Trump and Fact-Checking at the May 10, 2023 CNN Town Hall: Who Needs Facts, Anyway?

Donald Trump, White House photo

On May 10, 2023, a crowd of about 400 people, including Republicans and independent voters, but no Democrats, gathered at St. Anselm College, a Benedictine school with a lovely campus. CNN was sponsoring a town hall for former President Donald Trump. CNN’s highly respected journalist Kaitlan Collins moderated the event as Trump spewed one falsehood after another. For example, Collins asked about Trump's call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to change the election results. 

Collins: "You asked him to find you votes."

Trump: "I didn’t ask him to find anything. Let me just say."

Collins: "We’ve heard the audio tape, Mr. President."

And so the town hall continued. [And on that tape, Trump indeed did ask, “So what are we going to do here folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.”]

Throughout the event, the audience cheered and clapped when Trump lied, cheering even more loudly when Trump complained about being fact-checked.

Of Trump’s many lies, maybe his lies about the 2020 election were the most brazen. As PolitiFact points out, Trump and his supporters have long been falsely claiming that he won the 2020 election. In fact, PolitiFact corrected more than eighty election lies by Trump and his supporters before 2020 was even over. There have been false, easily disproven claims that ballot boxes were stuffed, that voting machines changed votes, and so forth. More recently, Dominion Voting Systems recently won an enormous settlement from Fox News, which had repeatedly promulgated lies about the election. Collins was right that it was entirely untrue to think that the election was rigged or stolen. 

Did either the truth or fact-checking affect Trump during the Town Hall? No!

Instead, Trump told the Town Hall audience:

“We did fantastically, we got 12 million more votes than we had, as you know, in 2016. I actually say we did far better in that election, got the most that anybody’s ever gotten as a President of the United States. I think that when you look at that result and when you look at what happened during that election, unless you’re a very stupid person, you see what happens. A lot of the people in this audience and maybe a couple that don’t, but most people understand what happened. That was a rigged election, and it’s a shame that we had to go through it. It’s very bad for our country.”

Collins promptly told Trump that the election was not rigged:

“It was not a rigged election. It was not a stolen election. You and your supporters lost more than 60 court cases on the election. It’s been nearly two and a half years. Can you publicly acknowledge that you did lose the 2020 election?”

Trump turned to the audience and said, “She doesn’t understand.” What did Collins, an extraordinary journalist, not understand? Simple. She didn’t understand that facts were not the issue. Few people in that crowd cared about the facts.

Trump continued:

“Let me just go on. If you look at True the Vote, they found millions of votes on camera, on government cameras where they were stuffing ballot boxes. So with all of that, I think it’s a shame what happened. I think it’s a very sad thing for our country.”

Collins rightly pointed out that this was false. As USA Today had already reported, Trump lost 61 of 62 election lawsuits, winning only one minor victory in Pennsylvania.

As if we didn’t get the point, Trump also said:

“All over the world they looked at it. It was a rigged election. It’s very bad for our country.”

Who were “they?” Trump never said.

After almost an hour, Collins again insisted:

“The election was not rigged Mr. President; you can’t keep saying that all night long.”

However, Trump did keep saying that. The audience cheered and clapped every time he told the lie. Evidence wasn’t the point. Group loyalty was the point.

In general, Trump’s loyal supporters derive their morality from loyalty to the group and admiration for Trump. The partisan audience cheered and clapped to demonstrate group solidarity. Furthermore, let us not think that Trump’s core supporters adopt a false morality because they love Trump. It’s the other way around. They love Trump because he encourages them to reject conventional morality and indulge their most selfish impulses. More precisely, Trump redefines morality as cult-like loyalty: “My Trump, right or wrong.” Mainstream pundits keep talking as if pointing out Trump's lies will somehow make people turn against him. How ridiculous.

So, yes, CNN moderator Kaitlan Collins repeatedly fact-checked Trump for his many lies during the town hall. That was useless. If facts contradict the cult’s consensus, who needs facts? That is, it seems, why Trump turned to the crowd and said, “She doesn’t understand.” That was exactly the point. An experienced, well-prepared journalist, Collins pursued accuracy and truth. Trump, and the crowd, did not. Instead, Trump and the crowd endorsed a group consensus based on group identify, not facts. Collins did her level best, but Trump was right: she did not understand. 

What Collins, trained as a journalist, could not fully understand is that religion, politics, and group loyalty can destroy normal moral thinking in a heartbeat.

So, yes, most people have personal moral values. Nevertheless, group loyalty and group consensus often matter more. That’s what creates cults. That’s what creates the Trump phenomenon. That’s what we saw last night at the town hall.

Realistically, most people who support Trump already know that he lies and lies and lies. It was probably worthwhile to remind them that Trump is deeply dishonest. It was, alas, useless to offer correction to Trump’s supporters. It may have been useful to remind the larger audience that watched this event on the television that there is still such a thing as truth.

The First Trump-Biden Debate: Interruptions for a (Non) Cause

Why Does Donald Trump Curse, Insult People, and Call People Names?

Donald Trump Polarized the Nation at CPAC, and That Was His Point

So, yes, CNN moderator Kaitlan Collins fact-checked Trump for his many lies throughout the town hall. That was noble but, perhaps, useless. If facts contradict the cult’s consensus, who needs facts? An experienced, well-prepared journalist, Collins pursued accuracy and truth. Trump, and the crowd, did not. Collins did her level best, but Trump may have been right: maybe she did not understand.

What Collins, trained as a journalist, could not understand is that religion, politics, and group loyalty can destroy normal moral thinking in a heartbeat. False loyalties can wipe out all concept of truth and falsehood, good and bad, right and wrong, to the point that people no longer care what the truth might be. 

So, yes, people have personal moral values. Unfortunately, group loyalty and group consensus often matter more. That’s what creates cults. That’s what creates the Trump phenomenon. That’s what we saw last night at the town hall.

In a larger sense, then, what can we do? Probably nothing! Many folks value the clarity that cult-like settings offer them. Joining a movement makes them feel strong. Their charismatic leader inspires them and comforts them. The only solution is to outvote them, and that won’t be easy.

“Truth Buried by Lies:” The Serious Side of Joe Biden’s “Dark Brandon” Speech

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Once again, thanks to the good people at rev.com for preparing a complete transcript of the town hall.

Was Biden Divisive When He Defended Constitutional Government?

Joe Biden, official photo

The people whom “the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars,” while, in contrast, the people “they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth,” wrote H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan.

This statement was made by journalists long ago, but it has never been more obvious than it is today. Lies are being sold as truth while the actual truth is buried beneath the lies.

On November 2, 2022, President Joe Biden spoke about the future of American democracy. He directly targeted Republican falsehoods and conspiracy theories, the January 6 riots at the United States Capitol, and ongoing efforts to intimidate election officials. This totally normal speech, which could equally have been given at an American Legion speech contest, instantly became controversial. The speech is all about stories. Biden presented a narrative of Republican conspiracy theories. Republicans, in turn gave their own counter-narrative. 

Biden’s rhetorical approach was extraordinarily clever. In particular, he used stories to make his point. In fact, he wove three different stories from three different events into a single compelling narrative. Instead of proving his points with the usual boring facts and statistics, Biden told stories. Stories are good. Stories work. Speakers need to tell more stories. Yet, for every story, there can arise a counter-story.

Story #1: The Pelosi Attack

Biden's speech began with a story about the horrible attack on Paul Pelosi, when a right-wing conspiracy theorist broke into the Pelosi family home and smashed his skull with a hammer. Biden told a convincing story that had the advantage of being true. His opponents establish a counter narrative. The substance of the Republican counter-narrative is that Biden is divisive by calling out his opponents’ lies. Unfortunately, Mencken and Nathan once again turn out to be right—the people whom “…the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars….”

The attacker presumably had mental health issues. Republicans responded, for the most part, not with sympathy, but with a series of crazed conspiracy theories.

So, what about those counter-narratives? Unfortunately, days before Biden gave his excellent speech, prominent Republicans had already established a counter-narrative: a narrative that the Pelosi attack was staged as an attempt to make Republican conspiracy theorists look bad.

The Paul Pelosi Attack: Top Republican Conspiracy Theorists Shocked by a Violent Republican Conspiracy Theorist

Is There Such a Thing as a Stupid Question? The Attack against Paul Pelosi Led Conspiracy Theorists to Make Bogus Arguments 


Biden gave a simple narration of the attack:

“Just a few days ago, a little before 2:30 a.m. in the morning, a man smashed the back windows and broke into the home of the speaker of the House of Representatives, the third-highest-ranking official in America. He carried in his backpack zip ties, duct tape, rope and a hammer.

“As he told the police, he had come looking for Nancy Pelosi to take her hostage, to interrogate her, to threaten to break her kneecaps. But she wasn’t there. Her husband, my friend Paul Pelosi, was home alone. The assailant tried to take Paul hostage. He woke him up, and he wanted to tie him up. The assailant ended up using a hammer to smash Paul’s skull. Thankfully, by the grace of God, Paul survived.”

So, Biden told his own a story that had the advantage of being supported by evidence and reality, but his story cannot easily overcome the horrifying, utterly false conspiracy theories.

Story #2: The Capitol Riots

Next, however, and this was his speech's heart, Biden directly tied the attack against Paul Pelosi to the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol.

“All this happened after the assault, and it just — it’s hard to even say. It’s hard to even say. After the assailant entered the home asking: “Where’s Nancy? Where’s Nancy?” Those are the very same words used by the mob when they stormed the United States Capitol on January the 6th, when they broke windows, kicked in the doors, brutally attacked law enforcement, roamed the corridors hunting for officials and erected gallows to hang the former vice president, Mike Pence.

“It was an enraged mob that had been whipped up into a frenzy by a president repeating over and over again the big lie, that the election of 2020 had been stolen. It’s a lie that has fueled the dangerous rise in political violence and voter intimidation over the past two years.”

That comment led Biden to his third story, when he narrated threats against honest election officials:

Story #3: Threats against Election Officials

Biden's last story told of election officials who were threatened by people who didn't want them to to their jobs:   

“Election workers, like Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, were harassed and threatened just because they had the courage to do their job and stand up for the truth, to stand up for our democracy. This institution, this intimidation, this violence against Democrats, Republicans and nonpartisan officials just doing their jobs, are the consequence of lies told for power and profit, lies of conspiracy and malice, lies repeated over and over to generate a cycle of anger, hate, vitriol and even violence.”

The argument through all three stories was that a culture of hateful lies caused all three evil events. 

The Narrative Style  

Biden 's narratives have the virtue of being true. Sometimes, alas, that is not enough. 

The Republican conspiracy theorists continue to deflect attention from the connection between those two horrible events. This led Republican Senator Mike Braun to write that, “President Joe Biden took to the podium to give one of the most divisive and ugliest speeches I've seen given by a sitting president.” did he disagree with any of Biden’s stories? No, in fact, he ignored them, he instead complained about “fuel prices, crime, and our economy: changing the subject, resetting the agenda. Braun complained that, instead of talking about the economy or crime, “Biden shouted angrily at half the country from Washington’s Union Station.” There, we see two different agendas, two perspectives.

In a twisted sense, Braun had a point. Yes, Biden spoke out strongly against liars, and that was divisive.

Liberty Bell, Photo by William Harpine

Indeed, fully 61% of Republican voters falsely believe that Joe Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 presidential election. Their belief is based entirely on lies and conspiracy theories. Nevertheless, Braun was right, in a sick sense. Biden was, indeed, divisive. He made a division between truth and falsehood. He made a division between good and evil. He gave the Republican Party a chance to rejoin the values of the American system of government. So far, I see every sign that they intend to decline. Biden's speech challenged the typical Republican voter's most cherished belief: that Trump won the election, making Biden an impostor.

From that viewpoint, Biden's stories were genuinely divisive: his stories laid out the truth, and he divided himself against people who tell lies (not that Biden always tells the truth, but...). Unfortunately, tens of millions of Americans continue to live in a sea of lies. These lies translate into votes. 

Here's another way to look at it. With his speech, which reminded Americans about the rule of law and the dangers of political violence, Biden gave MAGA voters and their leaders a chance to rejoin America. It appears that they have refused.

Stories are good and Biden gave a wonderful speech, but not everyone tells the same story.

Biden on the Soul of America: Was He Unifying or Divisive? Or Both?

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Technical note: For an academic look at narrative argument, see the work of the late Walter Fisher. 

In his book The Rhetoric of Motives, the great rhetorical theorist Kenneth Burke wrote eloquently that all unity and identification implies a division. 

Cancel Culture Gone Amok: Governor Brian Kemp Was Shouted Down by His Own People

Gov. Brian Kemp, Official Photo

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, a conservative Republican, was almost booed off the stage when he spoke yesterday at the Georgia Republican Party’s state convention, held at a resort on one of the state’s beautiful coastal islands.

He was booed by his own people. This signifies a radical turn toward increasing political polarization. Polarization means that you have fewer supporters, but your supporters are more fanatical. Absolute loyalty to Trump is becoming a Republican Party requirement. 

I have written earlier about terrible instances in which conservative rabble-rousers have chased liberal speakers off the stage, or liberals have shouted conservative speakers off the stage. What happened yesterday was different. Brian Kemp is a radical conservative whose policy positions should satisfy anyone who opposes abortion, government-financed health care, or basic pandemic precautions. Indeed, he got his biggest cheers when he reminded the audience that Georgia was the first state to reopen during the pandemic.

Earlier Post: Liberals Shouted Down Milo Yiannopoulos

Earlier Post: Milo Yiannopoulos Helped to Shout Down a Liberal Speaker

Kemp, however, made one enormous political mistake. He honestly certified the obviously accurate election results that gave Georgia’s electoral votes to Joe Biden. We all know that former President Donald Trump and his supporters have constantly and wrongly accused Georgia of mis-counting the votes. Trump’s false claim that he won the election has become the test for loyal Republicans across the country. 

During his speech, Kemp reminded his noisy audience about Georgia’s restrictive abortion laws. “We passed heartbeat legislation,” he explained. But a heckler immediately shouted, “Boo! What about the voting machines?” He reminded the crowd that he opposed critical race theory and vaccine passports. That kind of ignorance should have pleased them. Apparently it didn’t.

Kemp’s failure – his inability even to be heard at his own convention – tells us several things about Georgia’s Republican leadership:

First, it’s not all about the issues. Kemp reminded the crowd that he was rabidly conservative on every possible issue. So what? It seems that, to many in the Georgia Republican Party’s leadership today, it is all about Trump – and nothing else. If you are not 100% pro-Trump, nothing else matters.

Second, the Republican Party is becoming a house divided, a party polarized within itself. It’s not just that Republicans are polarized against Democrats. Moderate Republicans are polarized from conservative Republicans. Republicans like Kemp, who are conservative but even marginally honest, are polarized from Trump Republicans. For example, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who is running for re-election, wasn't even invited to the convention. Instead, appallingly, the convention censured him for certifying the 2020 election. 

The people who attended the Republican state convention were, pretty much by definition, the most dedicated party loyalists. They were not necessarily typical of all Republican voters. They were, however, the leadership. Photographs and video showed that the crowd was almost all-white and coronavirus masks were nowhere to be seen. And, although the audience included many Kemp supporters, they could not control the pro-Trump fanatics.

Earlier Post: Trump and the Maskless Crowd  

It didn't help that Trump has been roundly condemning Kemp every chance he gets. Some conventioneers cheered Kemp even as others booed him. Will Kemp's political career survive the onslaught? Time will tell. 

Polarization is a standard tactic of radical rhetoric. The idea is that you will have fewer supporters, but your supporters will be more dedicated. As the Republican Party systematically expels all but its most radical members, it also shrinks its voting base. Thus, it might lose any honest election. The booing crowd’s entire point was that they didn’t want an honest election. They seemed to feel that it was the governor’s job to certify a Trump victory regardless of the actual votes. Kemp explained to the crowd that the law and the Constitution required him to certify the votes. That misses the point. The conventioneers who booed Kemp showed no concern about either the law or the Constitution.

A polarized minority of the electorate cannot persuade a majority of the voters. However, many in the crowd rejected Kemp because their main goal, at this point, was to prevent honest election counting. And that, dear readers, is how a polarized minority can win elections.

No one can dispute Kemp’s conservative credentials. His conservative credentials made no difference. The anti-Kemp crowd at Jekyll Island wasn’t thinking about issues. They were thinking about power.


Earlier Post: Trump's Polarizing Rally in Kentucky: It's All About Getting People to Vote 


Technical note: the best source for people who want to understand radical rhetoric is still The Rhetoric of Agitation and Control by Bowers, Ochs, and Schulz. 

Chapter 4 of my book about the 1896 presidential campaign shows how the Democratic candidate's radical rhetoric helped him win the nomination but doomed him in the general election. Could the same happen to Republicans in upcoming elections? I would not be surprised. 

Liz Cheney's Courageous Speech Asking Republicans to Reject Trump's False Election Claims

Liz Cheney, US Congress

Never take freedom for granted.

In a dramatic speech, Wyoming congressional representative Liz Cheney told Congress yesterday that the Republican Party needed to reject former President Donald Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him by voter fraud.

Today, the Republican caucus removed her from her leadership role by voice vote: literally shouting down her insistence that the Republican Party should stand for truth. Good public speaking is not just a matter of skill; no, good public speaking requires integrity.

Acts of political courage like Cheney's are remarkably few and far between. Young Senator John Kennedy’s 1956 best-selling book Profiles in Courage summarizes courageous acts of eight United States senators who risked their political careers by taking unpopular political positions. It’s often noted that Kennedy’s book is short because politicians rarely exhibit courage. Most politicians are simple, amoral creatures who never think past next week's opinion polls. Most are willing to take any position, no matter how evil, that they think will help them get elected. This makes Cheney’s speech, which insisted that patriotism matters more than politics, all the more remarkable.

In fact, Cheney stated that theme in her very first sentence: “Tonight I rise to discuss freedom and our constitutional duty to protect it. Mr. Speaker, I have been privileged to see firsthand how powerful and how fragile freedom is.”

Indeed, Americans so often take freedom and greatness for granted. This sometimes makes us think that anything our nation does is automatically great. However, Cheney told Congress – and, more importantly, the American people – that American freedom is both fragile and endangered. She then warned that the nation’s freedom and greatness depend on responding to threats:

“God has blessed America, Mr. Speaker, but our freedom only survives if we protect it, if we honor our oath, taken before God in this chamber, to support and defend the Constitution, if we recognize threats to freedom when they arise.”

It required great intrepidity for Cheney to then explain that the greatest threat to American freedom came from the leader of her own political party. Former President Trump has repeatedly, and falsely, stated that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Conservative media, including commentators on Fox News, Newsmax, and so forth, have repeated this thoroughly-discredited claim. Since our constitutional republic depends entirely on the people’s faith in the system, Cheney warned that Trump’s behavior poses a unique and terrible danger:

“Today we face a threat America has never seen before. A former president, who provoked a violent attack on this Capitol in an effort to steal the election, has resumed his aggressive effort to convince Americans that the election was stolen from him. He risks inciting further violence.

“Millions of Americans have been misled by the former President. They have heard only his words, but not the truth, as he continues to undermine our democratic process, sowing seeds of doubt about whether democracy really works at all."

There is much wisdom in her simple phrase, “They have heard only his words, but not the truth.” We’ll return to that in a minute.

Cheney noted, of course, that the courts and the Department of Justice had universally rejected Trump’s false claims. She then called her party to its constitutional duty: “This is not about policy. This is not about partisanship. This is about our duty as Americans.”

She concluded her speech by once again calling on people to rise above party to defend the country:

“Ultimately, Mr. Speaker, this is at the heart of what our oath requires—that we love our country more [than life]. That we love her so much we will stand above politics to defend her. That we will do everything in our power to protect our constitution and our freedom -- paid for by the blood of so many. . . . That is our duty.”

As she gave this speech, Cheney – who is a most astute politician – knew perfectly well that the Republican caucus would soon remove her from her leadership role and that she would become a pariah in her own party.

People can speculate as to Cheney’s political future. If the Trump cult – no other word describes it – collapses, this does not mean that his supporters will ever forgive her. Germany rejected the Nazi Party after World War II, but never fully forgave Oskar Schindler for rescuing Jews from the Holocaust. He got death threats for years. I think that most Republicans know that Cheney is right, but that doesn’t mean they will welcome her again. I’ve heard speculation that Cheney may want to establish her own party or run for president. Neither seems likely.

Read: Senator Jeff Flake Spoke against Trump's Falsehoods

Read: Reagan versus Trump, Unifier versus Divider

Nevertheless, Liz Cheney gave a speech for the ages. Her speech will land in history books. Many speech students will study this speech, write papers about it, and let it inspire them. Other people, although they may stay quiet, will seethe in anger every time they think about what Cheney said yesterday.

In part, Republicans, desperate to remain in power, have shown themselves eager to discard every principle that they ever claimed to believe. Many Republicans, I suspect, quietly know that Trump has shamed them. Instead, however, of turning aside from their dark path, they will simply resent Cheney for being better than they are.

When she made her principled stand, Liz Cheney said that country mattered more than party. Her party, the once-great party of Lincoln, Grant, McKinley, and Eisenhower, rejected her. Heaven help us.



P.S.: Let’s return to Cheney’s statement that, “They have heard only his words, but not the truth.” For many Republican voters, this is probably true. We are long past the point when most people informed themselves by reading newspapers or listening to newscasters like David Brinkley or Walter Cronkite, who delivered carefully-verified reports with voices like heavenly thunder. Today, most conservatives get their news from Fox News, Newsmax, talk radio, or even less reputable sources. On the rare occasions that Fox' Chris Wallace tries to speak truthfully, viewers can tune him out, knowing that an irresponsible pundit will soon come on the air. I suspect that many Republicans, most of whom believe President Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen, have literally never heard the conclusive evidence that this is false. That is because they only listen to news media that tell them what they want to hear. To understand this bizarre phenomenon, look at communication professors Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Joseph N. Capella’s remarkable book, Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment.

Post updated May 13, 2021 to incorporate corrections based on the verbatim transcript published by rev.com. (She said Mr. Speaker, not Madam Speaker,  in the live speech, due to a Speaker Pro Tem presiding,)