Media, not Trump, told ‘lie of the year’

OPINION:

Mendacity is a funny thing. One man’s blasphemous lie is another man’s gospel truth. 

Remember “alternative facts”? That was a term coined by Kellyanne Conway, a top aide to President Donald Trump, as she defended White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s statement about the attendance numbers of his 2017 inauguration. 

In that case, there was some truth to the alternative fact claim. Critics later said that pictures showing a sparse crowd on the National Mall were taken hours before the swearing-in, not at high noon. 

Then there are former Vice President Al Gore and President George H.W. Bush. In the latter’s case, the media breathlessly reported that Bush was shocked to see a supermarket scanner during a 1992 photo-op. Instead, he was amazed at the new scanners’ capabilities, which could weigh produce and read wrinkled and torn barcodes.

And Mr. Gore never — despite endless media reports — said he “invented” the internet. What he did say in 1999 was, “I took the initiative in creating the internet,” and top internet pioneers agreed, saying that as a senator, Mr. Gore’s initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving internet.

But all that was hashed out long after the facts were known. At the time, Americans believed the reports from the media, which routinely get things grievously wrong without correcting themselves.

Fast-forward to the end of 2024. PolitiFact, which claims to be an “independent fact-checker” but is anything but, has decided again to dabble in mendacity. As it did in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020 and 2021, the liberal site declared that Mr. Trump uttered the “Lie of the Year” in 2024.

“A lie marked a town and its residents in the name of campaign rage,” the site wrote on X. “It was absurd. It was consequential. Our Lie of the Year goes to Donald Trump and JD Vance for false claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pet dogs and cats.”

This much is true: Last August, a 27-year-old woman was arrested in Ohio after police said she killed and ate a cat in a “residential area in front of multiple people,” according to an arrest report obtained by USA Today. The claim exploded on the internet and morphed into the tale that hungry illegal aliens were eating household pets.

The Ohio woman was eventually tried and sentenced to jail, but she wasn’t Haitian, just crazy. None of the hundreds of other reports that flooded police departments in Ohio and elsewhere — claiming immigrants were eating pets — ever proved true. Still, the story was everywhere, everyone was saying it and, like the scanner and internet reports, it was not corrected for ages.

But here’s the thing: There were dozens — maybe hundreds — of far more egregious lies told in 2024, an election year (when lies cloud the air like gnats). 

The real biggest lie is that President Biden is sharp as a tack. Top Democrats have told it over and over.

“Oh my gosh! He’s the president of the United States! I can’t even keep up with him,” White House spokesman Karine Jean-Pierre declared in one absurd claim. 

“The most difficult part about a meeting with President Biden is preparing for it because he is sharp, intensely probing, detail oriented and focused,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said.

“His mental acuity is great, it’s fine, it’s as good as it’s been over the years. All this rightwing propaganda that his mental acuity has declined is wrong,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer said.

But then 100 million Americans saw Mr. Biden in the presidential debate where he could barely compose a coherent sentence. And in the last few weeks, report after report says that he was not fine. In one scathing report, The Wall Street Journal detailed how White House aides covered up the president’s mental decline over the past four years.

The “Lie of the Year” could easily have been awarded to the media. As the damning recent reports about Mr. Biden have emerged, some reporters who covered him acknowledged that they dropped the ball.

“He insisted that he could still run for president. We should have much more forcefully questioned whether he was fit for office for another four years, which could have led to a primary for the Democrats,” CBS News reporter Jan Crawford said.

Even presidential lapdog Chris Cillizza acknowledged how the media failed at their job.

“I should have pushed harder earlier for more information about Joe Biden’s mental and physical well-being and any signs of decline,” the former CNN reporter said. “There was a shame factor that went into that. People around Biden worked to make you feel bad when you asked whether he was up to the job.”

Aw, poor baby. 

So that’s the “Lie of the Year,” that the U.S. has a vibrant free press pursuing the truth for the American people.

• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at josephcurl@gmail.com and on X @josephcurl.