March 11, 2021

By Beth Arnold

In the midst of this crucible for our democracy, one word keeps being repeated as a hallmark of the Trump presidency and the disintegration of the Republican Party, the culture that grew up around this political, social, and cultural disaster: lies. And by the looks of the recent CPAC convention, lies are what the GOP has decided to stick with as Trump railed about winning the election again as well as saying that President Biden had “the most disastrous first month of any president in modern history.” Trump was greeted with a huge gold statue, a standing ovation, and complete acceptance of all his whoppers by the Grand Ole Party.

Lies is a word that mainstream journalists who helped elect Trump by their incessant coverage of him didn’t use in regard to him at the beginning of his tenure. As a president, he was historically due the respect of the office—or that’s the way it had always been, it’s what a lot of us thought—not to mention journalists had better ethics and manners. We didn’t yet know that Trump and his blatant untruths and lack of principles would destroy the very concept of truth as well as journalistic credibility with virtually half of this nation. Never mind that he was the one putting out the “fake news” and had been manipulating the media for decades as New York’s Social-Climber-In-Chief.

But this was cultural evolution. The press had had a hard time adapting to the digital world and then didn’t yet understand that Social Media would be Trump’s bullhorn for explosive propaganda, which was one of few real skills he’d actually acquired in life. The other one was creating drama and divisive conflict, which came as naturally to him as his cruelty, and, according to his niece Mary, was instilled in him by his father.

Frankly, who could believe that a President of the United States could go so low that even George W. and Dick Cheney turned against him and look like American paragons compared to him?

 In the Post-Truth Era that Trump cultivated, more lies and outrageous conspiracy theories proliferated. As every racist in America came out of the darkness when Obama was president, all the alienated, ready-to-be-seditious entities, such as militias that the NRA had been ramping up for years as well as the bizarre-o Q-Anon groups emerged with Trump. This fusion of cults that grew up around Donald Trump were enamored of his authoritarian narcissism. They never met an anti-elitist conspiracy theory they didn’t like, and the Q-Anon-ers actually believe that Trump is a hero taking down Satan-worshipping pedophiles in Congress, business, and the media. Like he cared about anyone at all other than himself. Pathologically, the disaffected in America came together.

And what about the rest of us? We watched all this unfold over Trump’s four long and debilitating years, as every one of his press secretaries assured us that all the lies they told were truth, never mind actual facts standing in the way. The GOP Congress never batted an eye and backed up every iota of Trump’s corruption. Just as Roger Ailes aimed to do with Fox News, these senators and congressmen and women corroborated Trump’s doublespeak and misinformation. And America became more and more divided, just as Trump had intended.

Then there was January 6th and the deadly attempted coup. Here’s the movie teaser for what went down: When a corrupt and greedy U.S. President loses a fair and square election, he convinces his radicalized base that they have been robbed and are the only ones who can make it right. What happens next is up to them. 

After the attack on the Capitol, Forbes Editor Randall Lane named each one of Trump’s press officers—Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Stephanie Grisham, and Kayleigh McEnany—as fabulists. And he recommended that they should feel “repercussions” for their contributions to the foundation of lies that the Trump Administration’s devolution of our democracy was built upon. Lane had a warning for companies that might hire these builders of Trump’s culture of untruths. “Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie,” he said.

Lane was on to something, and the riots gave journalists more power to say bold truths about the damage Trump and his band of deceivers had perpetrated out loud. “There needs to be a reset,” Lane said in an interview with NPR's Audie Cornish, “and we need to hold ourselves to an accountability standard where truth and facts matter because that's the path forward for a healthy democracy.”

This was public validation for those of us who felt imprisoned during the Trump years. It should also have been a way forward to stop the splintering of the GOP. And since their lives were literally on the line during the attack on the Capitol, one might think that the Republican members of Congress had been shaken up enough to get real about what was happening in our country—and that they might actually do the right thing, which is to stop the fabrications. But instead, 121 House Republicans voted to decertify Arizona’s electoral votes, and 138 House Republicans voted to decertify Pennsylvania’s electoral votes to validate Trump’s false claims that he had won. Shame on them.

And the GOP’s rally behind Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA) after her loud support of deranged QAnon theories disavowing the Sandy Hook and Parkland mass shootings, as well as her advocating violence and xenophobia, is no sign that the Grand Old Party has any intention of becoming less cringe-worthy coming into the Biden years. Her “apology”? Pshaw. Ditto Rep. Lauren Boebert (CO), who just got her concealed carry permit in Washington. And how far is the rest of the GOP ready to go along these lines? After the second impeachment vote in the U.S. Senate and the CPAC, it has become more clear than ever that Donald Trump can be a terrorist and a traitor to his own country and the GOP will give him its stamp of approval, as it now does for his disciples.

A small cadre of members have shown they have integrity and a backbone. They are the 11 who voted for removing Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments and Liz Cheney, who didn’t. On the Senate side, there’s another handful. They have all been vilified by Trump who wants revenge for their disloyalty. At the last minute before President Biden’s inauguration, Sen. Mitch McConnell did the right thing by denouncing Trump’s role in the insurrection. Too little too late, when the GOP had gone along with every wrong and corrupt move our unfortunate president had done all along. What did they expect to happen? Then McConnell humiliated himself and us as a country yet again after Trump’s latest impeachment trial by skewering Trump on the Senate floor—declaring our ex-president’s guilt in every respect—after he’d voted for the traitor’s innocence moments earlier.

After the riots, major corporations like American Express, AT&T, Amazon, and many others stepped up to deny support to those members of Congress who’d tried to subvert the presidential election results. Amen. But we’ll see how long that lasts. Meanwhile, Steve Forbes came out to make a statement, which was that Forbes magazine was proud to present a diversity of opinions, and Randall Lane’s comment was just his opinion and not that of Mr. Forbes.

As for the press secretaries, Sean Spicer has his own talk show, Spicer & Co, on Newsmax, another right-wing network. He has applied to get White House press credentials. Stephanie Grisham, who didn’t hold one press conference during her tenure, was Melania Trump’s chief of staff on January 6th. She resigned that day after the riots. “I will never lie to you,” Kayleigh McEnany said to the White House Press Corps. “You have my word on that.” CNN’s Jake Tapper said he wouldn’t have her on his show because she “lies the way most people breathe.”

And, in late January, Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced her bid to become Arkansas’s next governor. "With the radical left now in charge of Washington,” she said, “your governor is your last line of defense.” The Radical Left? Joe Biden? This is exactly the deceitful, inflammatory language—the kind of misinformation—that Trump’s GOP and administration defined in the despicable Post-Trust Era. But Huckabee Sanders’ combative as well as mendacious political talk now seeks to further enrage Trump’s hardcore followers in Arkansas, who will get behind her, and to further divide our nation as well as her own state. My state. And Trump will be lying and raging along with her to help get her elected.

 It felt good to see former Little Rock Central High AP Government teacher Dana D. Deree call Sanders out for a spurious tweet she’d made. "You were a student at Little Rock Central High when I taught AP Government there,” tweeted Deree, “but you didn't take the advanced class. If you had, maybe you would better understand the First Amendment and the difference between limits on government and freedoms for private individuals."

"I've taught Sunday School too,” Deree added. “You didn't learn those lessons either.”

No, apparently she didn’t, even though she identifies as a “Christian.” Her father, after all, was a practicing Baptist minister at one time and has moved back to Arkansas to help Huckabee Sanders win her election and will presumably aid her in the divide and conquer scheme she has in mind for trusting Arkansans. The Huckabees who have financially come up in the world since he was governor are nothing if not greedy for money and power. But if she understood the basic tenets of her religion, she would know the 9th Commandment in the Bible: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. And she would know that that is a moral imperative. But she understands from experience that running for governor with the Trump GOP structure of lies will be catching more of the disaffected flies with her deceptive honey.  

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