Vice-presidential nominee JD Vance, left, stands next to former President Donald Trump during a rally at the Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Saturday, July 20, 2024. Photo: David Rodriguez Munoz / USA TODAY NETWORK
Last week’s presidential debate set a new course for the Republican ticket. The idea of trying to control Donald Trump – which was always a pipe dream – went out the window. Now we’re in a period where the strategy seems to be to make up the most disgusting lie possible and then double down on it.
There is also Trump’s insistence that schools are performing gender-affirming surgeries without parental consent. “Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s gonna happen with your child,” he lies.
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The question is, what kind of political strategy is this? In a close election, how does this benefit the Trump campaign?
The reality is that Trump has no strategy. He has impulses. His lies serve two purposes. They are meant to make himself look bigger and to protect his fragile ego (e.g., he didn’t lose the 2020 election). They are also meant as a test for his followers. Trump doesn’t allow for dissent, so you have to embrace the lie.
Trump keeps repeating the lie about Haitians because he can’t talk about immigration policy in any rational way. (He repeats a lie about Aurora, Colorado, being besieged by immigrant gangs for the same reason.) He lies about schools performing gender-affirming surgery because it fits with his dystopic view of a society out of control. Plus, it plays well with his audiences, who take his words at face value.
What the lies don’t do is convince that small segment of undecided voters that Trump is their candidate. If you don’t reside in the closed universe of ultra-online conspiracy theorists, you will likely think that this is crazy talk. That’s why Trump’s advisers were so desperate to have the candidate talk about Kamala and not barbequed cats.
Of course, that still leaves J.D. Vance, who may be totally bereft of principle and even humanity, but is not stupid. Vance is the one who has been fanning the flames of the Haitian pet-eating lie. He knows it’s a lie, but out of an overabundance of cynicism, he keeps repeating it, even though the lie originated with neo-Nazis.
At first, Vance said that there were “reports” of pet-eating. There weren’t. Then he said unnamed “constituents” were calling his office. (A CNN reporter asked him if he would take a constituent’s word about seeing Bigfoot.)
Then Vance made the mistake of accidentally exposing his logic for pushing an inflammatory lie. “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,” Vance said on CNN yesterday.
In short, it’s a lie, and Vance knows it. He just doesn’t care about the human cost. He tried to downplay his admission that he’s writing fiction. He was just “creating the American media focusing on it.”
Vance has to be one of the worst candidates ever at the national level. He makes Richard Nixon look like George Washington. But he is also incredibly inept for all his elite smarts. He thinks he’s generating buzz against Harris by focusing on the supposed horrors of immigration.
Both Trump and Vance are relying on lies because both want to burn the current system down. Trump wants to do it because that’s he plays to win, by destroying everything in his path. He also kind of believes the crazy ideas. People who support him will get a payoff in return. It’s all transactional.
Vance is doing it because he wants to create an entirely new system of conservative elites who will create a paradise based on right-wing Christian thought. He knows he’s appealing to ignorance. He’s counting on it. It’s what he needs to install himself and like-minded elites as heads of a new system. He’s looking for a different kind of power than Trump is.
Both Trump and Vance will continue to lie right up to and beyond Election Day. Trump is better at it because he’s had more practice and because he believes his own lies. Vance will keep exposing himself as the clumsy mercenary that he is. Unfortunately, as long as the pair finds a willingness audience for their lies, the damage that they inflict on democracy will continue to harm the nation.
