With the midterm elections two weeks away, President Trump is leading Republican candidates in outright lying to constituents. And one of the most popular lies, which Trump tweeted out Wednesday morning, actually tries to convince voters that Republicans hold one of Democrats’ positions on health care — and that Democrats don’t hold it.
Republicans will totally protect people with Pre-Existing Conditions, Democrats will not! Vote Republican.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2018
This is the second time in as many weeks that Trump has told this particular lie. Last week, he insisted “all Republicans support people with pre-existing conditions” while “Democrats will destroy your Medicare.”
ThinkProgress has found that at least 36 vulnerable House Republicans are telling the same lie in their campaign ads, even though all but four of them have voted at least once to eliminate protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
These lies are incredible, given Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) just promised last week that Republicans will try to repeal Obamacare again and added he also wants to cut Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid. Earlier this month, 50 Republican senators voted to maintain the Trump administrations’ rule permitting short-term insurance plans that can be denied to people with pre-existing conditions. And the Trump administration has argued in court that protecting people with pre-existing conditions is unconstitutional.
They’re not the only lies the administration is telling. Trump also promised this weekend that Congress would pass a new tax cut for “middle-income people” before November — even though Congress is in recess until after the election. When called to question about this contradiction Monday, he insisted there would be some kind of “resolution,” but then seemed to concede that would happen after the election.
This lie seemingly attempts to cover up the fact that last year’s Republican tax cut resulted in no wage growth for most workers. Executives and corporate shareholders, on the other hand, raked in a huge spike in profits, none of which trickled down.
The other big set of lies Trump and Republicans have been telling involves a caravan of immigrants making its way up through Central America to seek asylum in the United States — as is their right to do. These lies have included completely unfounded claims that “unknown Middle Easterners” and gang members were among the members of the caravan.
When press were invite to ask Trump questions in the Oval Office Tuesday, Vice President Pence tried to defend these xenophobic, fear-mongering lies. His explanation was that statistically, since the United States apprehends 10 or more suspected terrorists per day, “it’s inconceivable that there are not people of Middle Eastern descent” in the caravan. This claim about apprehensions was yet another lie — one that conflated terrorists with people of Middle Eastern descent — but also revealed that there is absolutely no evidence to substantiate these warnings about a group fleeing violence and authoritarian regimes.
It’s an ongoing concern that social media networks are vulnerable to the distribution of fake news, but in this election cycle, the lies are coming straight from the people the news is about.