Truth and Lies on the Campaign Trail

Bullshit.

That’s what the American people are being force-fed during this campaign season. And neither party has a monopoly on it.

First, there’s Donald Trump. Obviously. Here’s a random sample of the nonsense he has claimed over the past two weeks:

• Images of huge crowds at Kamala Harris’s rallies have been AI-generated, making them appear larger than they truly are;

• He had “more people” at the January 6 rally than the number that assembled to hear Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech; 

• Kamala Harris “happened to turn black” a number of years ago; 

• Biden is going to be reinstalled as the Democratic candidate. (He wishes.)

But while Trump’s BS is mostly a sin of commission, Kamala Harris’s is generally a sin of omission. Or evasion. Abandoning policy positions without explanation, memory-holing her duties as vice president (border czar? What border czar?), dodging interviews, and coasting into a polling lead on vibes and memes alone. And all of that was preceded by the biggest Democratic lie of all: that Joe Biden was fit to serve another four years as president. In a brilliant essay over the weekend, my colleague Eli Lake described all of this as part of “the election of laughter and forgetting.” (Read it here and listen to the accompanying Honestly episode if you haven’t already.) 

But now, Team Harris is distorting the truth in arguably the most sinister way yet. On Tuesday, Axios reported that the Harris campaign “has been editing news headlines and descriptions within Google search ads that make it appear as if the Guardian, Reuters, CBS News, and other major publishers are on her side.” The ads are labeled as “paid for” by the Harris campaign, and the links take readers to real news stories. But the headline for the ad—which paints Kamala in glowing terms—is written by the Harris campaign, not the outlet in question. 

And when you look at the result, you can see why this is so misleading:

This is the textbook definition of misinformation (albeit with a tiny disclaimer slapped on it). And it comes from the party that has spent almost a decade fretting about the dangers of “post-truth” politics. 

Meanwhile, the people who are supposed to help sort the truth from the bullshit—the media—have blown their credibility. Americans don’t place their trust in the press because the press has proven to be unworthy of it.

Take this clip from Stephen Colbert’s Late Show on Monday. In it, Colbert says to CNN host Kaitlan Collins, “I know you guys are objective over there, that you just report the news as it is.” The audience bursts out laughing. 

“Was that supposed to be a laugh line?” asks Collins. 

“It wasn’t supposed to be, but I guess it is,” says Colbert.

For the latest example of why the audience laughs at lines like that, check out this week’s fawning cover story on Kamala Harris in Time magazine, complete with a hagiographic image of the candidate: 

Harris did not make herself available for an interview for the piece. And that, it seems, was the right call. Even without access to the vice president and no original quotes, Time’s Charlotte Alter painted a picture of a stateswoman ready to meet “her moment.” 

Ahead of this election, we were warned of the rising threat of AI deepfakes. Thanks to artificial intelligence, we were told it would be next to impossible to sort the truth from the lies. But this election season proves that America’s political-media complex needs no technological help when it comes to blurring the lines. 

Here are three pieces from The Free Press about truth and fiction on the campaign trail—the lies we are told, and the stories we choose to tell ourselves. 

First, Francesca Block and Joe Nocera get to the bottom of whether Democratic VP nominee Tim Walz lied about his military service. They look at the claims both for and against and ask: “Is Tim Walz Really Guilty of ‘Stolen Valor’?” 

Second, Kat Rosenfield argues that our election is like a superhero movie, complete with Easter eggs, story arcs, heroes, and villains. In the end, she says, there is no plot or big reveal, just the inane babbling of the candidates, and we are starting to hallucinate patterns where none exist. Read Kat on why “The 2024 Election Is a Marvel Universe.” 

Finally, River Page asks how a satirical post on X, including a lurid joke about J.D. Vance and a couch, morphed into something like a half-truth winked at by the Democrats. Read River’s piece: “The J.D. Vance Couch Thing Was Funny, Until the Harris Campaign Co-Opted It.” 

Oliver Wiseman is a writer and editor for The Free Press. Follow him on X @ollywiseman. 

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