Flooding the Zone With Lies

The wave of outright lying by the Far Right Noise Machine - and their Republican Party allies hacks - is overwhelming us now as the 2024 election day nears.

It's been well-documented that trump lies nearly every line he says in public; but he's been spewing offensive allegations the past few months that hospitals in Blue states are "performing post-abortions" (which is legally infanticide), and the past few weeks that there are schools forcibly performing transgender surgeries on children (the second part of that covered by Matt Lavietes at NBC News):

Former President Donald Trump repeated his false claim that children are undergoing transition-related surgery during their school day, worsening fears among some conservatives that educators are pushing children to become transgender and aiding transitions without parental awareness.

“Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day in school,’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation? Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?” Trump said Saturday at a campaign rally in Wisconsin, a vital swing state.

Trump made similar remarks — saying children were returning home from school after having had surgical procedures — the previous weekend at an event hosted by Moms for Liberty, a parent activist group that has gained outsized influence in conservative politics in recent years...

There is no evidence that a student has ever undergone gender-affirming surgery at a school in the U.S., nor is there evidence that a U.S. school has sent a student to receive such a procedure elsewhere...

According to trump and his Far Right acolytes, our public schools have the medical facilities and the means to perform surgeries at a whim: Considering how most of our schools are struggling to keep up with office supplies makes this deluded narrative a clear fantasy.

You'll notice trump doesn't mention where these things are happening: No mention of which school, which state. If any school has been transitioning kids without parental consent we'd have heard of it by now, even by the traditional media outlets expressing some level of outrage. If any hospital has been killing newborns as trump is claiming, the pro-fetus crowd in those states - even in deep Blue states like California or New York - would be massed outside that building protesting every minute of every day. Vague allegations without any eyewitnesses or documentation, not a thing that could stand up as factual evidence in an actual court of law.

So we know he's lying, we know he's fearmongering to his MAGA base... and yet the mainstream media isn't holding trump accountable - they are not challenging him to his face - for these blatant lies.

And now just over the past few days, JD Vance and several of his GOP buddies are sharing the outrageous and debunked claim that Haitian immigrants are out there eating our pet cats. Even Ian Millhiser over at Vox's Explainer can't fully explain it:

For the record, there is no evidence that any Haitian immigrant ate a cat in Springfield, Ohio, or anywhere else in the United States, for that matter. But the lack of factual evidence hasn’t stopped the GOP from pushing the nativist narrative, which seems designed to play off bigotry and suspicion against the mostly Black population of Haitian immigrants.

More than 300,000 previously unauthorized migrants from Haiti received temporary protected status in June, which means these Haitian immigrants are now — despite Vance’s suggestion otherwise — legally present in the United States. Still, Vance and other Republicans’ attacks on these immigrants come at a moment when more Americans have grown skeptical of immigration...

Springfield’s Police Division said on Monday that there have been no reports of any pets being stolen or eaten in that city. However, there apparently was an incident in Canton, Ohio — a nearly three-hour drive from Springfield — where a woman was charged with cruelty to animals for allegedly killing and eating a cat. But there’s no evidence that this woman is an immigrant or of Haitian descent.

Despite that lack of evidence, the woman appears to have been identified as of Haitian descent in far-right tweets...

The wingnuts are twisting the facts to make it fit their narrative that Haitian refugees - that immigrants in general - are inhuman. That's the only explanation here. And these wingnuts are desperate to turn the manufactured fear of immigrants into easily-promoted hate.

So it’s not surprising that many prominent members of the Republican Party, a party that frequently flags isolated crimes committed by immigrants to fuel nativist sentiment, latched onto an unfounded internet rumor about Haitians and cats as “proof” that immigrants present a problem (that Republicans can fix).

Still, none of this context changes the fact that Republicans at the pinnacle of the party, including sitting US senators and even one of the party’s two nationwide candidates, see no downside to spreading racist, completely unfounded rumors based on random social media posts spread by far-right trolls...

Millhiser spells it out at his conclusion even though he doesn't want to discuss the implications further: Vance and everyone else at the top of the GOP chain of command are happily spreading the fearmongering lies because there's no one willing to hold them accountable for being liars. The ones who could sue for defamation - right now, the entire Haitian community in the United States have every right to sue the GOP for their slander - are too poor or too constrained by their legal status to fight any courtroom battles. The media outlets that are supposed to maintain professional standards of journalism are too cowed by their rich owners - and too blinded by the need for "access" - to push back.

There's been a long and troubling history of the Far Right - especially as trump rose to power among their ranks - to exaggerate at best and outright lie at worst about so-called "criminal" acts committed by liberals and Democrats in order to excite their base into violent action. Think of every attack on Planned Parenthood facilities whenever the wingnuts claim that "baby killers" are farming for body parts. Remember how accusations about a child sex smuggling ring involving Hillary drove a man to attack a pizza parlor in Washington DC.

This is where we are at now in America, as the November general election draws nearer and trump - fearing he is going to lose the Popular vote again and likely the Electoral College - is desperate to stir up the passions of his MAGA base... but not to show up and vote, instead to show up with guns and commit acts of terror and chaos to do whatever it takes to disrupt any voting at all.

Gods help us. The lying is going to get worse until November and beyond, not until every wingnut liar is out of power... and in trump's case sitting in a jail cell.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND TRUTH, AMERICA, STOP VOTING REPUBLICAN. Hold them accountable. That IS in your power to stop their lies.

Update: A historian from Northwestern University is raising the warning flag that violence aimed at immigrants is sure to follow:

So let's not get confused: the debunked claims that refugees are eating cats aren't just nonsense. They are the beginning of a wave of violence. The people spreading this rhetoric either know exactly what they're doing, or they should know. But violence follows. Every time. (3)

— Kathleen Belew (@kathleen_belew) September 10, 2024

trump wants the blood to flow: It's how he knows he has his mob doing his dirty work for him.