ROGER KIMBALL: On Truth and Lie in an Extramoral Sense. The debate last week on ABC was, from one point of view, a dog’s breakfast, but, from another, it was a mesmerizing exercise in vertiginous, pseudo-Nietzschean legerdemain.
As has become widely recognized, the debate was really a sort of ambush in which the execrable immoderators blatantly took sides, constantly “fact-checking” Trump with erroneous objections while letting Harris slide with a steady stream of lies emitted according to the fixed convention of Democratic talking points. As I said at the time, the real loser in that exchange was ABC News, whose credibility is now in the gutter.
Various public-spirited people, from media stars like Laura Ingraham to ordinary citizens with an X account, have come forward to provide inventories of Harris’s—and the moderators’—lies. One of the most complete was provided by @BelannF, who posted this useful inventory in paratactic summary:
Project 2025 – Lie
National abortion ban – Lie
“Very fine people” hoax – Lie
Will be a Dictator – Lie
Blaming Trump for Afghanistan- Lie
Racism and division by Trump – Lie
Never said she will ban fracking – Lie
Rally goers leaving early – Lie
“I will go over my plan” – Lie
Police died on Jan 6th – Lie
“Bloodbath” comment – Lie
Trumps stance on IVF – Lie
Won’t take guns – Lie
Trump weak on foreign policy – Lie
Trump friends with Putin, Un – Lie
Trump inciting Jan 6. – Lie
No military in combat zones – Lie*
She provides no sources for these assertions, but you can look them up in a nonce. I’ll go first with three to get you started. Early on in the evening, Harris angrily recycled one of the most thoroughly “debunked” (i.e., refuted) claims: that Trump said there were “very fine people” on both sides at the neo-Nazi demonstration at Charlottesville. Here’s a video clip of his remarks. Far from describing the thugs as “very fine people,” he castigated them in the strongest terms. Then why is this lie so frequently recycled? Perhaps it is a political application of the old adage repititio mater memoriae: “Repetition is the mother of memory.” If you repeat a lie often enough people come to believe it, or half believe, or at least wonder about the veracity of its contrary.
Harris also claimed that Trump said there would be a “bloodbath” if he were not elected. But what he actually said was that the auto industry would face a financial bloodbath if the Biden-Harris administration’s climate policies were enacted. And so they would.
Perhaps my favorite lie was her claim that there were no active-duty American military personnel in a war zone at present. Anyone who reads the news knows that is not true, as these American soldiers testified with refreshing candor.
What has been fascinating to watch is how the post-debate consensus has evolved.
Read the whole thing.
* Watch: The Best Fact-Check of Kamala Harris in History, and You’ll Never Guess How It Ends (language alert):
This is the greatest fact-check to ever exist. It will never get better than this. Savor it. pic.twitter.com/V6U6q4EF8t
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) September 14, 2024
Related: ABC News Is Perplexed: Why Isn’t Kamala Harris Getting a Post-Debate Bounce? The Answer Is…