Why Is USA Today Helping Donald Trump Lie?
On Wednesday, USA Today published an op-ed ostensibly written by Donald Trump. As if the president didn't already have enough platforms from which to disseminate half-truths, conspiracy theories, and outright falsehoods, the nation's foremost provider of charts and graphs to chain hotel guests, for some godforsaken reason, chose to lend him another.
The thrust of the op-ed's first two sections, which Trump uses to attack the Democrat-backed Medicare for All bill, is that instituting the proposal would gut Medicare benefits for seniors, who are the primary beneficiaries of the current regime. Perhaps aware of the the president's tenuous grasp on reality, the editors who crafted this op-ed littered the text with an unusual number of links that purport to back up its various assertions. It is not clear that they read any of those links first.
In support of its argument that the bill would "eviscerate Medicare," the op-ed links to a New York Times explainer which states that under Medicare for All, "coverage for [current recipients] would become more generous," and "would get rid of nearly all cost-sharing requirements in the [current] program." The op-ed states that the bill would "eliminate Medicare Advantage plans for about 20 million seniors," without disclosing that the same link notes that Medicare Advantage beneficiaries would simply be incorporated into the new scheme. For God's sake, when Trump writes, "As a candidate, I promised that we would protect coverage for patients with pre-existing conditions," he links to a Washington Post fact-checker article detailing the administration's diligent efforts to eliminate it. Here is its kicker:
With no explanation or warning, the president now supports an effort to nullify the provisions that make it possible for millions of people to purchase affordable insurance. Thus this new position, directly contradicting his repeated stance as a candidate and as president, qualifies as a flip-flop.
In its third and final section, the op-ed devolves from "ill-advised policy debate" to "batshit Trump rally talking points, but lightly edited for grammar." This paragraph, which consists entirely of Tucker Carlson bingo squares, is a representative sample:
Today’s Democratic Party is for open-borders socialism. This radical agenda would destroy American prosperity. Under its vision, costs will spiral out of control. Taxes will skyrocket. And Democrats will seek to slash budgets for seniors’ Medicare, Social Security and defense.
Several times, it declares that the Democrats hope to model America's economy on Venezuela's, and would end the enforcement of America's immigration laws altogether. Curiously, throughout this section, the authors abandon their earlier practice of providing evidentiary support for their conclusions. It is almost as if no such evidence exists.
At this point we all know that the president is an unhinged serial liar who literally makes things up for applause. Because the First Amendment exists, there is no way to prevent him from doing so. But publishing this embarrassing collection of inane vagaries—and hiding behind its "opinion" framing, as if there is no distinction between good-faith, fact-based disagreements and facially absurd lies—launders his standard-issue dishonesty through a medium that readers depend on for independence and objectivity. USA Today has failed at the most basic job of the free press, which is to vet the statements of elected officials, and inform Americans whenever those elected officials are full of shit.
