WWhen you write a book about Donald Trump and Fox News, you think a lot about lies.
Big lies for elections. Little lies about every subject under the sun. All kinds of dishonesty and distortion. It can be uncomfortable. After all, journalists—like people in almost any other profession—are trained to focus on what is true, not what is fabricated or imagined or distorted beyond recognition.
But there is much to learn from the deception and misinformation that chokes American politics. Whether it’s Trump getting re-elected in a bogus “stolen election” case, or Congressman George Santos admitting he made up much of his life story out of “insecurity” and “stupidity,” the lies is the news.
I admit: It can be exhausting. For citizens of good faith who want to be informed, who just want to know what is true, all the lies can feel suffocating. But I have found that studying liars has dramatically improved my understanding of the political universe.
First, lies aren’t really about lies. As Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum has observed, “sometimes it’s not about getting people to believe a lie—it’s about getting people to fear the liar.” It is to claim authority over reality.
Second, the point is, in the immortal words of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, to “flood the belt with shit”—to flood the press and the public with so much misinformation and disinformation that democracy cannot function. Trump, despite his status as a trailblazer, is barely controlled anymore. He says so much, so wrongly, that the fact checkers are at a huge disadvantage – just the way his team likes it.
Third, lying is contagious. Neuroscientists have studied how people’s brains react when they lie over and over again for personal gain. In short: The more they do it, the easier it gets. The results suggest a “slippery slope” where “small acts of dishonesty escalate into more significant lies,” said Dr Tali Sharot he said.
After several months of working to reconstruct the 2020 election season, when many Fox hosts and guests lied about the outcome, I’ve come to think of a lot of political lying as a self-preservation mechanism. Lies are often about protecting personal brands, political futures and self-interest. I saw this again and again as I explored the emails and texts obtained by Dominion Voting Systems in the defamation case against Fox.
Former Fox producer Abby Grossberg, who sued the network earlier this year and won a $12 million settlement, has seen this self-preservation instinct from many directions. In 2020, she was the producer of Maria Bartiromo’s Sunday morning show on Fox News, which wholeheartedly embraced Trump’s election lies. Trump hugged back giving Bartiromo his first interview since the loss — and he continued to sob “stolen” for most of the hour. Both delivered what Trump’s base wanted to hear, and Trump told her after the broadcast that he was happy with how it went. But Bartiromo had some doubts. He texted Grossberg and said, “I hope I didn’t do it by not asking about Biden,” then wondered if they should have “just stayed the extra 5 minutes and talked about a peaceful transition” instead of ending the Trump interview and turn around. to a different visitor. “To be honest,” Grossberg told her, “our audience doesn’t want to hear about a peaceful transition. They still have hope. And the coupons”—I think he meant the vultures—”would call it a concession.”
This is what Grossberg said at the time: Keep the audience watching by keeping (false) hope alive. Later, after allegations of discrimination and other wrongdoing by Fox, Grossberg said Bartiromo was trying to preserve her own position at Fox by tying herself into Trump’s web. Bartiromo’s cozy relationship with Trump gave her “power over Fox and she protected her,” Grossberg told TIME’s Charlotte Alter. Bartiromo didn’t want to believe Trump lost, because it meant she had lost, too, in a way.
Ego has a lot to do with it. So is the desire to feel part of a winning team. In a recent paper, political scientists Kevin Arceneaux and Rory Truex were found that Trump’s 2020 election lie is “pervasive and sticky” and that Republican voters tend to “reward politicians who perpetuate the lie, giving Republican candidates an incentive to keep doing it next election cycle.” Why; Perhaps because, as Arceneaux and Truex wrote, the lie may have “boosted” the “self-esteem” of some Trump supporters.
The human capacity for self-rationalization and arbitrary denial cannot be overstated. As historian Jon Meacham put it on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” earlier this fall, “the American Right has become detached from reality because of their devotion to this one figure.” He didn’t even have to say who.
This is why I believe psychologists should sometimes sit on cable news political panels next to campaign strategists – because experts who study human behavior for a living are better equipped to explain why public figures lie and because their fans reward them, instead of punishing them for it.
During my Web of lies research, one quote that stuck out to me was a remark by Al Schmidt, the Republican Philadelphia city commissioner, who pushed back against election naysayers in 2020. “One thing I can’t understand,” he said, “is how hungry people are we consume lies and we consume information that is not true.” The forces of political polarization and negative partisanship created a demand for lies, and the forces of capitalism produced an abundant supply.
Some of these suppliers may deny exactly what they do. As Fox Corp patriarch Rupert Murdoch himself said while being ousted from Dominion, “It’s no good for any country if masses of people believe lies.” He also agreed that Fox has a responsibility to tell the truth even when viewers don’t want to hear it. Imagine if Fox actually lived up to that responsibility.
Regardless, knowing why people think what they think. seeing why they choose comfortable lies over uncomfortable truths. brings a blurry environment into sharp focus. Dismantling the disinformation campaigns and BS narratives that distort our politics need not be a deterrent. It can be empowering.