Political lying: it’s a protected form of dishonesty that’s dangerous for democracy

HALIFAX–With so many possibilities, from bots to the Tucker Carlsons of the world, it’s hard to say what might eventually kill democracy. But the recent town hall in New Hampshire featuring U.S. presidential hopeful Donald Trump gives a broad hint: hair-on-fire, serial lying without bounds or shame. First of all, it was not a town hall at all. It was a Trump-led revival meeting filled with Kool Aid-guzzling devotees who laughed at his off-colour jokes, snickered at his abuse of CNN moderator Kaitlan Collins, and applauded his sexist slander of E. Jean Carroll as a “whack-job.” With this audience, as with his diehard base, misogyny continues to work. Just the day before the “town hall,” Carroll won a $5-million award in her civil lawsuit against Trump for sexual assault. Not content with slagging Carroll, Trump traduced the presiding judge in the case, and slammed the jury which unanimously held him liable for the assault on Carroll, as well as for defaming her. A man who was the president of the United States for one calamitous term, in which he was twice impeached, publicly and unabashedly put himself above the rule of law. Never mind that he had once sworn to uphold the law and the U.S. Constitution, which, by the way, he now wants to abolish. Like a mob boss sticking to his story under interrogation, Trump repeated old fictions to the delight of his cackling cult followers. The lies poured out of him like bullets from an AR-15: rapid-fire and relentless. The 2020 election was stolen; the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol was a gathering of good people and patriotic Americans; the wall on the southern border was completed while he was in office; he could end the war in Ukraine in one day; it would be okay if the U.S. defaulted on its debt; Mike Pence had the legal authority not to ratify the results of the 2020 election. Blah, blah, blah. Despite being swarmed by Trump’s lies and the crowd’s enabling enthusiasm for this prince of Pinocchios, Collins stood her ground like the solid, journalistic soldier that she is. Trump alternately ignored, talked over, and mocked the CNN moderator, but she doggedly fact-checked his lies, trying valiantly to hold him to the facts. But her solo battle to keep the conversation factual and rational could not slow the mojo of Trump’s mendacity. The reviews of this clown hall the morning after laid bare just how effective hyperbolic, public lying has become in politics. Commentators did not blast the man who lied his brains out for over an hour. They blasted CNN for agreeing to a format in which their host became a sacrificial lamb to partisan politics, and Trump was given a megaphone to repeat falsehoods—new and old—to a mainstream, national audience. The critics have it ass-backwards. CNN may not have come up with the best format or venue for this event. They may have put Collins in a lonely and perilous position. But the broadcast did expose America’s most dangerous politician for the bloviating sociopath that he is. The problem is that doesn’t seem to matter anymore. The reason is that political lying has become a protected form of dishonesty, something that is emphatically confused with free speech. In the United States, you can’t lie to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, you can’t lie to a court, and you can’t lie to the Internal Revenue Service. If you do, the consequences are immediate and serious. But if you lie to a whole country in pursuit of winning the right to govern, if you knowingly fabricate the facts to further your personal agenda, that kind of lie goes unpunished. In fact, this is how upside-down politics and political speech have become. When Trump was criminally indicted in the Stormy Daniels hush-money affair, some observers said that it would actually help his third presidential run. As if that weren’t enough, the same commentators concluded that being found liable by a jury for sexual assault would also assist in his quest for the GOP’s presidential nomination for 2024. Polling seems to back up those bizarre assertions. In other words, political lying is okay, mostly because it often works. It used to be that the public could get some measure of confidence in the system because no one could imagine bad people ending up with the top job. Recent history suggests otherwise. Trump may become president again, despite his legal problems, which include one current criminal indictment and several possible new ones in the offing. Benjamin Netanyahu has been indicted on corruption charges, but that didn’t stop him from becoming Israel’s prime minister again. Before Netanyahu, prime minister Ehud Olmert went to prison for corruption. Nicolas Sarkozy ran France for more than 1,800 days, and was later sentenced to jail time for corruption, a case still under appeal. Before Sarkozy, president Jacques Chirac got a jail term for influence peddling. Current Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva went to prison in 2018 for corruption. The point? Public service and political power are no guarantees of honesty. Nor is it particularly comforting when it is argued that the place to stop a political liar is at the ballot box. Ideally, that is the way it should be. Here’s the catch. The integrity of a vote is only as good as the information relied on to cast it. If a voter is misinformed, so too is his or her vote. And these days, between lying politicians and the social media echo chambers that often amplify their misinformation and disinformation, it is very difficult to know what is true and what is false. At the recent gathering of the federal Liberal Party in Ottawa, one of the delegates hit the nail on the head with a resolution, perhaps the most important of the 24 that were adopted by the convention. Catherine Evans, a Liberal from British Columbia, sponsored a measure that would hold online information services to account for what they publish, including lies, unsourced conspiracy theories, or blatant attempts to skew the facts. She said that dealing with these distortions of reality “is essential for our democracy, and it must be addressed.” She is right. Despite all the pitfalls of dealing with so delicate a matter, this is a task that can’t be shirked. Otherwise, the unfettered abuse of free speech, including the right to lie which is ceded to politicians, will be the death knell of free speech. Michael Harris is an award-winning author and journalist. The Hill Times

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Political lying: it’s a protected form of dishonesty that’s dangerous for democracy

The integrity of a vote is only as good as the information relied on to cast it. If a voter is misinformed, so too is his or her vote.

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