All three of this week’s lies surfaced during Tuesday’s presidential debate. But they’ve all been floating around long before the debate; Trump repeating them on the debate stage only magnified and perpetuated them.
In one form or another, all of this week’s lies (including the bonus Oldie but Goodie) are about isolationism. This is consistent with Trump’s only real vision for America — a country that it should become a gigantic whites-only gated community, fenced off to keep the rest of the world out.
Oldie but Goodie:
Criminal Migrants, Now With Even More Racism
Ah, echoes of past:
“[W]e have millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums. And they're coming in and they're taking jobs that are occupied right now by African Americans and Hispanics and also unions.”
— Donald J. Trump, 09.10.2024
From the moment he declared his candidacy, Donald Trump shamelessly, willingly, and proudly made his racism a cornerstone of his candidacy by accusing all Mexicans crossing the border of being criminals:
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
— Donald J. Trump, June 16, 2015
“Some, I assume, are good people.” Implicit in that statement that he’s never met any “good people” who have crossed the border.
It’s not just that this latest iteration of this racist lie accuses all people crossing the border of being criminals and mentally ill. Oh, no. That’s not offensive enough. They’re also taking jobs away from Hispanics and African Americans (he won’t say “Black jobs” anymore because he’s been mocked so mercilessly).
Let’s think that through. They’re criminals but they come here and go to work instead of doing crime. They’re sufficiently mentally ill to be institutionalized but they’re going to responsibly hold down jobs. And they’re going to be taking jobs away but only from African Americans and Hispanics and union workers. What does that say about Trump’s opinion of African Americans and Hispanics and union workers?
Trump’s racism and stupidity are getting worse.
Bronze Medal:
“Tariffs Will Solve All Our Economic Woes”
During the debate on Tuesday, Trump repeated his baseless claim that imposing tariffs on all imports was the panacea for all the economic issues, from taxes to inflation to … [checks notes] … child care. Seriously?
As many have reported, Trump doesn’t have even a fundamental understanding of how tariffs work. He claims that the countries exporting goods into the United States will pay the tariff. Right out of the starting gate, he’s wrong. Tariffs are paid by the importer of goods; if the importer is in America, an American is paying the tariff.
When that importer sells the goods that are imported, is that importer going to just say, “Oh, OK, I’ll just absorb the additional 20% cost by taking it out of my own pocket”? (20% is the number that Trump has floated.) Doubtful. Extremely doubtful. Importers are businesses, not philanthropists.
Those importers are going to raise the cost of the goods and pass that cost on to consumers. That is, in fact, what happened with the tariffs that Trump imposed on China for solar panels. The $242 billion collected in tariffs were paid initially by the importer and ultimately passed on to the purchasers of the solar panels.
So, for example, if the price tag of an item being imported is $3,000, there would be an additional $600 in bottom line cost for the consumer.
Extrapolate that 20% across all goods being imported and that’s a recipe for guaranteed runaway inflation, as Nobel Prize-winning economists have been warning.
That shopping trip to Wal*Mart that you rely on to save money is not going to be so economical anymore.
Silver Medal:
The Old “Post-Birth Abortion” Idiocy
Trump has trotted out this lie (or, really, this set of lies) on the campaign trail for a long time and, in response, he’s received gasps of horror and cheers of approval from his low-information audience. It’s a standard part of his extreme anti-abortion messaging. So he wasn’t prepared when a lie so preposterous wasn’t well received at the debate. In his own words:
[T]he plan is, as you know, the vote is, they have abortion in the ninth month. They even have, and you can look at the governor of West Virginia, the previous governor of West Virginia, not the current governor, who's doing an excellent job, but the governor before. He said the baby will be born and we will decide what to do with the baby. In other words, we'll execute the baby …
[H]er vice presidential pick says abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine. He also says execution after birth, it's execution, no longer abortion, because the baby is born, is okay. And that's not okay with me. Hence the vote.
After Trump’s rambling diatribe (edited above for brevity), Moderator Linsey Davis interjected a single sentence:
“There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it's born.”
This simple statement of truth from the moderator immediately threw the cultist echo chamber into a tailspin, triggering all kinds of wild accusations of a “three against one” debate. They’ve also accused ABC, based on a rumor somebody claims to have seen somewhere on the internet, of providing Kamala Harris with the questions in advance of the debate. (They’re unaccustomed to a candidate who actually prepares for a debate, so they’ve attempted to turn Harris’ skill and preparedness into the latest in the long string of baseless accusations and unhinged conspiracy theories.)
Americans have a wide spectrum of passionately held opinions on the subject of abortion and reproductive health. But tossing fact-free firebombs like Trump’s into the mix makes it impossible to have a reasonable, rational discussion about the subject. Like so many things that Trump does, it seeks to polarize rather than to seek consensus.
Gold Medal:
“They’re Coming for Your Pets!”
This one handily wins this week’s gold medal because of how repulsive it is and because of how quickly it spread. It started on September 9 with J.D. Vance claiming that, in Springfield, OH, Haitian immigrants had been eating people’s pets. Actually, it started before that with a false post on Facebook that had nothing to do with Springfield, OH, or with Haitians. But truth has never been of any particular value to the Trumpsters.
Then, toward the end of the September 10 debate, blindsided and infuriated by Kamala Harris revealing that people were getting bored at his rallies and left in the middle of his rants, Donald Trump desperately wanted to change the subject, so he extracted this lie from some mildewed recess of his consciousness and made it his own:
“In Springfield, they're eating the dogs. The people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating -- they're eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what's happening in our country. And it's a shame.”
He became further infuriated when the debate moderators performed the most gentle and polite fact checking, but Donald — never to be challenged and certainly never to be found wrong on anything — became even more enraged and combative. Consider this exchange:
Moderator David Muir: I just want to clarify here, you bring up Springfield, Ohio. And ABC News did reach out to the city manager there. He told us there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community —
Trump: Well, I've seen people on television —
Muir: Let me just say here this ...
Trump: The people on television say my dog was taken and used for food. So maybe he said that and maybe that's a good thing to say for a city manager.
Muir: I'm not taking this from television. I'm taking it from the city manager.
Trump: But the people on television say their dog was eaten by the people that went there.
Muir: Again, the Springfield city manager says there's no evidence of that.
Trump: We'll find out.
He’s “seen people on television.” Let that sink in.
Of course, that exchange instantly got under his extremely thin skin. By the next day, rather than having his campaign do research trying to find evidence of anyone chowing down on Fido or Mr. Whiskers, he immediately took to his failing social media network and started posting AI-generated artwork of an idealized version of himself rescuing overly cute puppies and kitties.
Never mind that he hates dogs. Never mind that he uses the word “dog” as the lowest form of insult at any opportunity. Never mind that he was the first resident of the White House in 100 years not to have a dog. Now he’s trying to take Sarah McLaughlin’s place on those heart-wrenching ASPCA commercials.
Within what seemed like minutes, places like Fox News and Newsmax were repeating and amplifying the “immigrants are eating your dogs” lie. His minions on social media were spreading the same nonsense as if they had uncovered some hidden truth that their imaginary “deep state” had been trying to keep from them.
The absurdity would be 100% hilarious if there weren’t such hateful, racist motives behind it. While in office in 2018, Trump referred to Haiti as one of the “shithole countries” that he identified. Whenever he says racist hateful things like this, he puts the targets of his ire in physical danger because his cultists will act on these lies with their second-hand rage. In fact, since Trump amplified this conspiracy theory, there have already been bomb threats to schools, hospitals, and other public buildings in Springfield, Ohio.
Aside from the racism and xenophobia, this cascade of lies represents two things. First, Trump’s lizard brain figured out that this is a shiny object to distract from the rest of his abysmal debate performance. Second, and far more important, Trump has absolutely nothing else to run on — no accomplishments, no vision, no policies, and certainly no basic human decency.
Mr. Whiskers. SMH. I want to see Mr. Whiskers, Theo. 🐈 💙