Opinion: Republicans can't stop lying for Trump. Even as it hurts them.
Less than a month from Election Day, the Republican Party is in an interesting predicament. Its politicians keep telling lies, and when they get checked on those lies, rather than dispute the lie or change the messaging, they cry bias.
Media bias against conservatives is a problem, but when voters hear the GOP excuse their lying by deflecting to how Democrats are treated, they don’t hear an answer for all the lying, only excuses.
It would be a heck of a lot easier for Republicans to cry bias if they simply stopped making it so easy for the news media by lying all the time for no apparent reason.
Republicans can't stop lying about things that hurt them
Lying isn't new to politics. It's the longest-running tradition in Washington. However, for being a supposed political outsider, nobody abuses the truth more than former President Donald Trump. As a result of their full embrace of Trump, the GOP has been forced to follow suit.
The deepest rooted of these lies is the lies about the 2020 election. I'm turning into a broken record on this one, but had Republicans nominated any other candidate, they could have finally shifted messaging on the last presidential election results, simply calling it unfair rather than outright stolen through fraud.
However, Trump does not allow for that, and the GOP is forced to dodge this line of questioning or outright lie about it so as not to bruise his fragile ego.
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More recently, Trump spread claims of Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating household pets during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. As a result, GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance was forced to continue lying about it despite a flurry of evidence to the contrary.
The same thing happened when Vance was asked about the 2020 election during the debate with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Instead of going on the policy offensive against Harris, Republicans are playing defense for Trump's lies.
When the GOP constantly has to cover for Trump's screwups by lying, it naturally overshadows the typical politician lies told by the Democrats that are on a different level than lying about the result of an election.
The GOP is blaming the refs rather than playing their own game
The GOP viewpoint amounts to this: The news media is biased against conservative candidates and thus fact-checks Republicans more than Democrats.
While I’m sympathetic to the viewpoint of media bias against conservatives, defaulting to this answer essentially admits to the audience that you were being untruthful.
During the vice presidential debate, Vance clapped back at the moderators’ fact-checking against him despite their promise not to, and instead leaving that role to the candidates themselves.
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While I think Vance was right to call out the moderators, the optics of the outburst weren’t beneficial for him because he did little to explain the actual statement being fact-checked.
Viewers saw Vance, when confronted with a check against what he said, calling out the moderators for holding him accountable. Rather than disputing the lie, Vance took more offense to being called out for it. It only reminds voters that he was probably lying.
A more effective response would be to provide actual evidence. However, frequently, Republicans can't do that because there is no evidence, such is the case with the various election conspiracies the GOP has falsely spread since 2020.
Republicans use bias as an excuse to avoid speaking to Americans
A long-standing tradition of presidential campaigns has been for candidates to interview with CBS News' "60 Minutes." Since 1968, the presidential nominee for a major party has been interviewed on "60 Minutes," generally around this time of the election cycle.
However, as with most norms in this race, Trump threw tradition to the wind and declined. CBS News said part of why Trump opted out was because the campaign didn't want to get fact-checked.
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It's probably a wise decision for Trump to sit out of adversarial interviews like this at this point in the race, especially given that "60 Minutes" took time to edit some of Harris’ responses. However, as a voter, I can’t help but be disappointed that the candidate for a major party wants to sit out, given the show's massive audience.
I thought it was a great disservice in the 2020 election when Joe Biden heavily limited his media appearances under the guise of COVID-19 caution, and I think it's a disservice now for Trump to skip out on any tough interviews for fear of slipping in the polls.
The American people deserve to hear from their candidates. If Trump is adamant about skipping out on the traditional outlets for such engagement, I would’ve liked him to bring an alternative to the table.
Instead, Americans see Trump skipping out on a tradition that every candidate for more than half a century has participated in, and they wonder why he is so set on hiding from the country.
Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Opinion: Trump lies so much, Republicans are left playing defense