Do Republican National Convention Speakers Care About Fact Checkers?

The Guardian, a British newspaper, headlined on this morning’s website that “Republican Convention Delivers Whirlwind of Lies Great and Small.” Okay, let’s acknowledge that all politicians get sneaky with the truth. Let us not, however, pretend that what happened the last few days was normal. Let us not pretend that it was ethical public speaking. 

For example, The Guardian points out: 

Vice-President Mike Pence falsely gave President Donald from credit for a complete travel ban against China to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. In fact, as The Guardian points out, tens of thousands of people took advantage of exceptions to the travel ban to reach the United States from China. 

Kayla McEnany said that “I can tell you that this president stands by Americans with pre-existing conditions,” at the same time that his administration was suing in federal court to abolish such protections. 

Madison Cawthorn, a Republican candidate for the United States Congress, said that “James Madison was just 25 years old when he signed the Declaration of Independence.” But any high school student should be able to tell you that James Madison did not sign the Declaration of Independence. 

Cawthorn later said that his line was “add-libbed.” That may be just the problem. When important people are speaking in a national forum, should they not pay attention to the facts? That one especially irks me, since Republicans routinely claim that they are protecting our Founders’ legacy. Cawthorn, at least, knew that there was such a thing as a Declaration of Independence. I guess I should be grateful for that. 

Lara Trump, the President’s daughter-in-law, misquoted Abraham Lincoln: “Abraham Lincoln once famously said: 'America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.’” Lincoln, however, never said that, as The Independent pointed out. 

PolitiFact had a field day fact-checking theRepublican convention, finding such tarnished gems as these:

Eric Trump, the president’s son and Lara’s husband, repeated his father’s false claim that “Biden has pledged to defund the police and take away your cherished Second Amendment.” That was especially inexcusable, since only a few weeks earlier, Fox News’ Chris Wallace humiliated Donald Trump for falsely accusing Biden of wanting to defund police.  

Pence pulled not, exactly a falsehood, but certainly a sneaky deception, when he called out the memory of a recently murdered officer who died during a Black Lives Matters protest: 

“Dave Patrick Underwood was an officer of the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Protective Service, who was shot and killed during the riots in Oakland, California.”

That was particularly slippery because Republican politicians and the right-wing media have been pounding on a law and order theme, and Pence’s statement falsely implied that Black Lives Matters protesters had killed officer Underwood. In fact, however, as Vox points out, a right-wing protester was arrested for the murder. Now, since Pence surely knew that, why didn’t he point it out? For that simple bit of information changes his point completely.  

The Democrats are far from perfect. Nevertheless, although PolitiFact found that the Democrats made some statements at their convention that were a bit out of context, they didn’t find the same long line of falsehoods as in the Republicans’ convention. They did find that, although Postal Service reforms caused some harms, the Democrats overstated them.

This brings up two questions: (1) Why do politicians lie so much, and (2) why did the Republicans this week utter such a stream of outrageous falsehoods, many of which have been repeatedly discredited? 

I don’t really know, but here are some questions that might lead to answers: 

First, is it possible that Republican core voters simply don’t care about truth? That would be harsh, but I’m still waiting to hear other Republicans or the conservative media condemn the falsehoods. 

Second, could the Republicans be aiming at what they consider to be a “larger truth?” Maybe they think that the Democrats’ social and economic reforms threaten the United States’ social order. What they think is a larger truth may matter more to them than picking over facts and details. 

Third, could it just be carelessness? Cawthorn admitted that he ad-libbed his false statement about James Madison. Still, if the Democrats can be more careful about their facts, the Republicans can match them. No one stops them. 

Or, maybe, fourth, anyone who follows the conservative media, such as Fox News, Breitbart, The Gateway Pundit, or WorldNetDaily, has probably heard most of these false statements, not just once, but many times. If people have sealed themselves inside what Kathleen Hall Jamieson calls the “conservative media bubble,” they may not even be aware of what the truth is. They may think that their truth is the real truth. American politics may be living in two parallel universes, one of which is largely fictional. Tens of millions of Americans belong to each. Can we bridge the gap? 

How can Democrats counter this? Obviously, they must challenge the falsehoods at every turn. Equally, however, if they want to claim the high moral ground, they must get their facts exactly right. Yes, the Democrats at their convention were far more accurate than the Republicans were at their own. But the Democrats were not perfect. The right number of lies to tell is zero.

What do you think? Do you have answers to these questions? Feel free to post a comment below, email me, or post a note on my Twitter link above. 

Kimberly Guilfoyle, an Old-Time Political Speaker at the 2020 Republican National Convention: Bombastic, Irrational, and Maybe, Effective