Why Trump and Vance's strategy is to “say it all, make it up” | US elections 2024

JD Vance held court on CNN's “State of the Union.” “The American media completely ignored this stuff,” he complained last Sunday, “until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes.”

But it wasn't just a meme, argued interviewer Dana Bash. The Republican vice presidential nominee gave a telling response: “If I have to make up stories so that the American media will actually pay attention to the suffering of the American people, then I will, Dana, because you are the ones who have completely failed Kamala Harris.”

If ever it came to saying the quiet part out loud, Vance had perfected the art. The cat memes he was referring to were sparked by unfounded rumors about pet consumption by legal Haitian immigrants in his home state of Ohio – rumors that led to bomb threats and the evacuation of schools and government buildings in Springfield.

But Vance's willingness to “make up stories” to gain attention ahead of November's election suggested a new frontier in post-truth America, where a lie is no longer secretly spread but brazenly flaunted as a tactic to garner political support to win and foment social chaos.

Some commentators are drawing a parallel to Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, who coined “alternative facts” when she tried to defend then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer's false statements about the crowds at Trump's inauguration on another Sunday politics show in 2017 .

Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist, said: “It is a logical continuation of what was once called 'alternative facts' by the same camp.” It is clear that this is a long-term mission statement, not just a casual one Comment.

“Their entire strategy is to say anything, make anything up, create false narratives to distract from the very real consequences of their radical and extreme agenda, which is so far outside the interests of the American people. They believe they have a better chance of winning by making up crazy stories about people eating pets rather than having a subsequent conversation about the consequences of their political agenda.”

Dishonesty in politics is nothing new, from Richard Nixon's cover-up of the Watergate scandal to the false claim of weapons of mass destruction used as a pretext for the Iraq War. In 2004, The New York Times Magazine quoted an unnamed George W. Bush administration official as saying, “We are an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”

It was fertile ground for Trump, who for years had exaggerated his personal wealth and charitable donations, misled the public about ventures like Trump University and even misrepresented his own height and weight. As of 2011, he was one of the leading proponents of the false conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and therefore ineligible for the office of US President.

According to a Washington Post count, Trump has made more than 30,000 false or misleading claims during his four years in the White House since his inauguration. He memorably claimed that he had implemented the largest tax cut ever – in fact, Ronald Reagan's was even larger – and repeatedly downplayed the coronavirus pandemic, telling the public that it would soon “go away.”

But perhaps the biggest lie of all occurred on the night of the 2020 presidential election, when Trump claimed he had won. He stuck to that position, arguing that it was “stolen” from him by widespread voter fraud, which ultimately led to a deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. He has since recast the rioters as martyrs and “patriots.”

Now that he is running for the White House for the third time in a row, Trump's mendacity, if possible, has kicked into high gear. According to a fact check by host channel CNN, he made more than 30 false claims during the presidential debate against Joe Biden in Atlanta, but escaped scrutiny due to Biden's poor performance.

In the debate against Harris in Philadelphia, he made false claims on issues such as inflation, immigration, tariffs, the role of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on January 6, Joe Biden's role in the criminal cases against him and popular support for the Repeal of the constitutional right to abortion.

Amazingly, he also brought the racist Springfield conspiracy theory out of the fever swamps of the Internet and gave it a national platform in front of tens of millions of viewers when he said, “In Springfield they eat the dogs.” The people who came in eat the cats. They eat the pets of the people who live there.”

Not for the first time all night, ABC News anchors were forced to do a fact check. There is no evidence to support such a claim. The Wall Street Journal reported that the day Vance first spread the right-wing rumors, Springfield's city manager told his office that they were unfounded.

Vance's team provided the Journal with a police report in which a resident claimed her cat may have been stolen by Haitian neighbors. But a Journal reporter tracked down the resident and learned that her cat had been in the basement the entire time, prompting her to apologize to her neighbors.

Still, at rally after rally during the campaign, Trump and Vance persisted in their deliberate falsehoods, undeterred by White House warnings that they could foment a nasty backlash against the Haitians in Springfield. Then came Vance's shocking admission that he would make something up and be proud of it.

Days after the CNN interview, Vance continued to defend the comments but admitted he had not fact-checked residents' claims about the pets. “The media has a responsibility to fact-check,” he said at a rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, to shift blame.

Charlie Sykes, a conservative author and broadcaster, said: “What JD Vance is saying is that the facts don't matter and that I'm not at all ashamed of spreading a false story.”

“It underscores the extent to which Trump and Vance and the MAGA movement depend on and their unwavering allegiance to these fake online internet memes. Even if they are refuted, they stick with it, which is a dangerous thing because it means that no matter how much evidence you can provide, no matter how dangerous the lies, they will not back down.”

Sykes warned: “They will keep pushing. Extrapolate this to the events of November and the election results. Extrapolate it to anything.”

On Saturday, Vance is scheduled to appear alongside conspiracy theorist Tucker Carlson on the former Fox News host's live tour in Hershey, Pennsylvania. This is despite Carlson recently hosting Nazi apologist and Holocaust denier Darryl Cooper on his podcast, a decision that was strongly condemned by Jewish members of Congress.

Meanwhile, Trump is being joined in the election campaign by right-wing conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer. She appeared at the debate and a day later in New York to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Loomer, who appeared on the social media platform At a rally in Las Vegas, Trump said he heard that Harris used a secret earpiece during her debate, a baseless conspiracy theory that Loomer has promoted on X.

Loomer also posted on Even far-right Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene called the comment racist.

Sykes, author of How the Right Lost Its Mind, sees Loomer as a symptom rather than a cause. “Look at a list of all the conspiracy theories that Donald Trump has embraced or promoted, and it’s lengthy,” he said. “It's not that Laura Loomer is making Donald Trump a conspirator. Donald Trump has been one for years. He now finds people who caress and validate his darker impulses.”

There is another reason for Trump and Vance's sense of impunity. Their lies originate in and are legitimized by a right-wing media ecosystem that now includes to represent freedom of expression.

Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at watchdog Media Matters for America, said: “This is a right-wing media ticket. Donald Trump and JD Vance are both people who have become fully immersed in the far right's information ecosystem and have adopted its complete lack of standards and willingness to use any means necessary to achieve their goals of political gain and political victory. What we see here is how these lies can spiral completely out of control. There is real chaos in Springfield, Ohio right now.”

On the way to the final stretch of the election, in which he could face prison time if he loses, Trump is outdoing himself with a flood of untruths. On Thursday, CNN's fact-checkers compiled a list of “twelve completely fictional stories” he has told in the last month, including Harris reinstating conscription, schools sending children for gender-affirming surgeries without their parents' knowledge, and Harris being Russian President Vladimir Putin is negotiating with them in 2022 to prevent the invasion of Ukraine.

Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said: “There is nothing worse than a desperate man. There is nothing worse than a desperate racist man who cannot control the woman in front of him who happens to be African American. Cannot control the changing conditions around him – the intensifying political race for the presidency.

“I can't control what people say about him, the fact that Republicans are now opposing a second Trump term and creating ways in which we're willing to support the Democrat over Donald Trump because he's so bad and is so dangerous.” If he can't control that, he'll become even more dangerous and desperate, and you have to be aware of that because there's more of this to come between now and November.”