The Witness Chronicles, June 20, 2024

Lies and the Presidential debate

Photo by Bruna Araujo on Unsplash

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The Art of the Lie Has Become Acceptable, For Now

Trump’s most shameful legacy

It used to be called ‘spin’, putting an angle on a damaging story to lessen its impact. But these days we don’t bother with euphemisms, we just straight out lie. At least that appears to be the primary strategy of the right and it’s based on the success of their guy, Don Trump.

Before I go any further with this, I need to be clear: this is not a minor change in American politics, it’s the herald of the destruction of democracy. Now that I’ve gone full alarmist, let’s just look at a recent example, next week’s debate between President Biden and DJT.

Outright lying is the norm for Trump and has been for his entire life. His bestselling book should not have been titled The Art Of The Deal; the art of the lie would have been far more accurate, because reality is he is terrible at deals but great at making things up.

Trump’s campaign managers, those who attempt to rein him in, are very aware that their guy is pretty deranged these days. He has gone far beyond lying and far into some kind of demented view of reality. And we will see this in next week’s debate, if it even takes place, the crapshoot bet of the election so far.

His campaign is now starting their spin, i.e. lying, by putting out a claim that he will let Biden win to keep the Dems from picking someone else as their candidate. The absurdity of this is breathtaking, but it is designed to lower expectations and give the Fox people a baseline story to explain away any Trumpian crazy talk.

They know there will be plenty because there are two realities at work here. The first is that Trump has no self-control, especially when goaded. The second is that very few voters have actually seen Trump going off the rails for an extended time period on national television. We get the clips and snippets, stuff about sharks, electric boats, and other random glimpses into what passes for his brain.

The Biden debate set up is a masterful example of how to give us a full view of Trump’s bizarre style. There will be no studio audience. The mic will be muted while the other debater speaks. The moderators are experienced mainstream journalists who are unlikely to tolerate breaking the guidelines.

In other words, the debate is set up to be an actual debate, not a forum for grandstanding and silly stunts. And there will be real time fact checking. The art of the lie is not going to fly here. To be honest, I really can’t wait to see this thing and I’m not alone.

A lot of minds are likely to be changed. And the events of the past two months, primarily Trump’s trial and felony convictions on 34 counts of elect fraud, are not laying the groundwork for a Trump win.

Now, the lowering of expectations we saw yesterday by Trump was put out there because his claims of Biden being amped up by some kind of cocktail of drugs are simply not flying. There is an inherent danger that Biden simply says ‘I’ll take a cognitive test if you will’ and we know Trump will not.

Yes, I’m probably being my usual optimistic self here. But when the Trump people agreed to the debate and Biden’s terms, they backed themselves into a corner. If Trump debates and goes haywire, they lose. And if he backs out now, they lose.

There is a context here that explains the incessant lying. And the incomprehensible speeches Trump gives almost daily. The man is unraveling. He has spent his entire life claiming to be the king of all winners and he has been losing non-stop since 2016.

The 2020 re-election campaign, the 2022 midterms where his endorsees uniformly lost, the defamation and sexual assaults civil cases that resulted in astronomical fines that could total nearly half a billion dollars, and those 34 criminal counts.

That’s a shopping list of failures unprecedented in modern history. And nothing the Republican Party can do or say can undo that reality. The art of the lie is catching up to all of them. We can only hope that enough voters realize the scam they are witnessing this year.

The obviousness of all this is unlikely to sink in with Trump. He simply cannot admit any loss on anything, the primary symptom of his all encompassing narcissism. But in the glaring lights of a nationally televised debate it should be obvious that he brings nothing concrete to the table for the country.

So he will fall back on his default strategy and lie about everything. But that is not going to work when he and his handlers have no control over the circumstances.

The great dealmaker got taken big time by the Biden campaign. If this doesn’t peel off those voters sitting on the sidelines, I’m not sure what will.

This is what they used to call ‘must see TV’.

~ I write The Grasshopper, an occasional letter on the creative life and it’s sister, mostly daily publication The Witness Chronicles, a place for my articles on politics and climate. They share a free and paid subscription. I also write The Remarkable, a recovery letter, about my addiction and reentry experience. I don’t paywall any content in these, however this is how I live and I strongly believe all writers and creatives should get paid, if we provide value. Your support with a paid subscription helps make that happen.

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