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Eleven years after Donald Trump came down that escalator in Trump Tower, Republican lying has become normalized to a disturbing degree. But even so, there’s something about how his second-term appointees make a mockery of the truth that’s especially galling.
Trump, of course, is an Olympian liar who lies daily, if not hourly. The Washington Post chronicled 30,573 lies during his first term, roughly 21 per day. The quantity of lies matter, but so do their quality. Trump tells whoppers so provably false that defending him compels supporters to degrade themselves.
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We expect right-wing hacks like Benny Johnson to repeat Trump’s most absurd falsehoods. But it was stunning to witness Trump’s Chief of Staff Susie Wiles — a longtime Florida political operative, daughter of legendary sportscaster Pat Summerall, and 2024 Trump campaign manager — echo Trump’s favorite lie.
At a recent public forum, Wiles recalled a post-2020 election dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in which Trump inquired “why he won Florida but maybe struggled in some other states that I think we’re going to find out he actually did win.” (Watch below.)
This stolen election lie is so destructive — it led, of course, to January 6 — that Trump’s detractors and the media feel compelled to distinguish it as “The Big Lie.” Trump knows it’s a lie, too: Between the 2020 election and Joe Biden’s certification as the winner, Trump paid two independent auditing firms to investigate election fraud, yet tellingly never released either firm’s report.
Because his defenders fib, fudge, and finagle to satisfy Trump’s need to believe his own lies, their deceptions are uniquely sinister. When Wiles, the most powerful unelected person in the federal government, perpetuates The Big Lie, it proves that lying on Trump’s behalf is more than an occupational hazard: It’s a loyalty test imposed by the most deceitful president in US history upon everyone around him.
Lies, damned lies, and (impossible) statistics
The most common and pedantic form of political lying is “spin,” the selective framing of a politician’s or party’s talking points. A skilled spinmeister often deploys literal truths in service of a broader deceit.
For example, notice how White House officials and congressional Republicans peddle the fiction that Iran is a nuclear danger to the United States by substituting Iran’s nuclear ambitions for its nuclear capacity. Sure, Iran would like to have nuclear weapons. But intentionally conflating ambition with capacity is classical spin — a bright, shining truth designed to blind voters to a deeper, darker lie.