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“We identified and stopped $50m being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas. They used them as a method of making bombs. How about that?”—Donald Trump
In the early 2000s independent fact checking emerged as a response to the spread and distribution of information on the internet. There was an increased need for establishing the veracity of claims, sometimes in real-time. In practice making sure “we’re getting this right” has been employed for millennia, but in current political environments verifying facts has become an entire industry. Misinformation, the spread of inaccurate information, and disinformation, the intentional and malicious distribution of lies have serious consequences have created significant threats.
One example: On December 4, 2016, there was a shooting at Comet Ping Pong a Washington D.C. pizza place—filled with families—because the shooter believed a series of tweets claiming it was the location of a pedophile sex ring involving Hillary Clinton. The shooter was there to save the children. Lies like this have become a pathology.
In short, lies can be dangerous when people believe them. Of course, there are different kinds of lies and some people are more susceptible to them than others, but the concept is clear enough. Many individuals and businesses require trust, and their reputations require honesty. I am one of them, it is essential that I corroborate the claims I make.
Another example: First, I saw video, but in a world with deep fakes and Artificial Intelligence I was skeptical, did Trump really say, “they used condoms to make bombs?’’ Eyes and ears can play tricks on us, not to mention the foreign and domestic campaigns weaponizing disinformation for personal gain. While the quote could be the work of a satire website, like the Onion, multiple sources confirm Trump made the fraudulent claim.
I cannot prove Trump knew he was lying. But there is no doubt that what he said was not true. There were no condom bombs being manufactured by Hamas. We know because the best explanation for the mistake being made was that someone confused the Gaza Strip with Gaza, Mozambique. Thousands of miles geographically separate them, the aid amounts claimed were different, and Hamas does not operate (bomb making or otherwise) in Mozambique, but they have similar spellings.
In normal times I give people the benefit of the doubt. Musk says “nobody bats a thousand.” That might explain getting the numbers wrong, and even the location, but even accepting that mistakes will be made there is a problem. Where does the “used them as a method of making bombs” come from? Someone created this fiction; either Trump is manufacturing dangerous lies on his own, or he is repeating them, and neither is a good situation.
It is not merely a matter of the erosion of public trust and degradation of honorable standing among our allies, it is an evasion of basic decency. It is not a trivial lie likes so many others told by this administration, the lie about condom bombs is told in defense of abhorrent budget cuts and treachery. The extreme betrayal and dereliction of integrity is that the US, through USAID, made promises to save lives. People counted on us to live up to these promises, then we stopped.
Without irony the whopper of a lie is intended to be proof of fraud. But, the reality, as painful and ugly as it is, is that the only fraud to be found is the liars themselves. Millions of people needlessly suffer and die due to funding freezes to stop a problem that does not exist. There is no known underlying medical condition for pathological dishonesty, Trump and Musk are unlikely to improve on their own, and we have no time to waste while people are dying. The best treatment pathway is for the people to decide enough is enough and force the liar in chief out of office—it’s time for a happy ending.
