Politicians’ tendency to stretch the truth or even outright lie is nothing new. However, this election cycle has seen such a divergence from the truth that one’s vision of what truth is is now almost entirely dependent on their partisan affiliation.
President-elect Donald Trump’s image of the country is fairly negative. Trump likes to paint the picture of a failing economy and inflation that has skyrocketed. He speaks of crime being at an all-time high and that migrants are pouring across the border at rates never before seen, causing crime waves and eating pets, as a result of “open border” policies.
Trump claims that Vice President Kamala Harris is a communist or a socialist and that her election would lead to economic ruin and government control over the economy. Trump also maintains that he not only won the election in 2020 but also that the only way he could have lost Tuesday was for the Democrats to steal the election again.
Of course, it is true that inflation skyrocketed from 2021-2022, but it has been on a sharp decline since then. Additionally, the U.S. economy remains strong and continues to grow.
While the National Victimization Survey shows an increase in crime from 2020 to 2022, FBI data shows a decline in violent crime over the same period, and more recent data from both the FBI and other sources show decreases in crime.
While yearly repatriations increased from 2020 to 2022 expulsions also increased under Title 42, a Trump-era policy that President Biden kept for most of his presidency. Additionally, the Border Patrol reported higher recidivism rates for those expelled under Title 42 than under Title 8, meaning much of the numbers on border encounters were likely inflated. According to previously cited immigration statistics, deportations have steadily increased under the Biden administration since 2021. Furthermore, a recent report showed a decrease in border crossing arrests.
Moreover, a recent study by the Cato Institute showed that more undocumented immigrants with criminal records were released under Trump than under Biden, and that the number of illegal border crossings have decreased since the ending of Title 42. Studies have also shown that immigrants, both documented and undocumented, are much less likely to commit a crime than natural born US citizens. There has been no correlation with increased migration and increases in crime. Claims about migrant gang takeovers and Haitians eating pets, although widely circulated and repeated by the likes of Donald Trump and JD Vance, are false.
Despite the claims that Harris is a communist, her campaign has made an effort of ticking to the center, and Harris has also called herself a “pragmatic capitalist.” In addition, actual communists have denied that Harris is a communist, and supposed “evidence” showing Harris to have been a member of the USSR communist party, or Harris and Tim Walz posing next to a communist party sign, have been shown to be doctored.
Harris’ policies show no signs of Marxism; her “price gouging” plan is not the Soviet-style “price controls.” In fact, her plans have more in common with laws on the books in many states, which ban price gouging in the event of an emergency such as a natural disaster. Harris has also abandoned more left-wing policies, including her previous support for universal healthcare, a policy that exists in every developed capitalist country besides the United States.
As for the 2020 election, even the conservative news network Fox News had to fact-check Trump when he claimed he won, and every court case challenging the 2020 election results failed.
While Trump, Vance, Musk and the Republicans have been saying things that are false, it is also true that Harris, Walz and the Democratic Party have said things that are false, or at the very least misleading.
Harris and Walz, for example, have pushed a false narrative of a national pregnancy registry, where women across America would supposedly need to register their pregnancy for government monitoring as part of a second Trump administration’s adherence to Project 2025. In addition, Harris has misled on Trump’s economic record, such as exaggerating the inflationary effects of his tariff policy by citing upper estimates of a $4,000 price increase on the average American family, although other estimates show such an increase at about a $2,000 price increase.
Harris also falsely claimed that Trump lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs before the pandemic, despite the fact that the U.S. economy gained approximately 400,000 manufacturing jobs throughout the pre-pandemic Trump administration. Another misleading claim Harris made was that Trump left the Biden-Harris administration with the worst unemployment rate since the Great Depression. Although in March 2020 unemployment did reach record highs, it decreased significantly by the time that President Biden took office.
However, to bring up false or misleading claims from Harris in order to downplay such claims or to say “all politicians lie” only leads to a both sides fallacy, and to whataboutism. This only deflects from the main problem of false political narratives. Both sides are not created equal, and truth is not bipartisan.
This is not to disparage Republican voters in general or those with conservative beliefs. However, it does become a problem when a portion of the country believes in things that are brazenly untrue, something seen in 2016 when a majority of Americans said that false news stories were causing confusion.
This is why news organizations that fact-check candidates are more likely to receive backlash and claims of “bias.” When the truth itself becomes partisan, room for rational debate on things such as public policy grows increasingly small. Political polarization increases as what is true becomes dependent on one’s feelings and on what the “correct” politician or public figure has said. It only decreases willingness to reach out to the other side, thus worsening the cycle.
This is why it is increasingly important to fact-check and to not accept what one reads or hears on a debate stage at face value. Politicians on both sides of the aisle need to be called out and corrected when they say things that are not true. This does not mean that anyone should be silenced or censored when they say untrue things, because oftentimes the presence of falsehoods is necessary to discover what is true. However, it does mean that there are things that are, and that are not, backed up by fact. Democracy can only thrive when the search for truth is valued, and as citizens, we should demand that our politicians value this too.
