During the opening monologue to MSNBC’s The Last Word Wednesday, host Lawrence O’Donnell went on a tirade bemoaning how far the institution of presidential debates have fallen, and how it was all Donald Trump’s fault. “I've been fighting Donald Trump's lies for five years on this program, but I haven't touched more than 1 percent of his lies,” O’Donnell whined, “Now a presidential debater or a vice presidential debater can take the stage and lie throughout the debate, including provably lie about what he himself has said in the past on video.”
The MSNBC host launched into a rather ludicrous form of hyperbole in claiming that no politician has ever told a lie while on a debate stage:
Politicians did not used to dare do that sort of thing, no matter how much they might have secretly wanted to. It was just too dangerous. Too dangerous a lie to tell. But now a debater who tells such dangerous lies can now be scored the winner of the debate by people in the political news media, because those lies no longer matter on the debate scorecard. Lies aren't dangerous anymore. The debate judges have been worn down by the year of political lying.
O’Donnell’s claim is absolutely ridiculous in every way. Of course there has always been lies told at debates, that is why there is such an emphasis on fact-checking afterward. His own hero President Barack Obama even lied during a debate in October of 2012, in claiming that he described the Benghazi terrorist attack as such in his comments in the White House Rose Garden. Debate moderator Candy Crowley infamously backed up the president, but was later forced to admit she too had lied.
And if that O’Donnell lie wasn’t outrageous enough, he went on to claim that Senator Tim Kaine told no lies at all while on the debate stage Tuesday. “You cannot make a video collection of the lies Tim Kaine told on the debate stage last night, because those lies didn't happen,” he exclaimed. He went on to cite a CNN focus group from that night to back himself up, and explain that America really thinks Kaine won.
Ironically, CNN’s fact-checkers called Kaine out on numerous lies he told about Trump and Mike Pence. CNN’s Tom Foreman noted that Kaine’s claim that Trump called all Mexicans bad was false. Forman also found that Kaine’s claim that Hillary Clinton apologized for the “deplorables” comment was false, and that he mislead on Trump’s position on the minimum wage. Nation Public Radio’s fact-checking showed that Kaine had lied about Clinton’s involvement in the Iran Nuclear Deal, and that it was Secretary of State John Kerry who handled the negotiations and not her.
O’Donnell is right though. It is dangerous for a politician to lie on a debate stage, because there are thousands of people ready to call them out on it. It is also dangerous to lie on a nationally televised news program for the same reason.
Transcript below:
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MSNBC
The Last Word
October 5, 2016
10:03:15 PM Eastern
LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: I've been fighting Donald Trump's lies for five years on this program, but I haven't touched more than 1 percent of his lies. That's how much has been coming at us. And that tidal wave of lies has changed the American political news media in profound ways. Now a presidential debater or a vice presidential debater can take the stage and lie throughout the debate, including provably lie about what he himself has said in the past on video. That is the most dangerous kind of lie for a politician to tell. A lie that can be instantaneously proven false by video of that politician saying the opposite thing. So dangerous.
Politicians did not used to dare do that sort of thing, no matter how much they might have secretly wanted to. It was just too dangerous. Too dangerous a lie to tell. But now a debater who tells such dangerous lies can now be scored the winner of the debate by people in the political news media, because those lies no longer matter on the debate scorecard. Lies aren't dangerous anymore. The debate judges have been worn down by the year of political lying. So they judge the debate the way you might judge two reasonably politically honest debaters whose difference on policy isn't terribly significant. Like what we had in 1960.
They judged the debate the way they judged the first televised presidential debate between jack Kennedy and Richard Nixon. They judge it almost entirely on the cosmetics, on the vocal quality of the debaters, on the poise, the tendency to interrupt. In other words, they choose the most superficial elements of the debate arena and insist that's how we should judge a debate, between two people, one of whom will be the next vice president of the United States, a heartbeat away from becoming president of the United States. A debate between two people where one of them lies repeatedly and the other one doesn't.
You can have differing views of Tim Kaine's competence. You can have differing views of Tim Kaine's governing philosophy. You can have differing views of the policy positions he supports. But you cannot make a video collection of the lies Tim Kaine told on the debate stage last night, because those lies didn't happen. And so the Trump campaign did not produce a video collection of Tim Kaine lies today. Instead, the Republican Party produced a video of Tim Kaine interrupting Mike pence.
…
That's it. Just interrupting. Not a word of substance in the Republican Party’s debate ad. And as I predicted last night, and this was the easiest prediction I have ever made on TV, the Clinton campaign today did produce a video with a sample of Mike Pence's lies told on the debate stage last night.
…
And so here we are 24 hours later, and the content that Tim Kaine delivered in the debate went completely unchallenged by Republicans today. But Mike Pence was proven to have lied repeatedly in the debate. A CNN focus group that watched the debate, but did not watch the post-debate analysis where so many people judged Mike Pence to be the winner. That focus group thought that Tim Kaine was the winner. And that may indicate that voters may not have been changed as much as the political news media has been changed by the year of political lying.
