Marc Elias: "The media has one job Thursday night: Tell the truth about Trump's lies"

[FakeNoose]

From Marc Elias' Premium Subscriber Newsletter, dated July 14, 2026:

Donald Trump is a stone-cold liar. He lies about his height, his wealth and his golf game. He lies about his accomplishments and his failures. He lies about everything, large and small, important and insignificant.

There is nothing, however, that Donald Trump lies about more than elections — particularly, the 2020 election. There is a reason his statements about the 2020 election were dubbed the Big Lie.

In his second term, Trump has transformed the executive branch into a factory for creating, disseminating and enforcing these lies. His Cabinet is filled with election deniers who parrot his falsehoods. He insists that every nominee — whether to an agency post or a federal judgeship — offer an answer about the result of the 2020 election that reinforces the lie.

The result, as the Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn said of the Soviet Union, is that "In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State."

The difference between the former Soviet Union and the United States today is that we have the constitutional right to speak freely and criticize our government. Our media is protected from government censorship by a robust First Amendment.

But these rights are only as strong as we are willing to exercise them. Sadly, right now, too few people in positions of power are willing to loudly criticize Trump for his lies. Even worse, the once-proud legacy media has proven itself too timid to speak clearly about Trump and his lies.

But on Thursday night, the media and its powerful backers have a chance to partially redeem themselves. That is because Donald Trump has announced a prime-time speech to the nation. According to reports, he will use this time to once again lie about elections.

Specifically, he is reportedly set to announce that he has new intelligence reports supporting his lies about the 2020 election. Some suggest he may single out Georgia, while others suggest he will try to implicate multiple states' election results. What is important to keep in mind is that it will all be lies.

To be clear, everyone in the legacy media knows Trump's history and knows that he will spread dangerous lies on Thursday night. They also know that they have a choice about whether to cover the speech in whole, in part or not at all. Most importantly, they know the danger and the stakes.

In 2014, the Obama White House sounded out the networks about carrying a prime-time address on immigration and was told no. In 2022, the networks refused prime-time coverage of a speech Joe Biden delivered on democracy.

The question we must all put to these same networks today is this: Do they plan to provide valuable free airtime to a president who is going to systematically undermine democracy by lying about elections?

Sadly, I suspect we know the answer. The largest media outlets have already proved unwilling to stand up to Trump. Their corporate overlords and outside business interests drive them to curry favor with Trump rather than hold him to account. Some of them will no doubt cloak their decision to cover the address as important for the public to hear. While I disagree, I offer them a compromise solution...

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Link: https://www.democracydocket.com/author/marc_elias/?p_type=opinion

[SamKnause]

1. The media will fail and it will be intentional.

[FakeNoose]

3. If Chump goes on the air with lies about Georgia, I'm wondering if they can sue him?

That would be an interesting development.

[tanyev]

2. Prediction:

Bob, what President Trump needed to do tonight was get up there and sound presidential, and I think we can all agree he accomplished that.

Etc., etc., etc.


🤮

[slightlv]

4. He's doing just like he's done in the past....

sowing the seeds of discontent and doubt about the election before the first vote is cast. That gives him "cover" to deny the results when they're counted. It also gives him cover to discount them when all his attempts at cheating fail, because the aware public is against what he's done to our country, and many of us are against what he's done to the world, itself. He's trying to cover all the angles and sow discontent... especially if he can discourage people enough to stop them voting. THAT would be the big "plus" for him. The fewer people vote, polls show the more likely Republicans are to be elected. When we get really large numbers of people to vote, the results is usually (tho not always) Democratic. This is why trump is so busy trying to get the SAVE act passed, get states to purge people from the electoral rolls - for any or no reason. To get the states to give up their voter rolls with all personal information contained therein. If he could come right out and do it, he'd cancel the election. I still think he wants to do that, he just hasn't figured out how yet. This is a pivotal election, and yet I'm so tired of hearing phrases like that. EVERY election is important. But this one will, I believe, decide whether or not we ever have another election that resembles anything like we've had in the past. It may be the last *meaningful* election. And I worry...