I’d like to think that the new year will herald in a new era of truth.
Sad to say though, it won’t. Things are going in the other direction. The long-lived riddle that asks, “How do you know when politicians are lying” and answers, “Their lips are moving,” isn’t a joke anymore.
Even sadder, a huge chunk of Americans don’t seem to care. It’s not just that the truth doesn’t matter to them, but lies don’t either.
Some politicians deliberately lie about an election’s outcome. Some Supreme Court nominees deceptively lie about their views to senators whose support they need. Some commentators knowingly lie about facts that don’t fit their narrative— Fox’s Sean Hannity set a new standard when he admitted under oath in a deposition that when he slandered Dominion Voting Systems on the air for “rigging” their voting machines, he “didn’t believe it for one second.” And when it comes to holding truth in contempt, our former president is the poster boy without rival. The Washington Post’s fact-checking unit catalogued an unprecedented 30,573 deliberate misstatements or flat-out lies during Donald Trump’s four years in office. If you’re counting, that comes to an astounding average of almost 21 a day.
(If you start adding Trump’s lies about the “rigged election” since he got kicked out of the White House— echoed by countless candidates who wanted his blessing in their 2022 campaigns— the number skyrockets even higher.)
But, truth be told— excuse the pun— a total disregard for truth didn’t just come along with Donald Trump. What’s more, indifference for the truth isn’t the exclusive province of Trump and the Grand Old Party he twistedly transformed. In the last century, presidents and administrations from both parties lied to justify the war in Vietnam, then in this century, the war in Iraq.
In the recent history of Democratic politicians, President Bill Clinton infamously told us, “I did not have sex with that woman” when in fact he had. His wife, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, claimed she’d been shot at in Bosnia when in fact she hadn’t. Another presidential candidate, Senator Elizabeth Warren, said she was Native American when she wasn’t. Joe Biden has told his own share of tall tales.
But none of them holds a candle to Trump. Save perhaps the newest exemplar of inconvenient truths: New York’s freshman congressman-elect George Santos.
He’s the guy— another Trump-allied election liar by the way— who lied about his life. Virtually his whole life. In his campaign appearances and on his campaign website, he lied about his professional background, he lied about his educational background, he lied about his charitable background, he even lied about his religious background.
After an investigation, The New York Times less than two weeks ago called him out on all of it. His response? In one interview, he merely “embellished” his résumé. In another, “everyone pads his résumé.”
Maybe not everyone but no lie there. However, exaggerations are one thing. Complete fabrications are another. At a certain point, this guy wasn’t just exaggerating or embellishing. He was unrepentantly putting out a panoply of pure lies.
Why does all this matter beyond the district which Santos won, where his soon-to-be constituents already have to wonder, “Can we even know who this man we elected less than two months ago really is?” First, it matters because ultimately it will help shape the new Congress that takes its oath in four days’ time. Wednesday, as part of his attempt at an apology tour, Santos sat for an interview on Fox with guest host Tulsi Gabbard. She called him out too. “These are blatant lies,” she told the congressman-elect. “It calls into question how your constituents and the American people can believe anything that you say when you’re standing on the floor of the House of Representatives.”
But here’s why it matters even more. Because unless a steamroller runs over George Santos between now and swearing-in day on January 3rd, he will stand on the floor of the House. A handful of lower-level Republicans have publicly pilloried Santos and said he should not be allowed to serve, but the party leadership? Silence. For one thing, condemning a congressman-elect who won a formerly Democratic seat— when they will already command a painfully thin majority in the new House— could come back to haunt them. For another thing, Santos has pledged to support embattled Republican leader Kevin McCarthy in his quest for the Speakership. No surprise, the presumptive Speaker doesn’t want to throw George Santos overboard. I guess even Pinocchio would get a pass if he promised to support McCarthy.
At one point in the interview on Fox, Gabbard rhetorically asked Santos, “Do you have no shame?” The same should be asked of his party’s leadership. If by their silence they don’t denounce his lies, they are a part of them. The National Republican Congressional Committee, which is the campaign arm of the House, hasn’t scrubbed Santos from its website. It has only scrubbed the bulk of his phony résumé.
Lies have been told ever since George Washington’s father asked him if he had cut down a cherished cherry tree and the six-year-old Washington reputedly answered, “I cannot tell a lie.”
But according to the Mount Vernon Foundation, even that tale is a myth. Lying has always been around, and always will be. What’s disturbing today is, it feels like an epidemic. Politicians not only get away with lies, sometimes they are praised for them. For too many Americans, the truth doesn’t matter and lies don’t either. If there’s to be a new era of truth, it will have to wait.
Over almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 36-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
I am shocked at the attempt to besmirch the tale of George Washington telling the truth about cutting down the Cherry Tree.
I happen to own that very hatchet. The handle has been relaced several times but the head has only been replaced once !
it is the truth that counts, nice work. May be a better year in 23