The Political Lie: A Tool at the Heart of Donald Trump’s Presidential Campaign

Anne E. Deysine, professor emeritus of Law and American studies at Paris Nanterre University and Université Paris Lumières, examines Donald Trump’s use of lies in his campaign for reelection.

The lie is as old as politics itself. Jonathan Swift, in his essay “The Art of Political Lying,” explains that “if a lie be believed only for an hour, it hath done its work.” Even if he did not invent the concept of post-truth politics, which is often credited to him, the current American president will have applied the Swiftian proverb in unprecedented proportions throughout his term of office. A politician has probably never lied as much as Donald Trump. According to The Washington Post, in August 2020, he had notched 20,000 lies since his election, a phenomenon which is constantly accelerating: Beginning with five lies per day at the start of his term, he reached 23 per day after 14 months, a leap observed after he was acquitted by the Senate on impeachment charges, and reaching a peak of 62 lies in a single day on July 9, of which half were in a single interview given to Fox News’ Sean Hannity.

He is particularly fond of certain affirmations, especially asserting that “the economic situation is the greatest in history” (a phrase he continues to hammer home despite the consequences of COVID-19) and, “the wall will be built” (repeated 261 times while in reality, there has only been three miles of new construction).

There are several peculiarities that can be added to the numbers: Trump never apologizes, even when he is caught red-handed telling a known lie (which happens practically every day), and he pays no political price for his lies. Like Teflon, he seems shielded by a protective coating.

Donald Trump Speaks, Fox News Reports It

Another characteristic element of the situation is the echo chamber that exists between the president, Fox News and its star journalist Hannity, and conspiracy theorists such as Alex Jones and the QAnon movement. The president, or one of his supporters, launches a statement that’s either false, grossly exaggerated (“Trump suffers constant attacks from deep state,” “Obama spied on the Trump campaign in 2016,” “there are terrorist riots in Seattle”) or outrageous (“the two camps are equally responsible for events in Charlottesville”), and it is circulated by members of his coalition of supporters and on social media, to such an extent that it acquires a status of incontestable truth within groups favorable to Trump.

Barack Obama paid the price for such strategies used against him in his time. Beginning in 2011, the birthers, led by Trump, hammered away that Obama should not have been president because he was not born in the United States. Some, 40% of Republicans still remain convinced today that Obama was born in Kenya, even though he made his birth certificate public and published it online stating stating that he was born in Hawaii, which is, until further notice, one of the 50 states.

Trump is using similar methods today to lay into Kamala Harris, born in California but to foreign parents. Will these unfounded accusations, coupled with attacks that many observers consider racist and sexist, discredit Joe Biden’s running mate?

The Reign of “Fake News” and Deepfakes

Today it is no longer simply lies that reign supreme, but “fake news” (that is to say, false, often sensational, information disseminated under the guise of news reporting). The great irony is that Trump and his supporters do not hesitate to label all information which does not suit them as “fake news,”hence the creation of the notion of “alternative facts,” according to the famous catchphrase by former White House adviser Kellyanne Conway.

There are also deepfakes, doctored videos that generally have a hostile purpose, and which are difficult to detect by the ordinary internet user. One of the favored channels for these lies and fake news is Trump’s twitter feed, followed by almost 80 million people who, in turn, pass on the president’s attacks and “fears,” for example, the inherent risks of fraud attached to mail-inl voting, even though in reality, these risks are almost nonexistent.

A study led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that fake news spreads quicker, to more people and more widely than real news, and that it is 70% more likely to be retweeted. The study also showed that the amplification of fake news is as much the work of bots as it is of human nature, and done by individuals entrenched in their cognitive biases and bubbles that reinforce existing prejudices. In other words, information and education must be part of the solutions we put in place.

The proliferation of lies and fake news on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks raises two questions: Should these sites ban the lies (and therefore also the president of the United States), as well as certain types of speech, such as calls for racial violence, anti-Semitism, homophobia or sexism? And should the checks be voluntary, or imposed by law? In the first instance, social networks would have to accept this role and put fact-checking teams in place similar similar to those at The Washington Post, which employs four people on a full-time basis. Although Twitter has banned certain users and closed their accounts, social networks are reluctant to intervene, always quick to cite the First Amendment. Both questions raise the question of freedom of expression as guaranteed by the First Amendment; a veritable point, but used to the the benefit of social networks.

We must, in fact, admit that the debate is dominated by the libertarian and idealized vision of cyberspace, presented as a civilization more just and with greater humanity than the world built by governments. This is the philosophy disseminated by John Barlow, founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 1990, who did not hesitate to quote Thomas Jefferson when he said, “We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.”

Despite these charming words, the internet is not a heaven on earth, a place of free expression and equality; it has always been governed by bans, rules and limits. That is what Danielle Citron underscores in her essay in “Free Speech in the Digital Age” and Mary Anne Franks in “The Cult of the Constitution.” Some rules are fixed by the government, and others by the powerful actors that are the social networks, who decide on their algorithms and terms of use. For both actors, those who oppose the rules do so by invoking their handy alibi, the First Amendment, but they fear that in reality, new rules, less favorable to them, will simply be introduced. However, the risks attached to a lack of regulation are serious.

Fake News Is Harmful to Democracy … and Our Health

The proliferation of lies and fake news makes a free market of ideas — the very foundation of the United States’ pluralist system — impossible. And more generally, it endangers democracy, the unity of society and the integrity of elections, since lies weaken trust in institutions and exacerbate social divisions. In 2020, they played a significant role in the death of more than 180,000 people who were “told” that the virus was a hoax, a fabrication by the Democrats, before mocking the precautionary advice and encouraging people to refuse to wear a mask.

Because the economic model of social networks relies on advertising, they collect as much information as possible about each of us to determine what will make us react, and use algorithms to amplify the most outrageous messages, like those of white supremacists, or conspiracy theories. And the amplification works even better if the news is fake.

It is therefore important to regulate the lies on social media, but that begs a question. In legal terms, the First Amendment prevents the government from hindering or limiting freedom of expression, but private companies can be either regulated, or self-regulating. Some of them have recruited underpaid and insufficient “moderators;” others have started to put in fact-checking teams in place. Three of them (Facebook, Twitter and YouTube) have banned Jones and several tens of millions of people from the QAnon group. But for the most part, such actions have been rare, not the least because there is always the temptation, which they repeatedly take up, to hide behind the First Amendment. What right does a private individual have to decide to strip another private individual of their freedom of expression, or even the president of the United States? That opens the door to arbitrary decision-making.

This is the reason for Trump’s attacks after Twitter dared to fact-check one of his (lying) tweets: He accused the social network platforms of being hostile to and discriminating against conservatives. That said, you might consider the opposite to be true, because despite the measures described above, the social network platforms tend to refrain from censoring conspiracy theorists, which the president is one of the major propagators of and whose camp they benefit, more so than that of his opponents.