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Those Demon Fact Checkers: Trump and Vance’s Greatest Fear
“You can’t handle the truth!”
Last night Kamala Harris was interviewed on Sixty Minutes, the highest rated news program on US television. It was one of multiple interviews she has scheduled this week designed to put her in front of audiences not always served by mainstream media, though Sixty Minutes is mainstream.
It has been a tradition to have presidential candidates on the show as an election nears. But Trump has refused this time around because the show’s producers insisted, as journalists should, that he be fact checked in real time.
In other words, that he not be allowed to lie nonstop, as he has been for this entire election campaign.
Think about this. A serious candidate for president, a former president, knows he is lying, and knows he will be called out for it. Not once, but every time and he cannot stand for that. Why?
Because he has no control over it. And he is not alone. His vice presidential candidate JD Vance, when fact checked just one time in his debate, complained about the fact checking, not about the validity of his statements.
Now think about these two men being our leaders, men who are willing to openly lie about anything to promote themselves. How would we know what is real and what is not in the world they live in? We wouldn’t and it looks more and more like they don’t know.
People talk themselves into fantasy worlds. Trump’s entire life is an example. He is rich, he is sexy, he is mesmerizing, he knows things intuitively, he is better than all of us. Except, by the standards of actual reality, he is none of these things.
The obvious question is does he believe what he is saying? I don’t think so. In Vance’s case, I am certain he does not because he has contradicted himself on virtually every lie, but he is an opportunist and nothing more. Trump is something different.
Somewhere along the line he discovered that a man with money can tell a big lie, with authority, and there will be those who believe it, or find it useful. The Republican Party now has embraced the latter and lying has become their equivalent of policy.
