mean that the GOP base has always eventually come around to the establishment candidate, that would be true. They’re taking a long time to come around this cycle. I’m starting to think that there is almost no “gaffe” that can sink Trump, rather, more likely is that some quantity of the primary voters will simply decide to get “serious” all on their own. Round about Iowa-New Hampshire time you’ll see a surge in support for one of the establishment guys and a drop for Trump and it won’t correspond to any event in particular. If that doesn’t happen and Trump is still the clear frontrunner on Super Tuesday, Lord knows what will happen.
David Koch
@Brachiator: the hilarious part – the incident he’s distorting is Israeli spies who were celebrating the attack.
I remember when it happened, ABC made a big stink about it – demagoguing the incident. And then it turned out that, yes, they were of middle eastern origin, but not moooooslims, rather they were our best buddies Israel. Ooops. Of course they immediately dropped the subject. It’s one thing to demonize moooslims, but we can never ever say Israel’s interests can be counterproductive to US interests. Likud can never be wrong. They can only be wronged.
David Koch
@Brachiator:
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.
slag
Anyone else remember Jake Tapper hanging around here for a bit defending himself and his colleagues (including sister station, Faux News) for their part in the creation of a post-reality world? Ahhhh good times.
redshirt
Today’s Republican party: The greatest post-modernists who ever lived. To date.
Paul in KY
@gene108: I get the impression that Bill could have just shagged the heck out of his wife & then Monica threw some out there & he would have been on that too.
I disagree with your premise.