The media has no idea how to deal with Donald Trump's constant lying

Vox Media ^ | November 23, 2015 | Dylan Matthews

[ForYourChildren]

Donald Trump's interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week (above) is a great distillation of why covering the Republican frontrunner is proving so difficult for mainstream press outlets.

On the one hand, he demands coverage. He's leading the race everywhere: nationally, in Iowa, in New Hampshire, in South Carolina. And with the exception of a brief surge for Ben Carson that's quickly dissipating, Trump has been leading consistently for more than three months. So outlets like ABC and shows like This Week would, naturally, like the longstanding GOP frontrunner to appear on their programs from time to time. It doesn't hurt that Trump is ratings gold compared with the likes of Jeb Bush or past frontrunners such as Mitt Romney, either.

But Trump also has a tendency to use his appearances on TV news to spout flagrant lies about a variety of topics. His statements aren't false the way that, say, Marco Rubio's claim that he can cut taxes by $12 trillion and still balance the budget is false. False claims of that variety are a long and distinguished tradition in American electoral politics, and it's an established policy on programs like This Week to not challenge them too aggressively.

Trump's lies, by contrast are more like something you'd hear a conspiracy theorist like Alex Jones trumpet. Stephanopoulos showed a clip of Trump claiming to have witnessed "thousands and thousands" of Muslims or Arab Americans in Jersey City, New Jersey, cheering in the streets on 9/11 in celebration of the attacks.

[ForYourChildren]

This title was linked off www.yahoo.com . This is what the media is left with regarding attacking Trump.

The media is full on dishonest! But nothing new here...

[Signalman]

“An American ambassador and 3 others were murdered as a result of a youtube video”.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe it was Donald Trump who uttered that lie.

[Reno89519]

Lies? Pretty strong language.

[Arlis]

Hmmmm.....if they really were concerned about a candidate lying, they’s be all over Hillary......the ultimate liar......

[smokingfrog]

I guess to be fair they would have to treat them the same way as Obama’s, Hillary’s, Pelosi’s, Reid’s, etc. Etc.

[CommerceComet]

You know after seven years of looking the other way on Obama’s whoppers, the press is a bit out of practice.

[faithhopecharity]

Lying?

has Trump lied about anything?

ON THE OTHER HAND, we have the daily lies from Obama and Kerry and Hillary

up the Kazoo!

[faithhopecharity]

this sounds like a serious case of projection...

[skeeter]

Whats hilarious is this idiot thinks people can’t spot a lie from the truth.

The media can’t ‘deal’ with Trump’s ‘lies’ because people collectively don’t perceive them as lies, hyperbole maybe, but not lies. The media does. Conversely, people consider the media to be patently dishonest.

Hence, the media ‘can’t deal’ with Trump.

[skimbell]

Yeah, if the MSM has difficulty dealing with what they think are Trump fabrications, just treat them the way they handle Hillary or that lying MF’er in the White Hut's lies

[ncpatriot]

Yeah...I love it!

[ClearCase_guy]

None of this matters. The thing to keep in mind is: “ISIS is contained”.

[ETL]

"In Jersey City, within hours of two jetliners' plowing into the World Trade Center, law enforcement authorities detained and questioned a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding tailgate-style parties on rooftops while they watched the devastation on the other side of the river."

--Washington Post, September 18, 2001

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/09/18/northern-new-jersey-draws-probers-eyes/40f82ea4-e015-4d6e-a87e-93aa433fafdc/?postshare=7281448290025183&tid=ss_fb

[JudyinCanada]

How can anyone find it hard to believe that muslims were cheering when 9/11 happened. For the love of Pete, they booed the moment of silence for Paris at a soccer game in Turkey and chanted allahu ahkbar, or whatever their stupid saying is.

These were the “moderates”, I’m assuming.

[Nervous Tick]

He’s driving the left absolutely bananas.

I’m hoping for ten to twenty million ‘rat/socialist/media suicides in the next eight years. It would make our country a better place.

[ForYourChildren]

Unbelievable how the msm gives Hillary a pass on the Benghazi fiasco which was very clearly dishonest. And yet they charge Trump on nothing.

I am really enjoying what Trump is doing to the media. I hope when this is all over there is nothing left of the current media, all of it goes the way of Rather.

[ronnietherocket3]

Raise the possibility that Trump actually saw footage of celebrations in East Jerusalem, which is, to be clear, not in New Jersey?

The author is stating here that people near the region that is sending us and Europe refugees celebrated 9/11. This is an argument against the refugees.

Note that the more durable urban legend concerned Paterson, New Jersey, where police responded to the rumors by going to the center of the city's Middle Eastern community and saw only Muslims praying, with none celebrating?

There is the possibility that there were short lived celebrations that got mitigated quickly by community organizers.

It's even worse than Stephanopoulos indicates. The closest number to that comes from comments by Secretary of State John Kerry, who suggested that the US was ready to accept 85,000 refugees total in fiscal year 2016 and 100,000 in 2017. That's 185,000 — or close to 200,000 — but over two years, and, as Stephanopoulos says, that's all refugees, not just Syrians, who'd be a small fraction of that total.

So Trump got the number correct to within a rounding error and believes that the someone appointed by the President to over see a cabinet department can speak for the President. But in this guy's fantasy land, that is not true. This logic would have been great during the Bush years.

That wasn't even Trump's only lie about refugees. He repeated the myth that most Syrian refugees are young men, when most are in fact women and children:

In all the images I have seen, all of the refugees are young men, not women, children or old men.

Stephanopoulos noted that people on terrorism watch lists are currently allowed to buy guns, and asked Trump if he'd like to change that policy.

There is the little issue of the Constitution not allowing someone to be deprived of liberty without due process.

[SoFloFreeper]

would be nice to see Trump buy one of these nitpicky media sites outright. And then fire the people writing this crap.

[funfan]

Or Obama that guy lies so easily and often.

[Castlebar]

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