The Enduring Myths That Let the Trumpers Off Easy

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One reason I hung out my shingle with WhoWhatWhy was my mounting frustration with big news organizations for not being blunt enough. 

They often do excellent jobs of reporting and digging, unearthing new facts and context, but what drives me crazy is how often they stop short in their inquiries or analysis. They leave the knockout punch to the editorial page folks — that is, if the ultimate point of the thing is clear. But that leaves a big part of the journalism itself unfinished. 

A recent example was a strong New York Times article on several top people driving climate policy for Trump, who have devoted years and years of their lives to ensuring that… we do not stop the pollution that will make human life impossible on earth in the not-distant future. 

How can any sentient person not recognize that the world faces rapidly worsening environmental and climatic conditions? The best the Times piece could do by way of an explanation is to note that these men — and they are all men — see the climate movement as a leftist effort to hamstring unfettered capitalism. 

If that’s what these Trump officials actually believe, it’s ludicrous on its face. But even if that analysis had validity, would that justify ignoring the scientific evidence, or claiming that 99 percent of scientists are wrong or stupid or deluded into participating in a massive fraud? 

How to even explain this other than that these administration officials are flat-out batshit crazy? Or willing to take short-term personal wins (like funding from fossil fuel interests) over long-term civilizational survival?  

Love this quote from a leading climate denier, Steven J. Milloy, so proud of what they are doing: 

“We’ve kept the skepticism alive,” Mr. Milloy said, adding, “I hope we don’t blow it. I don’t know when or if this opportunity will come around again.”

To be clear, he’s not saying this may be our last opportunity to save humanity. He’s saying this may be our last opportunity to destroy it. By stopping those who are trying to save it.

One of the biggest failings of legacy media is that it is so much part of the system that it seems bound to accept, or at least not challenge, illogical beliefs that have long been part of this country’s sense of itself. These surely include an unquestioning embrace of religion despite its unscientific foundation, an insistence on the “specialness” of America or Americans, and our faith in capitalism as a balm for all that ails us. 

Because of all this hewing to shibboleths, the legacy media cannot break free to call the game honestly. 

It has to dance around a good bit, and that prevents it from leveling with its audience about how bad things really are, how sick or evil some powerful elements are, and how narrow a window of time we have to set things right. 

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Mark Twain famously said something along the lines of “a lie gets halfway around the world before truth can get its pants on.” 

That is the real story of MAGA. All those influencers, all that outrage over immigrants and “woke” and the Obamas — all that burn and churn is FAKE. A relentless parade of untruths crafted to manipulate naive and poorly informed people — that’s the real story. 

Lies are everywhere, created and disseminated by internet trolls and armies of bots and talking heads on propaganda outlets posing as reputable news sources. And a big chunk of the American public consumes these lies without healthy skepticism and with seemingly no interest in looking deeper. 

Traditionally, a core function of the media has been to fact-check claims and burst bubbles. After that, it’s everyone else’s job to vouch for and spread the word about accurate portrayals of reality. 

One problem is that nuance usually loses. So the task before us is: how to respond quickly and effectively to disinformation and misinformation. “Effectively” means we need to develop storytelling mechanisms that can take a lie, quickly strip it down, and show someone who has little attention span that they’ve been hoodwinked. It’s not easy, but it can be done. 

The challenge that truth-tellers face can be seen in recent news reports about the federal raid on the Fulton County, GA, elections office. Targeted in this government operation were voting records from the 2020 presidential election. Why this sudden interest in an election decided six years ago? 

Because this raid was carried out in search of proof for Trump’s dangerous assertion that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. By all indications, Trump and his allies are looking to sow doubts about that result, so that if the Republicans do badly in the coming midterm elections, they can undermine, challenge, and somehow overturn the result. 

The Republicans hope that their seizure of Georgia ballots — complete with dramatic images of uniformed officers carting “evidence” away and combined with tendentious rhetoric — will sway enough people to accept a reversal of the actual ballot count in 2026. 

What they wouldn’t want is a careful look at the facts themselves. 

The Times did a great job with this technical markup of an FBI affidavit seeking a search warrant to look at and seize “evidence” in Fulton County. Three seasoned Times reporters took apart the document, explaining the basis and origin for each claim. The markup reveals a deficient, biased, and illogical presentation — one that was approved perhaps in part because the federal magistrate judge who read it was given only a one-sided presentation, in secret. The Washington Post also did a good job, noting that many of the claims in the FBI affidavit had been debunked previously.  

The problem is: How many people actually read and studied these journalistic analyses? I would guess precious few. This then raises the question of how the shoddiness and dishonesty of the whole thing can be turned into something that captures the national attention and conversation. Often, it’s left to savvy and charismatic entertainment figures like John Oliver to add bite and humor and make it all stick. Though, again, it’s only sticking with a more evolved audience. 

A possibly more effective next step is an army of people using social media to dribble out some of the most laughable aspects of the administration’s claims. Again, the more technical the topic, the more challenging this can be. It’s hard — but it’s not impossible. 

And, arguably, a strategy of “a thousand cuts” — consistently pointing out the agenda in play, the fabrications and exaggerations — can succeed, such that at some point even those who are the most resistant may start to pay attention. It’s a bit like a mechanic’s bill. Not an inherently interesting record for most people, and few would want to review it in detail. But tell them they got hoodwinked, and show them where and how, and suddenly you’ve got a hot little document. 

The good news is that, even with the least aware people, Trump is beginning to strike out. As noted by data journalist G. Elliott Morris: 

The less voters knew, the more they liked Trump in 2024. Not anymore… The least engaged Americans have swung 25 points against him since 2024 — about twice the shift among everyone else. Trump has flattened the engagement gap. 

The Coming Election Chill 

It’s plenty obvious the Republicans are entirely comfortable with suppressing a full and fair vote in the midterm elections. But how, exactly? 

It looks to me like a classic “pincers movement” — squeeze from all sides: 

• Make voters hesitate to go to the polls by convincing them it will be a dangerous or upsetting or messy experience.
• Mobilize ICE to intimidate them if they do go to the polls. 
• Pass onerous voter ID laws to make both registering and voting difficult if not impossible for targeted constituencies.
• Discourage, if not disable, voting by mail, early voting, ballot drops.
• If necessary, exploit the right-wing affiliation of voting-equipment vendors for access to the vote counting process.
• Weaponize legitimate concerns that foreign powers might try to hack into voting systems by preparing the public for the administration’s own possible interventions to seize ballots or machines for “investigation” — in districts where the vote typically goes to Democratic candidates.

Hide the Embarrassments 

It’s easy for Trump & Co. to see what the public is and isn’t responding to. The American people don’t like the ICE “surge,” and so that’s going away. Ordinary Americans are worried about the economy, and so checks are on their way. And they’re none too happy with Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his anti-science agenda. 

As a result, RFK is cycling away from his most toxic issues. Two of his top aides, HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill and General Counsel Mike Stuart, are said to be on their way out, as part of a broader restructuring of HHS. O’Neill, in particular, is a problem for RFK, having pushed a host of controversial positions, including anti-vaccine messaging, and strongly backed the US leaving the World Health Organization.

RFK himself doesn’t seem to be threatened. My guess is that he’s protected by his celebrity factor and daffy storytelling style: The other day on a YouTube show, This Past Weekend With Theo Von, he actually said:  

I’m not scared of a germ. I used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats.

Somehow none of this upsets the MAGA base. He’s got that special Trump Teflon — no lie, no outrageous behavior or insane policy, is enough to rouse the MAGAs against him. 

But he knows he has to clean up his act just a bit. That’s why they’re refashioning him as the first person to promote eating healthy food. So they have him out stumping against overprocessed junk food like first ladies used to do. 

Of course, meanwhile, all the anti-science work continues unimpeded. The latest being a move to penalize COVID-19 vaccine maker Moderna. The FDA told the company it won’t review its application for the first mRNA-based flu vaccine; this rejection is supposedly part of stricter standards for vaccines, but it appears to be based on no scientific evidence whatsoever. However, it should keep RFK’s original base of anti-vaxxers happy.  

Also, in the latest in a continuing series of scientific resignations, Dr. Richard Pazdur, a top federal drug regulator, quit after RFK’s Food and Drug Administration commissioner, Dr. Marty Makary, reduced the number of clinical trials required before drugs can be approved — from two to one. 

One other thing: It’s only February, and there are already more than 900 cases of measles in the US — which, pre-RFK, was virtually measles-free.

Another Embarrassment

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin — who has known all along that the majority arrested by ICE were not the “worst of the worst” — apparently tried to save face after CBS published a report, based on an internal Department of Homeland Security document, revealing that less than 14 percent of nearly 400,000 immigrants arrested by ICE in 2025 were guilty of violent crimes. After the embarrassing report came out, she appeared to be trying to make even nonviolent crimes appear as bad as possible.

Drug trafficking, distribution of child pornography, burglary, fraud, DUI, embezzlement, solicitation of a minor, human smuggling are all categorized as “nonviolent crimes.”

Omitted from her statement: A whopping 39.8 percent were guilty of nothing more than living in the US illegally, or overstaying a visa, and that only 5.7 percent were involved with drugs.

Below, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) describes what happens to people grabbed by ICE — so many of whom are guilty of only minor crimes, or nothing at all:

@RepRaskin

I just exercised my right as a Member of Congress to conduct an unannounced oversight visit of the ICE field facility in Baltimore. The staff I met with respected my right to visit, but what I saw was disgraceful. Kristi Noem has a budget of $75 billion she could use to ensure humane conditions, but we saw 60 men packed into a room shoulder-to-shoulder, 24-hours-a-day, with a single toilet in the room and no shower facilities. They sleep like sardines with aluminum foil blankets. Whether it’s for three days or seven days, nobody would want a member of their family warehoused there. The room set aside for dangerous criminals and violent offenders was empty. We’re demanding immediate answers and action.

A Happy Story

Ironically, while people often don’t pay attention even when it would benefit them to do so, it seems that money will always get their attention. 

In Costa Rica, a program to pay people not to destroy the rainforest is bearing fruit. The proof of this, as reported in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Global Change Biology, emerged when a doctoral student set up more than 100 microphones around Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula. A million minutes of audio recordings showed that the reclaimed pastureland — made available in return for cash payments to farmers — produced a joyous din of living creatures similar to that of intact forests in the area. In other words, the forest was roaring back to full strength.  

How do the authorities pay for this? Mostly by taxing fossil fuels. Thanks to the program, Costa Rica’s ecosystem is now showing a net gain: Any forest acreage being lost is more than compensated by new forest coming in. Of course, even rapid new-growth forest cannot fully replace old-growth forest, but it’s a very hopeful development.  

Now if we could just do the same thing to combat the withering of democracy in America. What might that look like? Paying people to study the news and take a quiz? Paying people to vote? Let’s hear your ideas.