From Vance’s penchant to ‘create stories’ to Trump’s false claims, lies are brazenly flaunted as a tactic to win support

From Vance’s penchant to ‘create stories’ to Trump’s false claims, lies are brazenly flaunted as a tactic to win support

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

But it wasn’t just a meme, objected interviewer Dana Bash. The Republican vice-presidential nominee gave a telling response: “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do, Dana, because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast.”

If ever there was a case of saying the quiet part out loud, Vance had perfected the art. The cat memes he referred to were prompted by baseless rumours about legal Haitian immigrants in his home state of Ohio eating house pets – rumours that led to bomb threats and evacuations of schools and government buildings in Springfield.

But Vance’s willingness to “create stories” to grab attention before the November’s election hinted at a new frontier in post-truth America, where a lie is no longer slyly distributed but rather brazenly flaunted as a tactic to win political support and stir up social chaos.

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  • Billiam@lemmy.world
    19·
    4 months ago

    Why Trump and Vance’s strategy is ‘say anything, make up anything’

    Because their supporters don’t fact check anything and hear only what they want. That’s it. It’s that simple.

    • Wrench@lemmy.world
      7·
      4 months ago

      As demonstrated by the same kind of barrage of insane shit Trump and his administration did when they were in power. It was just rapid for crazy shit to drown out whatever bad story they wanted attention away from, constantly.

      It amazing that half the voting population wants that back.

      • Billiam@lemmy.world
        8·
        4 months ago

        I call those people “electoral cicadas.”

        They stay buried underground for four years, then poke their heads up two months before the election and try to figure out what’s going on.

  • LEDZeppelin@lemmy.world
    11·
    4 months ago

    Their strategy is:

    Step 1: Lie bigly

    Step 2: double down

    Step 3: triple down

    Step 4: move on to a new lie, back to step 1

    Bonus: insult more and more people with every repeated cycle

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
    10·
    4 months ago

    The answer is twofold: both like to bath in the media attention, and a crazy invented story simply draws more of that than simple facts. And both have no real arguments speaking for them. This election is about Trump, not about any political issues or problems that need to be solved.

    • TokenBoomer@lemmy.world
      62·
      4 months ago

      After reading some of Hitler’s speeches, to me, Trump is worse. Hitler at least tried to give historical context and statistical evidence. Trump just spews word salad immigrant xenophobia. It’s actually frightening how little he has to try.

  • eldavi@lemmy.ml
    1·
    4 months ago

    i’m convince that liberals and conservatives alike only go by what their in-group says and they become leftists and independents once they spend more than the average amount of effort to scratch beyond the surface.

    • goodthanks@lemmy.world
      1·
      4 months ago

      Everyone is susceptible to social adaptation. Like how some people from poor backgrounds become classist once they’ve made it and have golf buddies to talk to about real estate. The real test of a person’s principles is if they’re willing to go against their peers opinions. It can be very isolating.

      • eldavi@lemmy.ml
        1·
        4 months ago

        agreed and i’d like to think that my autism induced isolation enables me to have these views as a sort of silver lining to being on the spectrum.