Countering Their Lies

Understanding how the Trump regime lies and how we respond is key to winning the war for public opinion.

Photo courtesy of NBC News

The Trump regime’s war on our democracy began with a war on truth, and that fight is continuing apace. They currently have a clear goal: turn public opinion against migrants and anti-ICE protesters to justify a police state in Democratic cities.

They’re deploying three key messages to achieve this.

First, they’re falsely labeling all undocumented immigrants as criminals in order to telegraph to the nation that they deserve what’s coming to them.

Second, they are grossly exaggerating the scope and nature of the anti-ICE protests in order to deploy even more federal troops.

Third, the White House is brazenly conflating peaceful protestors with violent rioters and “insurrectionists” in order to suppress First Amendment freedoms.

When we hear and read the regime’s statements, they usually fall into one of these three buckets. To form a coherent response, we need to be disciplined about identifying their lies, exaggerations and conflations where we see them. And as members of the public, we all can help get the truth out there to counter their propaganda.

Immigrants aren’t criminals

The playbook of the White House is neither inventive nor unfamiliar. From his very first speech as a candidate after coming down the golden escalator at Trump Tower, Donald Trump has labeled whole immigrant communities as rapists, drug dealers and murderers in order to dehumanize them; turn the public against them; and weaponize fear, bigotry and division.

Republicans habitually exploit instances like the tragic murder of Laken Riley to paint all undocumented immigrants as murderous gang members. Democrats unfortunately are pretty terrible at responding to these attacks. They often even feel powerless to vote against draconian legislation (intentionally named after victims like Riley) because they worry they’ll be viewed as soft on “migrant crime.” Republicans learned long ago that it’s far easier to tar an entire community with the actions of one person than it is for Democrats to prove a negative and demonstrate how the vast majority of immigrants are law-abiding and hard-working.

But the White House has recently made a series of mistakes borne of overconfidence, and they have taken things too far. That presents a solid opportunity for concerted response.

Recently, for example, the White House crudely photoshopped an image of Kilmar Abrego García in order to claim he’s a gang member. Donald Trump even pulled the picture out to show the world his “proof,” getting fact checked and ridiculed in the aftermath.

And this week Kristi Noem called the entire city of Los Angeles a city of criminals, not a city of immigrants, while Stephen Miller got called out in reporting by the Wall Street Journal for ordering I.C.E. not to round up actual criminals but to target immigrant workers outside of Home Depot.

The best way to handle habitual liars is not just to challenge each and every lie, though that is important. They must also be labeled as liars whose credibility is worthless, tinged with animus and never to be trusted.

This approach leverages how normal people’s brains actually work. If someone lies to you once, you might wonder what they’re after or hiding from you. If they lie to you repeatedly, you learn to not trust a thing they say. (MAGA appears to be an exception to this, with cognitive dissonance and cultish obedience dominating over critical thinking.)

The mendacity of the Trump White House means we can still win over the center of the country. The White House lied openly about Abrego García. Officials lied when they said they were only going to deport criminals. Now they’re lying again in a very big way by claiming every undocumented immigrant is a criminal.

Noem, Miller, Homan, Trump—these are the goons who cried “criminal.” We need to call them what they are: a pack of racists who see a brown person and think “deport.”

L.A. is not “ablaze.”

If you were to watch Fox coverage of the protests for any length of time (and I’d not advise that for anyone) you’d start to notice something. The same video images of burning Waymo cars and tear gas filled streets, complete with rock throwing protestors, are being broadcast on repeat.

This has two effects. First, it gives the distinct impression that there is massive danger, chaos and destruction happening. Second, it suggests, falsely, that the entire city of Los Angeles looks this way. From this, we wind up with tweets from Republican senators like Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, who claimed Gov. Newsom caved to the “radical left” and “illegals” while the “largest city of California was set ablaze.”

Marsha, Marsha, Marsha.

So the entire city of Los Angeles is on fire now, is it? Can you name a single building? Which district is it in?

The GOP and its media allies of course did this before. During the George Floyd protests, particularly in places like Portland and New York City, there was a widespread but false belief that both cities were “ablaze” and in total chaos. Fox News watching parents and grandparents called to make sure their adult children were okay. But like the L.A. protests of today, the conflicts in 2020 were contained to small areas. The National Guard wasn’t needed then, and it’s certainly not needed now.

These wild exaggerations of whole cities on fire are not just irresponsible, they are intentional. Trump’s sycophantic supporters in Congress and on right wing media hope the rest of the country really comes to believe that L.A. is “ablaze” from the “radical left” and “illegals” so that Trump can justify sending in federal troops.

So here’s the truth. As CBS more responsibly reported, the conflicts (and recent nighttime curfew, now lifted) are contained to a few blocks around ICE facilities and operations downtown.

The rest of the city of 10 million is just going about its business.

For some perspective, here is a map that I shared on social media from a friend’s post. It shows the entire city of L.A. with the small conflict zone circled .

We all need to put skepticism and fact-checking into daily practice. When you turn on the television, for example, and you see the same car fires and smoke-filled streets on repeat, remember that the media is complicit in the exaggeration of the conflict. It’s feeding the White House’s false narrative to boost ratings and keep you anxious and glued to your set.

It’s not real but it’s working hard to make something small and contained look big and pervasive.

Call it out. Share posts and videos of how normal things are. This is particularly helpful if you live in Los Angeles (or the other cities where anti-ICE protests are beginning to take place) and your daily life has not been meaningfully affected by the protests.

Protestors are not rioters or insurrectionists

If you listen to the rhetoric coming out of the White House, as I am sadly forced to daily, you begin to notice patterns.

Suddenly, the anti-ICE protests of last weekend, which were by and large peaceful, were dubbed “insurrections” against the government—even when they were simply crowds of people protesting ICE abuses. Here was Stephen Miller starting things down this path on Friday:

People have a right to peaceful assembly in this country. A crowd approaching an ICE facility is not an insurrection. This, however, was one:

It’s to the White House’s advantage to label protests as insurrections, of course, because it dilutes the power and imagery of the actual insurrection within a history the GOP is eager to rewrite. The presence of “insurrectionists” in Los Angeles would also open the door to invocation of the Insurrection Act, just as Trump recently declared while speaking to the press:

It wasn’t long before Trump began to parrot Miller’s characterization. Two days ago, for example, on his Truth Social platform, he called the protestors “paid insurrectionists.”

Trump also referred to the protests as “catastrophic Gavin Newscum inspired Riots going on in Los Angeles.” He then issued a threat to “any protester” of his army parade this weekend that they are going to be met with “very big force.”

I personally hope people simply ignore Trump’s vainglorious military spectacle. And as for protests around the country and in Los Angeles, there will always be fringe elements who intentionally stir up trouble. Out of crowds of thousands, they are the exception. Yet the White House and the media portray these scattered instances as if they’re the rule.

It will be especially important this weekend, when thousands of “No Kings” rallies are planned, for protests to remain peaceful. This administration is itching for a violent confrontation, and we should never give them that.

Time for each of us to step up

Beyond the restraint we must show, we need to be proactive. Participants across all 50 states need to post images and videos conveying the peaceful nature of their resistance to the Trump regime. This will help counter the lies, exaggerations and conflations discussed above. If the media begins to focus on a handful of troublemakers, we need to be quick to call out the false lens and skewed narrative.

Make no mistake: The stream of propaganda spewing from the White House and its allies is key to their larger effort to win the war for public opinion to justify harsher crackdowns. The good news, however, is that this also means we, as members of the public, all have a role to play in setting the record straight.

I’m often asked what people can do besides writing letters and donating money. To this I’d say, attend a rally or protest this Saturday. It’s crucial that we show up in huge numbers. You can find your closest one here by entering your zip code. If you can’t physically attend, let others know where to go. Put it out to your networks of family and friends, and let them know where you stand. I’ll be attending a rally in New York City at Bryant Park at 2:00 p.m.

Then help document, publicize and amplify what’s really happening, with millions of ordinary citizens standing up to dangerous federal abuse and overreach. Be part of the wave that changes public opinion, because in the end we the people are the ultimate guardrail against autocracy.