The media has one job Thursday night: Tell the truth about Trump’s lies
Donald Trump is a stone-cold liar. He lies about his height, his wealth and his golf game. He lies about his accomplishments and his failures. He lies about everything, large and small, important and insignificant.
There is nothing, however, that Donald Trump lies about more than elections — particularly, the 2020 election. There is a reason his statements about the 2020 election were dubbed the Big Lie.
In his second term, Trump has transformed the executive branch into a factory for creating, disseminating and enforcing these lies. His Cabinet is filled with election deniers who parrot his falsehoods. He insists that every nominee — whether to an agency post or a federal judgeship — offer an answer about the result of the 2020 election that reinforces the lie.
The result, as the Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn said of the Soviet Union, is that “In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.”
The difference between the former Soviet Union and the United States today is that we have the constitutional right to speak freely and criticize our government. Our media is protected from government censorship by a robust First Amendment.
But these rights are only as strong as we are willing to exercise them. Sadly, right now, too few people in positions of power are willing to loudly criticize Trump for his lies. Even worse, the once-proud legacy media has proven itself too timid to speak clearly about Trump and his lies.
But on Thursday night, the media and its powerful backers have a chance to partially redeem themselves. That is because Donald Trump has announced a prime-time speech to the nation. According to reports, he will use this time to once again lie about elections.
Specifically, he is reportedly set to announce that he has new intelligence reports supporting his lies about the 2020 election. Some suggest he may single out Georgia, while others suggest he will try to implicate multiple states’ election results.
What is important to keep in mind is that it will all be lies.
To be clear, everyone in the legacy media knows Trump’s history and knows that he will spread dangerous lies on Thursday night. They also know that they have a choice about whether to cover the speech in whole, in part or not at all. Most importantly, they know the danger and the stakes.
In 2014, the Obama White House sounded out the networks about carrying a prime-time address on immigration and was told no. In 2022, the networks refused prime-time coverage of a speech Joe Biden delivered on democracy.
The question we must all put to these same networks today is this: Do they plan to provide valuable free airtime to a president who is going to systematically undermine democracy by lying about elections?
Sadly, I suspect we know the answer. The largest media outlets have already proved unwilling to stand up to Trump. Their corporate overlords and outside business interests drive them to curry favor with Trump rather than hold him to account.
Some of them will no doubt cloak their decision to cover the address as important for the public to hear. While I disagree, I offer them a compromise solution: Label the entire speech with a prominent disclaimer: “Trump Is Lying to the American People.”
That disclaimer should appear on screen whenever footage is shown. It — or words to the same effect — belongs in the headline and lede of any written story. It can be read aloud on podcasts and radio broadcasts.
Some will object that this is unfair, that no outlet would agree to editorialize so openly while covering a sitting president. However, neutrality is not the same thing as silence. A decision to carry a speech the media knows is false isn’t neutral — it’s complicit.
We have seen what happens when Trump lies about elections. On Jan. 6, 2021, thousands of Americans stormed the Capitol because they believed Trump’s lies. They believe what Trump told them, night after night, from podiums much like the one he will stand behind Thursday.
Trump could not spread these lies alone. Media outlets that knew better broadcast, quoted and printed his lies with too little context and correction. The results were deadly.
We are again watching this same situation play out in front of us. But the institutional media has a chance to learn from its failures and serve democracy and the public better.
History will not be kind to those who platformed falsehoods they knew were dangerous and called it balance. Journalism was built on a promise to inform the public, not to launder lies into the appearance of legitimate debate. Thursday night will test whether that promise still means anything.