As people calm down a little bit over the debate on Thursday, it’s worth examining Trump’s tsunami of lies. As the historian Heather Cox Richardson noted,
This was not a debate. It was Trump using a technique that actually has a formal name, the Gish gallop, although I suspect he comes by it naturally. It’s a rhetorical technique in which someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to say them. Trying to figure out how to respond makes the opponent look confused, because they don’t know where to start grappling with the flood that has just hit them.
Yes, Biden’s team should probably have been prepared for this and they weren’t. And so it goes.
To prove the point of what a liar Trump is, I want to focus on seven particular lies that Trump threw out there, and how easy they are to rebut after the fact. All seven of these lies are blatant, and none of them are difficult to disprove. They are:
- That Trump, and not Biden, Lowered the Cost of Insulin
- That Biden made up the “Suckers and Losers” Quote
- That Nancy Pelosi Refused Support from the National Guard
- That Trump “Didn’t Have Sex with a Pornstar”
- That “Some Democratic States Allow People to Execute Babies After They’re Born”
- That Trump Won the Club Championship at his Own Golf Club
- That “We had the H2O Best Numbers Ever”
Let’s look at these in detail.
That Trump, and not Biden, Lowered the Cost of Insulin
This one is easy to cross-check, as you just have to determine the date the act was signed.
Biden signed the Medicare Prescription Drug Provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act on August 16, 2022, when he was President.
To be fair, Trump took a small step in that direction. What Trump did was lower the cost of insulin to $35 for some Medicare Part D beneficiaries under a two-year pilot project in which some insurers could voluntarily reduce the cost for some insulin products. But that is nothing compared to what Biden did.
That Biden made up the “Suckers and Losers” Quote
Trump tried to convince the world that Biden made up the “suckers and losers” quote about the military. John Kelly, Trump’s former Chief of Staff, heard him say it. While he was his Chief of Staff. What would have been Kelly’s motivation to make that up if he hadn’t heard Trump say it? In any case, he’s confirmed it on a number of occasions.
Trump made the disparaging remarks during a visit to France in 2018, specifically when he canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris, and a number of other people heard it as well.
I’d also like to know who the “19 people” are that “didn’t hear” Trump say it. Like, how do you “hear” somebody not say something?
That Nancy Pelosi Refused Support from the National Guard
Trump claimed that Nancy Pelosi refused to accept assistance from the National Guard when the exact opposite is true. Even more galling, as proof of his statement, Trump cited the film that Alexandra Pelosi — a respected documentary filmmaker who also happens to be Pelosi’s daughter — made of the events of January 6th inside the Capitol, where she was accompanying her mother.
The film, “The Insurrectionist Next Door” is available on HBO, and you could watch it for yourself. Fascinating film, actually. Does Trump think that no one has actually seen this film?
That Trump “Didn’t Have Sex with a Pornstar”
I mean, this one has actually been adjudicated. In the New York “hush money” case that led to Trump’s conviction on 34 counts, the jury had to believe that Trump had sex with Stormy Daniels while Melania was pregnant, that he had David Pecker catch and kill the story on his behalf, and then falsified business records to hide the entire transaction. That’s the case. That’s what the jury had to believe, and they did. Beyond a reasonable doubt.
So Trump wants people to believe that he paid $130,000 to someone he never met, doesn’t know, and never had sex with? Who the hell is going to believe Trump now?
That “Some Democratic States Allow People to Execute Babies After They’re Born”
Is this guy on drugs? If that were actually true, it would be one of the greatest scandals ever. There is, of course, no evidence for that whatsoever, and it seems to come out of the portion of the propaganda playbook where someone tells a lie so outrageous that normal people think to themselves, “well, that must be true, because no sane person would ever say such a thing if it weren’t true.”
Emphasis on “sane” person.
That Trump Won the Club Championship at his Own Golf Club
Trump is such a notorious cheat at golf that the sports journalist Rick Reilly wrote an entire book about it: Commander in Cheat. In the book, among other things, Reilly explains how Trump claims to have won 18 club championships, and that’s like “an NFL quarterback telling you he’s won 18 Super Bowls.” We’re talking not just senior club championships — which in and of itself would be an absurd claim — but actual club championships. The ironic thing is, for a man his age, Trump is apparently a pretty good golfer. There’s no reason for him to have to exaggerate his game or to cheat, literally, every time he goes on the golf course. But with all the self-control of a coked-up squirrel at a nut parade, Trump cannot seem to help himself.
Is this the guy we want to be the Commander in Chief?
That “We had the H2O Best Numbers Ever”
I don’t even know what the fuck this means. The full quote is, “Clean water and air. We had it. We had the H2O best numbers ever.” So, Trump is claiming that the air was cleaner and the water safer when he was President? Is this like when Trump declared himself the “least racist person in the room” during the final presidential debate on October 22, 2020?
Again, one has to wonder if Trump is on drugs. It’s as if I — a competent amateur jazz pianist — declared myself to be the greatest jazz pianist ever. Better than Chick Corea. Better than Herbie Hancock. Better than Keith Jarrett. Better than McCoy Tyner. Better than Oscar Peterson.
People would ask what the fuck is wrong with me. People would ask me what kind of medication I was on, and whether it needed an adjustment. But when Trump says things like that, it’s just another day at the office.
In Conclusion
In this article I’ve focused only on these seven absurd lies from Trump. Of course, there were many, many more. A deluge of lies, and FactCheck.org analyzed the entire debate for us, including the few misstatements by Biden.
Now, we can all agree, I’m sure, that Biden did not have his best night. It was very disappointing and somewhat inexplicable, given that Biden is a seasoned debater. (We’ll be covering this more in the next few days.) But Trump is an extraordinary malignant narcissist and an astoundingly compulsive liar on a scale never before seen in public life. I’ll take a slightly diminished Biden over Trump any day.