The Club PUBlication 10/21/2024

Trump is increasingly hostile to fact-checking
By ASHLEY PARKER and JOSH DAWSEY • The Washington Post

Donald Trump and his campaign have waged an aggressive campaign against fact-checking in recent months, pushing TV networks, journalism organizations and others to abandon the practice if they hope to interact with Trump.

Trump nearly backed out of an August interview with a group of Black journalists after learning they planned to fact-check his claims. The following month, he and his allies repeatedly complained about the fact-checking that occurred during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, berating journalists and news executives in the middle of the televised debate.

And this month, Trump declined to sit down for an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes" because he objected to the show's practice of factchecking, according to the show.

Campaign advisers also expressly asked CBS News to forgo fact-checking in its vice-presidential debate with Trump's running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance — who then complained on air when a moderator corrected him.

The moves are the latest example of Trump's long-held resistance to being called to account for his lies, which have formed the bedrock of his political message for years. Just in recent weeks, for example, Trump has seized on fabricated tales of migrants eating pets and Venezuelan gangs overtaking cities in pushing his anti-immigration message as he seeks a second term in office.

Lucas Graves, a journalism and mass communications professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said that publicly chafing at fact-checking has become a form of tribalism among some Republicans.

"Within the political establishment on the right, it is now considered quite legitimate — and quite legitimate to say publicly and openly — that you disapprove of fact-checking," said Lucas, author of "Deciding What's True: The Rise of Political Fact-Checking in American Journalism. He added: "Precisely because of Trump's unusual relationship with the truth — even for a politician — it's hardly surprising that he would object to it so volubly and so forcefully."

The Washington Post Fact Checker team tallied that by the end of Trump's presidency, he had made 30,573 false or misleading claims — an average of about 21 false, erroneous or misleading claims a day.