Trump and Trumpism Have ‘Won’ in Four of the Past Five Years
The fact-checkers at Politifact this year have handed their annual “Lie of the Year” award to President Donald Trump and his supporters’ coronavirus denialism, including any “claims that deny, downplay or disinform about COVID-19.”
“President Donald J. Trump fueled confusion and conspiracies from the earliest days of the coronavirus pandemic,” Politifact managing editor Katie Sanders writes. “He embraced theories that COVID-19 accounted for only a small fraction of the thousands upon thousands of deaths. He undermined public health guidance for wearing masks and cast Dr. Anthony Fauci as an unreliable flip-flopper.”
And while Sanders notes “the infodemic was not the work of a single person,” she makes clear “Trump was the conductor, if not the composer. The message: The threat to your health was overhyped to hurt the political fortunes of the president.”
Importantly, Politifact reminds Americans that all along Trump knew the truth.
“On Feb. 7, Trump leveled with book author Bob Woodward about the dangers of the new virus that was spreading across the world, originating in central China. He told the legendary reporter that the virus was airborne, tricky and ‘more deadly than even your strenuous flus,'” while all along telling the American public just the opposite: “I mean, view this the same as the flu.”
Here’s Trump on February 26, telling Americans the 15 U.S. cases “are going to go down to zero.”
“Three weeks later, March 19, he acknowledged to Woodward: ‘To be honest with you, I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down. Because I don’t want to create a panic.'”
This is not President Trump’s first “win.” In 2019 Politifact awarded Trump the “Lie of the Year” for his false claim that the whistleblower got his Ukraine call “almost completely wrong.”
In 2017 Trump also won the award for his lie that Russian election interference is a “made-up story.”
Trump wasn’t the direct “winner” of the 2016 “Lie of the Year” award, “fake news” was.
“Fake news found a willing enabler in then- candidate Trump,” Politifact writes, “who at times repeated and legitimized made-up reports.”
And in 2015, when Trump hit the political stage, the “campaign misstatements of Donald Trump” were awarded “Lie of the Year.”