I remember growing up in a time when one of the most important things a person could do was to tell the truth. If we did something wrong, we could expect to be punished. If we did something wrong and then lied about it, we were punished more severely. We were constantly being told that “honesty is the best policy”. That was 70 years ago. What in the hell is happening today? Most Americans, left, right, or independent, want leaders who shoot straight, tell the truth, and don’t play games with our lives. We don’t want the perfect truth. We don’t want every detail. What we want is honesty when the stakes are high. What I see as one of the problems is that not all lies are the same. Some are just small political exaggerations. Some are mistakes. Some are spin. Some are so big that they change the course of history. A major problem is that, in many cases, the press seems to lump them all into the same category, which, in itself, is just another lie.

Let's look at Biden first. Joe Biden has made false and misleading statements. That’s a fact. He has mixed up numbers, overstated job growth, and gotten inflation statistics wrong. Sometimes he would talk fast and get details scrambled. Sometimes he exaggerated to make a point. These mistakes deserved correction. They frustrated people. They gave his critics ammunition. But when you look at Biden's falsehoods, you will see that they didn’t cause mass harm. What Biden's falsehoods didn’t do was start wars, they didn’t undermine elections, they didn’t encourage violence, create a conspiracy, or tear down institutions. They were the kind of political misstatements that get fact-checked, corrected, and then should fade away. You don’t have to like Biden to see the difference between a president who gets numbers wrong and a president whose falsehoods reshape the country.

Barack Obama had a major broken promise, but it actually did limited damage. When he said, “If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it”, millions of Americans found out that wasn’t true. Plans were canceled, and people were angry. Obama actually apologized. This was a failure, and it hurt his credibility. Did it cause war? Did it cause mass casualties? Did it threaten our democracy? No! Obama’s falsehoods were policy oversimplification, overpromises, and misleading statistics. They caused political fallout, not a national crisis. Again, you don’t have to like Obama to see the difference between a broken policy promise and a falsehood that leads to war or violence.

George Bush’s false claims led to war. They were a very different category of falsehoods that had life and death consequences. If you remember, in the lead-up to the war with Iraq, the Bush administration made many false claims about Iraq. Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, which turned out to be untrue. Iraq was reactivating its nuclear program. Again, not true. Iraq had operational ties to al-Qaeda. That also was not true. Multiple investigations found that none of these claims were supported by intelligence. Whether you believe these were lies, mistakes, or intelligence failures, the consequences are undeniable. Over 4400 American Troops killed. Over 30,000 American troops were wounded. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians are dead. A region destabilized. The rise of ISIS. Trillions of dollars spent. This is what a high-impact falsehood looks like. It doesn’t matter if Bush made fewer false statements overall. What matters is that the ones that he made helped justify an unjust war that reshaped the world. This is not about blaming Bush personally, though many have. It is about recognizing the scale of the results of his false statements.

I have to admit that after researching this, Donald Trump is in a league of his own. His falsehoods are different from those of the other three presidents in scale, type, and impact. This isn’t about liking or disliking him. It’s about what the falsehood did, so here we go. Trump repeatedly and still does claim that the 2020 election was stolen. We have had multiple court rulings that there was no election fraud. We have had multiple state audits, and they all stated that it was a fair election. His own Department of Homeland Security said that there was no election fraud. Multiple Republican election administrators stated there was no election fraud. Trump's claim that the election was stolen was not just a small mistake. It became the foundation of a national movement to build on distrust. His claim of being cheated led directly to the January 6 attack on the Capitol. It led to threats against election workers. Because of Trump's false claim of a stolen election, millions of Americans rejected the certified results on just his word and not the evidence. It has had the long-term effect of weakening the trust in our democracy.
When it came to the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump made numerous false claims that probably cost thousands of lives. Trump made false claims about the severity of the virus. He pushed unproven treatments. He undercut public health measures. Public health experts widely agree that these falsehoods contributed to thousands of preventable deaths by discouraging masking, vaccination, and social distancing. Trump has used falsehoods to attack journalists, political opponents, private citizens, whistleblowers, and election workers. This is actually unprecedented in modern presidential history. The Washington Post documents 30,573 misleading statements in four years, which is more than 20 false statements a day. Is the number the most alarming thing, or is it their purpose and results? They delegitimized institutions. They created an alternate reality, remember the alternate truths? They have kept supporters in a permanent state of grievance, which makes it impossible to unite the nation. It has undermined any authority except for himself. This is not normal political spin. It is an intentional use of falsehood to destabilize the country.

To summarize this in the cleanest way to understand the difference. Joe Biden got numbers wrong and exaggerates, but his falsehoods were very low-impact mistakes. Barack Obama made a major broken promise that he apologized for. That mistake caused no mass harm. George W Bush made false claims about Iraq. Those claims were used to justify war, which caused a major loss of life. Donald Trump spread election lies, spread COVID misinformation, used falsehoods to justify cruelty, attacked institutions, and fueled political violence. I haven’t even included all the false information that he spread about immigration and the violence that ICE is causing in our cities. That will be for another blog. This is not about whether you like Trump or not, but it is about his structural use of falsehoods that has changed the course of the country.

This isn’t about who you liked. It’s about what the falsehoods did. America can survive politicians who exaggerate numbers because we have shown that we can. America can survive politicians who get statistics wrong. Americans can survive politicians who oversimplify policy. America will struggle to survive with wars built on false premises, elections undermined by false claims, institutions attacked by conspiracy theories, and violence fueled by misinformation. The country is the strongest when its leaders, right or left, tell the truth when it matters most. The 1^st amendment is not in place to protect the lies. It was put in place to ensure the truth was not suppressed from the people, as it is being suppressed today.