It’s stunning that after over a decade of Donald Trump’s political career—nearly six of those years as president of the United States—many in the mainstream media still refuse to use the word “lie” in describing the statements of Trump and the many other professional liars employed in his administration.
Let’s just say it. They lie. They know they’re lying. That’s the point. But too many in our media ecosystem clutch their pearls and whisper that if they call a lie a lie, people will think they’re not “impartial.” Puh-leeze.
I got a peek at how this plays out recently (more on that in a minute), but I’m far from alone in noticing. Media critics like Dan Froomkin, who writes the Press Watch newsletter on Substack, regularly call out news outlets for dancing around the reality that many statements from the Trump White House are either transparent lies, deranged, or both.
For example, in July, Froomkin zeroed in on coverage of Trump’s announcement of new tariffs, rightly noting that he justified them based on “an obvious lie” that this was a Very Serious effort to crack down on countries that tolerate forced labor. The Associated Press, Froomkin noted, “guilelessly” reported the official rationale with an apparently straight face. Only 12 paragraphs into the story did the nation’s largest news service note any flaws in the administration’s justifications, with the critiques carefully atributed to “critics.”
Froomkin notes that while the law under which Trump imposed the tariffs allows action against “unjustifiable,” “unreasonable” or “discriminatory” trade practices, AP never asked the obvious question: “But what is unjustifiable, unreasonable or discriminatory about the practices of the trading partners that happen to account for 99% of US imports?” Other outlets, like the New York Times and Politico, were as bad or worse.
This is routine. Trump, or Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, or HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. say something wildly, obviously false and the media blandly report that “critics say” the statement was inaccurate, rarely daring to call out the most shameless lies. In most cases, the wildly wrong statements can have only two viable explanations: Either Trump and his minions are consciously lying or they’re so delusional that they’re probably not safe to have walking free among us. And sometimes the public record pretty clearly tells us which alternative applies.
Call me old fashioned, but I think it’s dishonest not to call a lie a lie
Recently, my colleagues at Defend Public Health—who don’t believe in tiptoeing around the obvious—called out RFK Jr’s endless parade of deceptions in a report titled, Whoppers in Review: RFK Jr.’s Killer Year of Lies. In it, they reviewed the results of a year spent tracking and debunking Kennedy’s dishonesty in a weekly website feature called the RFK Jr. Whopper of the Week. They looked at recurring themes and patterns in how the secretary communicates and—like the good scientists they are—followed the data where it led them.
And where it led them was to the conclusion that these aren’t the random misstatements of a confused mind. The man is lying.
They drew that conclusion because Kennedy’s false statements consistently follow patterns characteristic of disinformation and deceptive propaganda. Specifically, he regularly appeals to intense emotions like fear and anger. He substitutes anecdotes for data. And what few snippets of data he does cite are carefully cherry-picked to omit what is often a mass of research that contradicts his preconceived opinions.
But we struggled to get news outlets to cover the report, and I suspect squeamishness about the word “lies” played a role. A recent conversation with a reporter I know—who, for obvious reasons, has asked to be anonymous—reinforced that view.
Despite the carefully built case, this reporter was forbidden by their editor from using the word “lie” in relation to Kennedy. The editor argued that to say a person lies implies knowledge of their intent, and we can’t possibly know another person’s thoughts.
This is a standard editorial practice in mainstream media outlets. And it’s not a crazy argument in most cases. Often, you can’t tell whether a person means to deceive or is just clueless.
But sometimes you can know intent, and Kennedy is Exhibit A. Everything in the public record suggests that he knows what he’s doing. He does what propagandists do, and does it again and again.
Propagandists know that emotions often overwhelm reason in the human mind, and that storytelling is often the most powerful way to get a point across. And they carefully select tiny snippets of fact that seem to support their view while ignoring the rest.
Anecdotes, I should note, are a particularly effective way to mislead about science. As the Defend Public Health team noted, if my uncle drank Dr. Pepper every day and lived to be 105, it may make a gripping story—but it does not prove that drinking Dr. Pepper makes you live longer. Yet Kennedy regularly offers anecdotes as if they were proof.
True, none of these tactics by themselves prove someone is consciously lying. Stories and emotional appeals get used regularly by effective communicators making legitimate points. But seeing them all used together again and again in the service of blatant falsehoods makes the pattern clear.
And many of Kennedy’s falsehoods are shockingly blatant. Speaking in 2021 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania (currently the site of a deadly measles outbreak), he praised the area’s low vaccination rates, suggested that the worst effect of measles is making kids stay home from school, and added, “What is the cure for measles? Cure for measles is chicken soup and vitamin A, and neither of those things can be patented.”
Neither chicken soup nor vitamin A cures measles, but too much vitamin A can damage your liver.
He’s also said that the prior version of the federal dietary guidelines “put Froot Loops at the top of the food pyramid.” No specific food product or brand has ever been at the top of the food pyramid.
Kennedy does stuff like this virtually every time he speaks. He’s done it for years.
Can we read his mind? No. But if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks, it’s dishonest to turn somersaults to avoid saying, “This must be a duck.”
Call a lie a lie. Sometimes lives depend on it.
