Trump’s Lies Keep Coming. Republican Officeholders Keep Staying Silent.
Former President Donald Trump is well known as a serial liar. He may well be the most prolific liar in American history.
During his four years in office, according to The Washington Post, Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims. Politifact tracks Trump’s more recent lies, such as his false claim that Nikki Haley opposed both Trump’s border wall and his travel ban.
How do most Republican officeholders respond to Trump’s lies? They practice the political art of “Hear No Evil, See No Evil.” They act like lemmings.
Many Republican officeholders, for example, stay silent as Trump incessantly repeats his blatant lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.
There is a dangerous streak of cowardice in Republican officeholders when it comes to publicly challenging Trump’s lies, no matter how outrageous or blatant they are.
Last week, as Haley appeared to cut Trump’s lead in New Hampshire to single digits, Trump trotted out one of his favorites – his “birther” lie. Trump falsely claimed that Haley is not eligible to run for President because her parents were not yet U.S. citizens when she was born in South Carolina.
The Constitution’s 14th Amendment, however, makes clear that “all persons born” in the United States “are citizens of the United States.” Haley, of course, was born in this country.
Far be it for Trump to let the Constitution stand in the way of a self-serving lie.
Trump played the same false “birther” card against Senator Ted Cruz in 2016 when Cruz was challenging Trump in the Iowa caucuses. Trump falsely called into question Cruz’s eligibility to run for President because Cruz was born in Canada. As the son of parents who were U.S. citizens, Cruz was a U.S. citizen regardless of where he was born.
Even before he ran for President, Trump spent years falsely attacking Barack Obama’s citizenship and eligibility to serve as President.
Through it all, most Republican officeholders have stayed silent as Trump falsely attacked the citizenship first of Obama, then Cruz, and now Haley.
As the late Senator Daniel Moynihan famously said, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.”
Republican officeholders, many of them caught in the January 6 Capitol mob attack, also have stood silent as Trump absurdly described the imprisoned rioters, many of whom were convicted of violence on January 6, as “hostages.”
At least one Member of Congress – Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) – parroted Trump’s “hostage” line, recently claiming the imprisonment of the rioters constituted “the weaponization of the federal government.”
In 2021, Stefanik sang a far different tune, saying of the mob that attacked the Capitol that “violence in any form is absolutely unacceptable” and calling for the Justice Department to prosecute those responsible “to the fullest extent of the law.”
That’s precisely what the Justice Department has done. But now Stefanik sees the rioters as “hostages” and attacks the Justice Department for enforcing the law that she herself called on them to do.
Trump is currently facing four criminal cases with the Special Counsel’s January 6 case the most important. Charges in this case include incendiary statements Trump made that incited the mob to attack the Capitol and “fight like hell.”
That’s nothing new for Trump. On election night 2012, as Obama began to pull ahead of Mitt Romney, Trump proceeded to post tweets that look eerily similar to his January 6 incitements.
“We can’t let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty” and “Lets fight like hell!” he tweeted … in 2012.
Similar language from Trump showed up again last week when he warned of “bedlam in the country” if the charges against him cause him to lose the November election.
Trump’s never-ending destructive web of lies is no longer a surprise. But it’s only part of the story.
The lies have taken hold.
A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll released last week found that Republicans “are now less likely to believe that Jan. 6 participants were ‘mostly violent,’ less likely to believe Trump bears responsibility for the attack, and are slightly less likely to view Joe Biden’s election as legitimate” than they were in a similar survey from December 2021.
And a key part of the reason Trump’s lies have taken hold with Republicans is that most Republican officeholders are standing by as silent accomplices.
These Republican officeholders won’t call Trump out for his lies. Instead, they bend the knee to Trump, truth and democracy be damned.
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Fred’s Weekly Note appears on Thursdays in Wertheimer’s Political Report, a Democracy 21 newsletter. Read this week’s and other recent newsletters here. And, subscribe for free here and receive your copy each week via email.
