Andrew Weissmann argues for new law to hold political liars like US president accountable for harming democracy
Politicians must be held accountable if their lies damage democracy, according to a former US federal prosecutor and FBI general counsel who was pursued by Donald Trump.
The US must be “as creative as possible” and introduce sweeping structural reforms if it escapes its current “mess”, said Andrew Weissmann, laying out a proposal for a legislative crackdown on election deceit.
“Lying can be held to account,” argued Weissmann, a senior figure in former FBI director Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, and Trump’s links to Moscow.
For the longest of time it was just accepted that politicians lie all the time and I never understood why
Obviously trump put the lying to a whole new level where literally ever second word out of his mouth is a lie, but still, all presidents lied their asses off and somehow it’s a accepted? Why?
If a leader lies once, that is a yellow card, twice is red, thrice is bye bye, next leader
The other change that has happened over time is that, sure, prior to the rise of hate radio and Faux “News”, people, most especially boomer hippies that had watched things like Nixon, Iran/Contra, the outcome of the Church Committee were generally kind of suspect of corporate news (AKA, “liberal media”), but the Bircher Society type of conservatives, in other words, most of them, were even more so, but for entirely different reasons.
Then Faux and hate radio came along and have done a LOT to distort what people expect from news. The right just now fully expects their outlet to confirm all of their biases, which includes lying and letting right wing lying liar politicians lie, and brazenly so.
It’s funny when these people complain about the Clintons lying or the “cover up” of Biden’s health, or Obama’s certificate being “lied” about, etc, because they absolutely expect their media outlet to lie to them to prop up their ridiculous world view.
absolutely expect their media outlet to lie to them to prop up their ridiculous world view
I don’t think they (the viewers) expect to be lied to, I think they believe it to be the truth.
Possibly. Seeing their reaction to Obama’s wins and getting mad that Faux told them that he won makes me think quite a few expect Faux to lie to them in order to construct some kind of alternative universe.
Lying can be held to account
🤣🤣🤣
Go on then
Indeed. And how do you make that quantitative? Because otherwise, such laws will be weaponized by the hubris factory.
“Biden won the election.”
“Lie! Arrest that man! We’ve all seen the truth in the media!”
This assumes knowing the truth can be as decisive as the law. Thats a pretty big ask already. It will only get bigger later.
