MSNBC’s Chris Hayes took a lengthy look at just a sample of the “outright, brazen, dangerous, ludicrous lies” told by Donald Trump and myriad other Republicans, some of which are causing actual problems for people represented by Republicans.
Hayes reminded viewers that in 2020, lies like these “brought an armed angry mob to our nation’s capital,” concluding ruefully that “if left unabated, I fear it is going to get people hurt again.”
You can watch the entire segment below:
For those who can’t watch, Hayes began by mentioning the danger misinformation poses to the country during this election, arguing that the term “doesn’t quite do enough to capture what is happening with one half of the American two party system.”
“Outright, brazen, dangerous, ludicrous lies in denial of the most obvious reality… has become not just the primary tactic for Donald Trump and JD Vance’s running mate, but the operating principle, increasingly, for the entire Republican Party,” he said.
As an example, he ran a clip from this week in which Donald Trump was asked, in the context of the latest excellent jobs report, “do you acknowledge that the economy is improving. Trump proceeded to lie about it at length, culminating in the racist false claim that “You have illegals coming in, and they’re taking the jobs.”
“A lie, just a lie,” Hayes countered. “Donald Trump knows the economy is doing very well. He knows the quote, illegals, undocumented, unauthorized workers, haven’t taken all the jobs. Inflation has cooled. Jobs are up, a lot. Wages are up. The stock market is booming. He denies it, as if by repeating the lie enough times, he can just change the underlying reality itself.”
Hayes then brought up another, even stranger lie — Trump claiming JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon endorsed him.
For those who missed it, Trump posted a doctored photo of a news article with a faked headline on Truth Social. Dimon has since come out publicly that he didn’t endorse Trump. When pressed on it, Trump first claimed he knew nothing about it and blamed assistants for it. When asked to comment, and told again that the claim is false, Trump then said “well, then somebody is using his name.” Read more about it here.
Hayes then noted that Florida Senator Marco Rubio is also lying about the jobs report, commenting, “at some level, it’s not anything new, right? We’ve been living with this for so long. Everyone knows Trump and his MAGA cronies are liars, but there’s real danger here, right? The lies are dangerous. They have a cost, like, for instance, most obviously the big lie of a stolen 2020, election, the lie that Donald Trump repeats to this day, almost every day, even as a running mate tries to gaslight us all into believing he doesn’t, and that lie caused the deadly January 6 insurrection election workers to flee their homes due to threats of violence.”
Hayes argued that this lie “is the means through which Trump may be priming supporters to do it all over again a month from now. In fact, he seems dead set on that if he loses. There’s also Trump’s disgusting blood libel directed to Haitian migrants, racist lies about folks stealing and eating pads that directly led to a series of bomb threats and fears for safety in Springfield, Ohio and workplaces and in schools. And it’s a lie, by the way, that JD Vance admits is a lie.”
Hayes then rolled the clip of JD Vance on CNN, admitting to Dana Bash that he made up the false story about Haitians– a story that has literally caused a rash of right wing terrorist threats against schools and people in Springfield.
This was followed by a clip from a recent Trump sin which Trump repeated several absolute lies about Haitian migrants and appeared to encourage his supporters to attack them physically. Then, a clip of Trump telling yet another very racist lie that the Biden administration took money intended for disaster relief and gave it to “illegals.
Hayes contrasted that to the shocking report Friday that when he was president, Trump repeatedly tried to withhold disaster aid from Democratic-leaning states.
Hayes connected that to Georgia GOP congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green who on Friday claimed that the government can somehow control the weather, and then implied Hurricane Helene was somehow created to harm GOP voters. (We shouldn’t need to say it, but to be clear this is not remotely true.)
Hayes called this “a pretty shocking lie,” adding, “actually, it’s out past a lie. ‘A lie’ doesn’t really do it justice. It’s a lurid delusion. It’s a form of madness she’s hoping to spread.” And, Hayes noted, this “madness” is having real impact, so much so that a Republican state senator from North Carolina has publicly begged his fellow Republicans to stop spreading these lies.
“What do you even do with stuff like that, like, where do you start combating a lie like that?” Hayes asked “The plain fact is that there’s been a complete and total epistemic breakdown among tens of millions of our fellow Americans. That breakdown, that brazen lying, is what brought threats of violence to the people of Springfield it is right now. as I speak, you actively hampering an ongoing hurricane recovery, and nearly four years ago, it brought an armed angry mob to our nation’s capital, and if left unabated, I fear it is going to get people hurt again.”
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