It is election time and lies are spread like peanut butter…..but of all the lies which is the most prolific? Lies are an essential part of the modern campaign strategy, well political lies have always been there so saying ‘modern’ is misleading.
My post is along the lines of one from my friend John….
Scandal of the Century: Why Republicans Can’t Tell the Truth
Which of our two parties spread the most crap?
The creator of a top political fact-checking website has finally revealed which party lies more: Democrats or Republicans.
Bill Adair, who started the Pulitzer Prize-winning website PolitiFact, admitted that – despite his claims over the years – he was, in fact, keeping tabs and found the GOP to be the most liberal with the truth.
In 2012, Adair was asked which party lies more by a caller on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal and claimed he “didn’t keep score.”
The former Washington Bureau Chief for the Tampa Bay Times has since left the nonprofit fact-checking company and so said he can now “talk freely” about who is more deceitful.
Appearing on Washington Journal 12 years later, as part of a media blitz to promote his new book Beyond the Big Lie, the fact checker admitted he “was lying” in 2012 to show his company was “truly nonpartisan.”
By PolitiFact’s tally, the Republican party was actually lying “far more” than the Democrats – and since then, Adair, has found the disparity between the parties has only grown.
Between 2016 to 2021, Republicans lied 55 percent of the time, compared to Democrats 31 percent of the time, according to Adair’s company’s investigations of politicians’ statements.
“I think we need to talk about it because the fact that there are so many lies coming from the Republicans, it’s really affecting our discourse,” he said
According to this report the GOP tells the most lies….who did not see that coming?
Now that we have established that….let us ask Why does Trump lie so often?
When it comes to lying in politics, Donald Trump is in a class of his own. According to the Washington Post, he made 30,573 false or misleading claims in his four years as president, increasing year-on-year from six per day in his first year to 39 per day in his fourth.
Although other presidents have lied to the public, none have lied like this. Some of Trump’s lies are trivial, and many are self-aggrandising (“Nobody builds better walls than me”). Then there are his more egregious lies, like the one about the 2020 presidential election being “stolen” – demonstrably and dangerously contrary to the facts, with serious consequences for the nation and public trust.
And these lies can cut through. Research by political scientists Kevin Arceneaux and Roy Truex found that this “big lie” about the stolen election was very “sticky”. Around 50% of Republican voters believed it, regardless of any emerging contrary evidence. The researchers also found that belief in this lie boosted Republican supporters’ self-esteem – as they weren’t “losers” after all.
https://theconversation.com/why-does-donald-trump-tell-such-blatant-lies-241192
I have an easier answer….because he can and get away with it.
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”