Tweets And Rallies Make It Easy For Trump To Lie

Or rather, tweets and rallies make it easy for Trump's lies to get out there and circulate as common wisdom among his followers.

In tweets and rallies, Trump can lie to his heart's content without fear of contradiction. If he tweets, for example, or says at a rally that he won the election "in a landslide," there's nothing anyone can do to counteract the lie -- it's out there among the Trumpistas, and millions of them believe it, despite the fact it's a blatant lie.

If Trump were to make that statement in an interview with an actual journalist -- and I'm not talking Fox News or Breitbart here -- the response would be: "WTF? That's just not true."



On Chris Hayes tonight, All In With Chris Hayes, on MSNBC, the Trump team said:

Today marks a historic electoral landslide victory in our nation's democracy ... The official votes cast by the Electoral College exceeded the 270 required to secure the presidency by a very large margin, far greater than ever anticipated by the media.

Okay, there's a humungous lie there: "Today marks a historic electoral landslide victory in our nation's democracy." NO, NO, NO! 306 votes in the Electoral College is, historically speaking, barely squeaking through; and he lost the popular vote by almost 3 million.

But truthtellers, unfortunately, have to hedge their statements; they feel compelled to tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Their scream of LIAR! to the first bit has to be tempered by a grudging acceptance that the rest of the statement can be interpreted as true. The rest of the Trump statement can be defended. The EC votes exceeded the 270 needed by quite a bit -- not by "a very large margin," by 36 votes -- although almost every other president in modern history exceeded that number by a far greater margin. And yes, it's true that 306 votes was far greater -- far, far greater -- than ever anticipated by the media, because general wisdom and the media were so far off the mark; they anticipated he would lose by jaw-dropping numbers. So yes, it's true; 306 votes, while far from a landslide, was a hell of a lot more than the media anticipated.

By lying grossly and repeatedly in tweets and at rallies, Trump is able to shout through a bullhorn unimpeded by those pesky fact-checkers -- and his adoring fans believe him. Sad, but true.