JD Vance getting angry over being fact checked tells us how dangerous he is

Every debate going forward must have fact checking

“The rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check,” declared an angry JD Vance during the debate. This line perfectly sums up both Vance and Donald Trump. Both want to be able to lie non-stop in the pursuit of power. Both get angry when called out for their lies because they want to create an alternative reality that helps them. And both are following the authoritarian playbook.

We all know the line, “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.” That law of propaganda--often attributed to the Nazi Joseph Goebbels—is the cornerstone of Trump’s MAGA movement.  This quote instructively continues that “the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” 

Trump understands this instinctively. It’s why he dubbed any media story that criticized him “Fake news” so his supporters would believe him—and him alone—when it come to the truth. As President, Trump took it further in 2018 when he told people at event, “Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news,” adding jaw droppingly, “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”  At the time the NY Times reported about these comments, “Trump is doubling down in his efforts to tell supporters to trust him over the words of critics and news reports.”

This also explains why Trump supporters believe his “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen. After four years of Trump telling them what was reality, they were primed to accept his lie that 2020 election was filled with fraud. And we are currently seeing Trump prepare his base for the same type of reaction after the 2024 election with his recent pronouncements “the only way we’re gonna lose” is “because they cheat.”

This is also why Vance was angry after he spewed lies about Black immigrants in Springfield, Ohio that prompted CBS debate co-moderator to slightly push back. This exchange came when Vance peddled the lie that, “In Springfield, Ohio…we’ve brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes.”

He then added, “The people that I'm most worried about in Springfield, Ohio, are the American citizens who have had their lives destroyed by Kamala Harris's open border.”

After Tim Walz responded slamming Trump for submarining the bipartisan border security bill that would have addressed the issue and more, that is when co-moderator Maragret Brennan stated, “And just to clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status.”

Brennan did not fact check the litany of other lies in Vance’s statement such as Harris had created “open borders” or that Harris “brought in millions of illegal immigrants,” etc. Brennan simply stated the truth that the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio have legally entered the United States.

Yet that comment angered Vance who believed that like at the CNN presidential debate, he should be able to use a national debate watched by millions to mislead the America public. At that point, Vance raised his voice to interrupt the co-moderators to bellow, “Margaret. The rules were that you guys were going to fact check.”  From there Vance tried to bully the two female co-moderators by speaking over them to the point the microphones were shut off for a moment.

That angered Trump and MAGA world. They understand that having a fellow candidate fact check Vance or Trump will be meaningless for many viewers because it appears to be just political rancor. But when a moderator of a respected network calls out a candidate’s lie in real time, it actually is effective at destroying the lie.

It’s why Trump slammed the CBS moderator on social media calling Brennan, “Fake News” and accusing her of “trying to get the pathetic Democrat across the finish line.”  MAGA prince Donald Trump, Jr. jumped into the fray as well posting, “Of course the Fake News hacks at @CBSNews are only “fact checking” JD Vance, even after they publicly promised they wouldn’t engage in their BS fact checks.”

This is also why we saw such anger after Trump’s horrible performance in his debate with VP Harris on ABC. To be clear, Harris won that debate with her grasp of the issues, effectively communicating her vision for the nation and of course for her effective taunting of Trump.  The fact checking was a sideshow to the real reason Trump was decimated that night.

Yet Republican members of Congress—partly to help Trump save face but also to ensure that they are not fact checked in the future on a national debate stage—even opened an investigation into ABC News for daring to fact check Trump. Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, wrote in a letter to ABC News President ​that, “Over 67 million Americans watched as a policy exchange between two presidential candidates quickly turned into a three-on-one debate against the Republican nominee.”  The Senator added, “it became abundantly clear that ABC News and its respective moderators had a biased agenda.” He then demanded that ABC news turn over any communications with the Harris campaign to uncover the bias.

And Rep. Dan Meuser, R-Pa., while on Fox Business alleged—without any evidence-- that Harris may have received the questions before the debate. He pledged, “We're going to do what we can to bring ABC in and have them answer some questions.”   Of course, none of the criticism was that the fact checking by ABC News was wrong or that Trump was not lying.

It’s one thing for Trump and his minions to whine on Twitter about the fact checking. It’s far more alarming and dangerous when Republican members of Congress use the power of the state to threaten media outlets that dare reveal the truth to the public.

That is also right from the rules of Nazi propaganda that instruct people in power, “The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie.” Well, here we have the GOP members of the State using their power to shield the truth from the people since that is “the mortal enemy of the lie.”

There should never be a presidential or vice-presidential debate in the future that does not feature real time fact checking. The candidates are not there to be journalists, but to share their vision for the nation. Fact checking after the debate is just about meaningless. But as we saw with the Harris-Trump debate, fact checking in real time flags to the viewers that a candidate is lying about basic facts. This is how we protect our Republic from people like Trump--who attempted a coup, incited the Jan 6 attack and was convicted of 34 felonies for cheating in the 2016 campaign—from ever being elected President.

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