\n<\/p>\n
Could\u00a0Donald Trump<\/strong>\u2019s comfy post-truth ecosystem help derail GOP challengers like\u00a0Ron DeSantis<\/strong>? The Florida governor is trying to woo the Trump base away with a sleight of hand, refusing to directly challenge the GOP\u2019s standard bearer while making his pitch to the party faithful. \u201cWe must reject the culture of losing that has infected our party in recent years,\u201d DeSantis\u00a0said<\/a> Saturday in Iowa, without mentioning Trump as central to the party\u2019s struggles in three consecutive cycles. When\u00a0asked<\/a> on Monday about that \u201cculture of losing\u201d comment, and if he acknowledges Trump lost, DeSantis pointed out how the GOP lost the House in 2018, lost the Senate in 2020 (as\u00a0Joe Biden<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cbecomes\u201d president), and underperformed in 2022\u2014all without mentioning Trump.\u00a0<\/p>\n The problem for DeSantis, who appears\u00a0on the verge<\/a> of officially entering the 2024 race, is that in order to make the case he is more electable than Trump this time around, he needs to debunk the lie that Trump actually beat Biden\u00a0last time. As Republican consultant\u00a0Alex Conant<\/strong>\u00a0told<\/a> Politico, \u201cIf a candidate can\u2019t dispose of a fake issue like who won the election, how can voters expect them to handle the real issues?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s not hard to see how the GOP got here. I remember the first time I heard Trump interviewed on television. I was struck by just how truly untethered from the truth he was. Of course, politicians have lied before. But Trump has taken dishonesty far beyond making vague, unfulfillable promises or spinning one\u2019s record. He made\u00a0tens of thousands<\/a> of false or misleading claims in office. He\u2019ll say things that can be easily disproved by visible evidence,\u00a0like that he built<\/a> his long-promised\u00a0border wall<\/a> with Mexico, or that he\u2019d\u00a0never met<\/a>\u00a0E. Jean Carroll,<\/strong>\u00a0even\u00a0when there is\u00a0a photo of him<\/a> with the columnist who accused him of rape. (A jury last week\u00a0found<\/a>\u00a0Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation of Carroll.) It was telling that Trump, as president, once told<\/a> a crowd that what they\u2019re \u201cseeing\u201d and \u201creading is not what\u2019s happening.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s supporters, by ignoring the \u201cfake news\u201d and simply taking his word\u2014or that of his propagandists\u2014are left in post-truth reality. I\u00a0wrote<\/a> in November on the \u201cpost-truth midterms\u201d\u2014and now we\u2019re entering the post-truth primary. It\u2019s a space where uttering truths that run counter to Trump\u2019s lies becomes an act of betrayal, leaving DeSantis or\u00a0Mike Pence<\/strong>\u00a0or anyone hoping to woo this base in a sticky wicket. Even Trump seems to acknowledge how essential the subject of 2020 \u201cfraud\u201d is in the 2024 primary, telling<\/a>\u00a0The Messenger this week how if he didn\u2019t talk about it, \u201cI would actually be rebuked by a large portion of the Republican Party.\u201d<\/p>\n The former president\u2019s dishonesty is nothing new, but last week\u2019s\u00a0off-the-rails CNN town hall<\/a>\u00a0brought this trait back to the forefront of American voters\u2019 minds. Trump lied, as he always does about\u00a0various topics<\/a>, from the 2020 election (\u201cIf you look at True the Vote, they found millions of votes on camera, on government cameras, where they were stuffing ballot boxes\u201d) to blaming the January 6\u00a0<\/sup>insurrection on the then Democratic speaker of the house (\u201ccrazy\u00a0Nancy Pelosi<\/strong> and the mayor of Washington were in charge, as you know, of security, and they did not do their job.\u201d)\u00a0<\/p>\n As often happens\u00a0during a rally<\/a>, the town hall audience\u2014which CNN said was made up of New Hampshire Republicans and undeclared voters\u2014rewarded Trump\u2019s lies and insults with applause and laughter. This is the base DeSantis needs to win and this base occupies the post-truth ecosystem that Trump has created and thrived in. In order to draw these supporters back to Earth One, DeSantis would have to challenge the fundamental tenet of Trumpism, which is that Trump\u2019s untruths trump all actual truths. One might be able to puncture a lie, but Trump supporters aren\u2019t going to love you for it. If anything they\u2019ll be enraged.<\/p>\n Republican politicians have rarely gone on offense against Trump, but sure know how to play defense. South Carolina senator and Trump sycophant\u00a0Lindsey Graham<\/strong> responded to the Carroll ruling by condemning the courts,\u00a0tweeting<\/a>, \u201cWhen it comes to Donald Trump, the New York legal system is off the rails.\u201d Even Florida senator\u00a0Marco Rubio,<\/strong> who did challenge Trump in the 2016 primary, told\u00a0reporters<\/a> \u201cthat jury\u2019s a joke.\u201d (During the taped deposition, Trump bragged that he could grab women by the pussy<\/a>, \u201cWell, that\u2019s what\u2014if you look over the last million years, I guess that\u2019s been largely true. Not always, but largely true. Unfortunately or fortunately.\u201d So the jury, for believing Trump did something he boasted he could do, is the problem?)<\/p>\n Some Republicans do pierce the veil of Trump\u2019s unreality. Senator\u00a0Mitt Romney<\/strong>\u00a0said<\/a> of Trump after the town hall, \u201cYou see what you\u2019re going to get, which is a presidency untethered to the truth and untethered to the constitutional order.\u201d But Republican politicians who do that are hardly rewarded; just ask\u00a0Liz Cheney<\/strong> or\u00a0Adam Kinzinger.<\/strong> Trump\u2019s untruths act as a barrier, a protective wall around him. So perhaps when Trump says that he\u2019s built the wall, this is what he means. The problem for Republicans is this Trump-built wall keeps out candidates who could win in the purple states.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n