Republicans have run out of reasons to tell the truth because there's no consequences for lying, according to a new column by Molly Jong-Fast.
Republicans mocked and distorted the brutal attack on House speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband, aided and abetted by newly minted Twitter owner Elon Musk, and Jong-Fast argued in Vanity Fair that their lies deflected attention away from the fact that a right-wing conspiracy theorist was driven to assault the elderly Paul Pelosi by lies spread widely by conservative media.
"Such is the trajectory of information today: The world’s richest man, using a global communications platform he just bought for $44 billion, promotes a story featuring baseless claims to his more than 112 million followers," Jong-Fast wrote. "Musk wasn’t alone in muddying the waters around the Pelosi assault, with Senator Ted Cruz of Texas using Twitter to cast doubt on the motivation for the attack, thus entering the murky post-truth zone where the GOP base operates in its own alternate reality."
Republican voters don't care about the lies and actually seem to prefer them, she wrote.
IN OTHER NEWS: 'He's lied one way or the other': CNN's Elie Honig says Kash Patel won't be the witness who brings down Trump
"Many Republican candidates running for the office this midterm cycle have embraced this post-truth ethos, with the majority of those on the ballot this Tuesday having denied or questioned Joe Biden’s victory two years ago," Jong-Fast wrote. "For Republican candidates, it seems, there’s increasingly no incentive to tell the truth."
Voters have a wealth of evidence at their fingertips to prove GOP candidates are lying, but conservatives have increasingly insulated themselves in an alternate reality where Democrats steal elections and schools place litter boxes in restrooms to accommodate children who identify as cats.
"We are swimming in a sea of content, but it’s being rejected by a segment of the population because it just doesn’t fit into their reality," Jong-Fast wrote. "In a post-truth world, everything, including fact, becomes subject to opinion. Kids aren't identifying as cats and Paul Pelosi wasn’t having some kind of love affair with David DePape. Sometimes, actually, most of the time, the most obvious answer is correct."
