by David Crisp
Democrats were in full panic about Joe Biden’s age last week while Republicans remained indifferent to Donald Trump’s lies.
How many lies? Tens of thousands in the course of his political career, including a couple of dozen in his recent debate with Biden and at least 22 in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention.
To give a minor but typical example, Trump said at a recent rally that the price of bacon has quadrupled in the Biden administration.
“We don’t eat bacon anymore,” he said.
I do, in fact, eat more bacon than is good for me, especially if you count that luscious side pork at the Muzzle Loader. As Kevin Drum documents, bacon production has risen 13 percent since Trump left office and its price has risen 14 percent, less than wages have increased during that period.
Drum theorizes, “His brain is so badly beyond repair that I suspect he literally can’t help himself, and he’s surrounded by sycophants who will never confront him with the truth.”
By “sycophants” he could mean just about the entire Republican Party. While many Republicans who served under Trump during his presidency have refused to endorse him, the rest of the party’s leadership remains supportive or eerily silent.
The lying is contagious. Jason Thielman, a native Montanan who is executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, wrote in the Billings Gazette that crime is “skyrocketing in communities large and small.”
According to FBI statistics, crime is down across the country in nearly every category. We still have half a year to go, but one analyst estimates that 2024 may show the largest single-year decline in crime in U.S. history.
Will U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Montana and chairman of the NRSC, point out Thielman’s error? Sure he will, and I will win the Nobel Prize.
Moreover, contrary to Trump’s claims, statistics consistently show that illegal migrants are less likely to commit crimes than American citizens. Trump’s acceptance speech claim that illegal migrants are taking 107 percent of new American jobs may seem improbable, but if athletes can give 110 percent, I suppose migrants can take 107 percent of our jobs.
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum has been saying on cable news that Biden is a dictator. Note to Burgum: If you can call the leader of your country a dictator on national TV without fear of reprisal against you or the network, you are not living in a dictatorship.
Troy Downing, running for the U.S. House seat in this district, argues confusingly that America is great, but we need to re-elect Trump to make America great again. Which raises the perennial question: When did America stop being great? How did we become what Trump now calls a “Third World nation” and a “joke” sliding into a “cesspool of ruin”?
Many of Trump’s lies are old favorites, recycled in speech after speech. For instance, he says his election would again earn us the world’s respect. But a Pew Research Center study in June found that people in 31 of 34 countries surveyed have greater confidence in Biden than in Trump to do the right thing in world affairs.
Some lies really do matter. Trump claims he will build up the military, reduce taxes, end inflation, deport millions of people, keep Social Security and Medicare intact and reduce debt all at the same time. How? Only by the same thing that spared him from an assassin’s bullet: divine intervention.
None of Trump’s lies matter as much as his contention that he won the 2020 election and that those who assaulted the Capitol are “unfairly imprisoned” hostages. His party already is setting the stage to challenge 2024 election results, and his vice-presidential candidate, J.D. Vance, has indicated he will go along.
Before Trump took office, he called President Barack Obama a “disaster,” a “catastrophe,” and “the most ignorant president in our history.” But in Trump’s inauguration speech in 2017, he said, “Every four years, we gather on these steps to carry out the orderly and peaceful transfer of power, and we are grateful to President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama for their gracious aid throughout this transition.”
Yes, I remember those days, when defeated presidential candidates gracefully conceded even when they had legitimate gripes about election results. Trump ended that tradition. Maybe that was when America stopped being great.
