As
the political season heats up, Trump is ramping up his lies through his three
amplifiers: Fox News, rallies, and Twitter.
According
to The Fact Checker’s database, the average daily rate of
Trump’s false or misleading claims is climbing.
The
problem isn’t just the number or flagrancy of the lies – for example, that
Putin and the Russians didn’t intervene in the 2016 election on behalf of
Trump, or that the Mueller investigation is part of a Democratic plot to remove
him.
And
it’s not just that the lies are about big, important public issues – for
example, that immigrants commit more crimes than native-born Americans, or
trade wars are harmless.
The
biggest problem is his lies aren’t subject to the filters traditionally applied
to presidential statements – a skeptical press, experts who debunk falsehoods,
and respected politicians who publicly disagree.
The
word “media” comes from the term “intermediate” – that is, to come between
someone who makes the news and the public who receives it.
But
Trump doesn’t hold press conferences. He doesn’t meet in public with anyone who
disagrees with him. He denigrates the mainstream press. And he shuns
experts.
Instead,
his lies go out to tens of millions of Americans every day unmediated.
TV
and radio networks simply rebroadcast his rallies, or portions of them.
At
his recent rally in Great Falls, Montana, Trump made 98 factual
statements. According to the Washington Post’s fact checkers, 76 percent of them were false, misleading or
unsupported by evidence.
For example, Trump claimed that “winning the Electoral College is very tough for a Republican, much tougher than the so-called ‘popular vote,’ where people vote four times, you know.”
The
claim ricocheted across the country even though countless studies have shown
that Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud and abuse are simply not borne
out by the facts.
Meanwhile,
over 50 million Americans receive his daily tweets, which are also brimming
with lies.
Recently, for example, Trump tweeted that Democrats were responsible for his administration’s policy of separating migrant families at the border (they weren’t), and that “crime in Germany is way up” because of migration (in fact, it’s down).
Around
6 million Americans watch Fox News each day and relate what they see and hear
to their friends and relations.
Fox
News is no longer intermediating between the public and Trump. Fox News is Trump.
Many of his lies originate with Fox News; Fox News amplifies the ones that
originate with Trump.
Fox
News’s Sean Hannity is one of Trump’s de facto top advisers.
Trump has just appointed Bill Shine, the former number two at Fox News, as his
deputy chief of staff for communications.
No
democracy can function under a continuous bombardment of unmediated lies.
So
what are we to do, other than vote November 6 to constrain Trump?
First,
boycott Fox News’s major sponsors, listed here. Vote with your wallet and starve the beast.
Get others to join you.
Second,
attend Trump’s rallies, as distasteful as this may be. You’re entitled to
attend. He is, after all, the president of the entire country.
Organize
and mobilize large groups to attend with you. Once there, let your views about
his lies be heard and seen by the press. You can find out when and where his
rallies will occur here or here.
Third,
sign up for his tweets, and respond to his lies with the simple: “b.s.” You can
sign up here.
Fourth,
write to Twitter and tell its executives to stop enabling Trump’s
lies. Its contact information is here.
In
addition, as the Times’ Farhad Manjoo suggested recently, Twitter’s employees should be
encouraged to make a ruckus – as did Amazon workers who pushed the firm to stop
selling facial recognition services to law enforcement agencies, and Google
employees who pressured Google not to renew a Pentagon contract for artificial
intelligence.
Twitter
defines its mission as providing a “healthy public conversation.” Let them know
that demagoguery isn’t healthy.
Your
vote on November 6 is the key, of course.
But
as the political season heats up, Trump’s lies are heating up, too. And they
will sway unwary voters.
So
you need to be active now, before Election Day – on behalf of the truth.
Robert
B. Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of
California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing
Economies. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for
which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries
of the twentieth century. He has written fifteen books, including the best
sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of Nations," and
"Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent, "The Common Good,"
which is available in bookstores now. He is also a founding editor of the
American Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary,
"Inequality For All." He's co-creator of the Netflix original
documentary "Saving Capitalism," which is streaming now.
