Play Video1:13
Donald Trump is wrong about 9/11. Here's why that doesn't matter.
The Fix's Chris Cillizza explains why a "fact-free campaign" and a controversial comment on the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks won't hurt Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)
Let me start with this: I am rarely surprised by anything that happens in politics. Call it cynicism or pragmatism. But after spending two decades covering politics, I feel like nothing is shocking anymore.
Except, that is, the remarkable disdain for facts in the context of this presidential campaign. Candidates have always done their best to bend numbers, statistics and stories to make themselves look as good — or as not-bad — as possible. But there was almost always a line that wasn't crossed in years past, a sort of even-partisans-can-agree-on-this standard.
Now, in large part because of Donald Trump's candidacy, that line has been smudged out of existence. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's famous quote that "you are entitled to your own opinion … but you are not entitled to your own facts" is no longer operative in this campaign. That is to the detriment of not only the people running for president but to all of us.
Trump's latest foray into the fiction zone came on Saturday when he told a group of supporters that he watched as "thousands of people were cheering” in Jersey City, N.J., when the World Trade Center towers collapsed after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. On Sunday, Trump called in to ABC's "This Week" and got into a back and forth with moderator George Stephanopoulos over that claim. The exchange is long but worth printing in full.
I mean. What. The. Actual. Hell.
For those who would criticize Stephanopoulos for "letting Trump get away with it," I would ask you how he could have done things any differently. Trump is operating on his own set of "facts." Stephanopoulos is adamant that "the police have said it didn't happen" but it's quite clear that Trump wasn't going to suddenly say: "Yeah, you're right. I misspoke." Could Stephanopoulos have spent the next five minutes making the same point about the police? I guess. But Trump wasn't going to give in. Period.
In elections and campaigns past, there would have been a price to pay for The Donald's complete flouting of fact. It would have hurt him politically to just say things that aren't true. In this one, there's plenty of reason to think that he not only will get away with saying it but also that it may even help him among certain segments of the electorate.
Why? Because trust in the media — in both parties but especially among conservatives who comprise Trump's base — is at an all-time low. So, anything that a member of the media calls a "fact" is inherently viewed as fishy (at best) by the people backing Trump. The media lies, we all know that, so why wouldn't they lie about this, too? All the mainstream media cares about is serving as the political correctness police, so if this did happen then of course they would work to cover it up, right?
Here's the thing: If there is no agreed-upon neutral arbiter, there are no facts. And, as I have written before, what is happening in the Republican race is that most of the candidates — save Trump and, at times, Ben Carson — are playing by an established set of rules around what you can say and do. Trump is not only not playing by those rules but there are also no referees to enforce his blatant flouting of them.
I give you, Ben Carson's response Monday to Trump's allegations, a response that amounts to "Yeah, I saw that too."