Fact-checking Trump misses the point, but The Left loves it. Viewers of MSNBC and CNN and other mainstream outlets get excited over fact-checking Trump’s “lies.” This has been true for years, and, recently, as Democrats have been pressured by their supporters to “resist” the Trump 47 administration, fact-checking Trump has taken on a new energy and urgency in left-leaning media.
Good luck with that, Dems.
Even the liberal, Bill Maher, is beginning to recognize the folly of this fruitless approach. In the March 7 episode of his HBO show “Real Time with Bill Maher,” the first after Trump’s recent Joint Address before Congress, he said he has become bored with fact-checking Trump.
BILL MAHER: So did you watch the speech on Tuesday night? The long, 100 minute speech?
ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN: Regrettably, but yes. Most of it.
BILL MAHER: All right. So Trump said some things that were not exactly true. And when I say not exactly, I mean not at all. (LAUGHTER).
And I just think we should talk about that by saying, I don’t want to talk about that, because if you’re a conservative and you see him say many, many things that are not even close to true, you just don’t care anymore. This is so baked in the cake. That is who he is. They do not take him literally or think he needs to be taken literally. It’s an amazing advantage in politics, I think, but that’s it.
And if you’re a liberal watching MSNBC every day, you’re obsessed with this. And you’ve seen all these things where they exposed it.
I’m bored with that s***! Okay? This is what he does. It’s– I just take everything with a grain of salt.
Well, Bill. Smart people understood this truth about Trump’s “lies” long ago; but, there is more to it than that. One of my favorite podcasters Scott Adams explained Trump like this:
every time he doesn’t pass the fact-check, it doesn’t matter because he is persuading in the right direction.
“So if he says, you know, I brought down inflation this much, but you think it’s not that much? Well, he’s fighting hard to bring down inflation. So every time he does something that seems to be like a little hyperbole, a little exaggeration, or maybe just a made-up fact, they’re all in the right direction.
So for example, the Doge stuff, is it true that he may have mentioned some things … like condoms for the Palestinians in Gaza? Well, not exactly true, but directionally, it was completely true. The money was being spent overseas on things that you and I would think would be not good uses of that money.
That’s the point… and that’s very different from the Democrat lies. The Democrat lies are, “there’s no way to close a border.”
Directionally Correct
Adams uses the term “directionally correct,” which is one of the best ways I have heard to describe Trump’s communication style.
When Trump claims, for instance, that border crossings are down to zero, the left sees a “LIE!” Obviously, crossings are not zero, but according to CBS news, the number of migrants crossing the U.S. southern border illegally in President Trump’s first full month in office plunged to a level not seen in at least 25 years. So, where the Left sees a lie, the Right sees a president who has brought about a precipitous decline in illegal immigration since the day he was inaugurated. In other words, Trump’s language on immigration is directionally correct.
Democrats, on the other hand tell directionally incorrect lies. Like when Joe Biden said he had no involvement in Hunter’s business deals, and then he had never met any of his Chinese and Ukrainian business partners, and then testimony and photographs showing up that disputed both. And then we were left wondering why China was allowed to eat our lunch in so many respects, and why we were sending so much money to Ukraine. Was there really a Biden crime family?
The whole time Joe Scarborough and others in the liberal media were assuring us that “Joe Biden was “as sharp as he has ever been,” those working with him every day knew he was severely compromised cognitively. Today we realize we have no idea who was in charge of the White House during so many critical events. That lie was directionally incorrect.
So when Bill Maher announced that he has given up on fact-checking Trump because Republicans “just don’t care,” he was almost right. As Scott Adams explained:
He’s so close. It’s not that we don’t care. It’s that we know Trump is directionally correct.
That’s what we care about. We don’t care about the specifics. We care about the direction.
We care about the energy. We care that he cares.
And even the hyperbole shows he cares.”
