In recent weeks, former President Donald Trump and Senator J.D. Vance have been on a rampage, spreading egregious lies that would exhaust even the most seasoned fact-checker. From imaginary pet-eating immigrants to schools secretly performing gender-affirming surgeries on children, their lies aren’t just garden-variety political spin—they’re weaponized fiction aimed at manipulating public discourse. The kicker? In a lot of cases, the media, wittingly or not, is playing right into their hands.

Take Trump’s wild claim at the recent Moms for Liberty conference that schools are facilitating gender-transition surgeries without parental consent. “Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation,” he declared, as if schools have secret operating rooms next to the gymnasium. CNN’s Daniel Dale—who does a great job—debunked this, noting that Trump’s campaign couldn’t provide a single example to substantiate the claim. Even conservative organizations couldn’t back him up, though some, like Thomas Jipping of the Heritage Foundation, tried to defend Trump’s remarks by suggesting that if you “just change a couple words,” his point becomes valid. That’s like saying if you squint hard enough, a circle becomes a square.

Then there’s the appalling narrative about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. Both Trump........

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