By now, former President Donald Trump’s willingness to deviate from the truth is well-documented. Topics range from broken core campaign promises such as the border wall (“I completed what I said I was going to do”) to the bizarre (“They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats.”) to his refusal to concede that he lost our state in the 2020 election (“Does anybody really believe I lost Georgia? I DON’T!”)
In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Trump has falsely accused the Federal Emergency Management Agencyof diverting disaster relief money to undocumented immigrants. The claim led to an immediate and searing rebuke in a joint editorial from North Carolina’s two largest newspapers, headlined “Shame on Donald Trump for worsening NC’s Helene tragedy with political lies.”
Credit: Geoff Duncan
Credit: Geoff Duncan
The question is not about Trump’s relationship with the truth. It is why the Republican Party, for nearly a decade, has been willing to go along with it.
Nobody enjoys or thrives living around a liar. They don’t make good business partners, neighbors or, especially, spouses, but somehow many Republicans think they make good presidents. The party has given Trump an eternal hall pass as long as it’s entertaining and “owning the libs.” It’s especially ironic for a party that not that long ago was trying to impeach a Democratic president for lying under oath about an affair with an intern.
Kudos to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp for not taking the bait, during both the 2020 election and its aftermath, as well as last week’s awkward joint storm update session in Augusta. Kemp stayed laser-focused on the storm relief efforts and controlled the show. No teleprompters were present, and Trump’s prepared remarks were short and nonpolitical.
Before Trump could veer off script, Kemp shook his hand and left the stage.
Yet Kemp was again the outlier. Other high-ranking Republicans echoed Trump’s false claims about FEMA and migrants. Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, labeled FEMA a “disgrace.” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., took aim at the agency for, “using any pool of funding from any account for resettling illegal aliens who have come across the border.”
To be clear: Both the FEMA response to Helene and the administration’s broader priorities on immigration are fair game for criticism. Democrats were unsparing in their critiques of the Bush administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The Biden-Harris administration has paid a political price for their early decision related to the southern border. Immigration has been an issue where voters favor Trump over both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris by wide margins.
It shouldn’t take outright lies to make the point.
Whether it’s next month or next election, the Party of Lincoln is going to wake up from its slumber and realize we can do better than a leader willing to lie at all costs.
We can do better than a man who declared the 2020 election “rigged” because he didn’t like the outcome, and whose unhinged behavior preceded an attack on the U.S. Capitol.
We can do better than a man found guilty of 34 charges of illegally influencing the 2016 election through a hush money payment scheme to an adult film actress who said the two had sex.
We can do better than a man whose “big beautiful wall” across our nearly 2,000-mile border with Mexico resulted in less than a quarter of that distance in fencing.
We can do better than a man who once vowed to end the national debt and whose latest fiscal plan is projected to double in cost of his opponent’s.
If you’re a Republican and are still on the fence about what to do in November, I get it. Harris is a liberal from California, and her campaign does not have much, policy-wise, for conservatives to grab on to. Point taken.
Before casting your vote, ask yourself this sobering question: When did associating with a pathological liar work out for you? If Trump loses in November, it will be fueled in part because Republicans — like the 77,000 who pulled the lever for former South Carolina Gov. and U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley in our March primary even though she no longer was a viable candidate — have had enough of the lies.
An AJC contributor, Geoff Duncan served as Georgia’s lieutenant governor from 2019 to 2023. He is a former professional baseball player and the author of “GOP 2.0: How the 2020 Election Can Lead to a Better Way Forward for America’s Conservative Party.” He also is a contributor to CNN.
