Lying should be grounds for termination
8 February 2025
In my small business, I tell newly hired employees that honesty is essential to our business and that lying is grounds for termination. Everyone will make mistakes. Sometimes, they are so embarrassing that employees are tempted not to be honest about them. However, management needs to know about the mistakes as soon as possible to mitigate the damage.
Lying for other reasons is also intolerable. If Trump or Musk worked for me or most businesses, they would be fired for lying. No business or institution can function well when employees are dishonest, regardless of their other attributes.
Heather Cox Richardson detailed many examples of recent lies by Trump, Musk and other MAGA supporters.
The U.S. has seen high-profile immigration raids since Trump took office, but Dara Kerr of The Guardian today reported that the Trump administration “is gaming Google to create a mirage of mass deportations.” On January 24, 2025, old online press releases from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from as much as a decade ago were updated to make Google prioritize them as new releases, thus creating the illusion that raids are taking place all over the country. When The Guardian asked ICE and Google about the changed dates, some of the new dates disappeared, dropping those stories out of the top of search results.
Since President Ronald Reagan, Republicans have won elections by convincing their voters that their opponents are not trying to use the federal government to help Americans like them but are instead trying to hand tax dollars and power to undeserving Black and Brown Americans, women, and LGBTQ+ Americans. Over the past 45 years, that rhetoric has created a population that believes the federal government is controlled by their enemies, now sometimes called the “Deep State,” whom they blame for destroying the country. Those Republican voters now appear to hate the federal government and to be willing, even eager, to dismantle it.
But the Republicans’ vision of the nation never reflected reality and now, under President Donald Trump, it is entirely made-up. Today, Brian Stelter of Reliable Sources recorded some of the disinformation in which MAGA voters are currently marinating. Trump lied that Elon Musk found that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) spent “$100 million on condoms to Hamas” and that last week’s fatal midair collision that took 67 lives was due to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
Trump today claimed CBS “defrauded the public” in “the greatest broadcasting scandal in history” when it exercised normal editing procedures on a 60 Minutes interview with then–vice president Kamala Harris that he insisted—falsely—involved replacing her actual answers with others. Today, Trump called for CBS News and 60 Minutes to be “immediately terminated,” despite the fact that the U.S. Constitution protects the freedom of the press.
MAGA is amplifying right-wing lies. Today, influencers—including Musk—claimed that USAID secretly bankrolled Politico, claiming that the media site had taken $8 million from USAID. In fact, that sum was not an annual grant, but rather years of subscriptions from across the government to Politico Pro, a pricey subscription service for data and legislative analyses for lobbyists and government officials. “Politico…has never taken a cent of government subsidies or state funding,” said the chief executive officer of its parent company. “[P]eople are paying for… [Politico Pro] because they need the service,” he said. “It’s not subsidies, it’s capitalism.” When Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) joined the chorus parroting the lie, fact-checkers noted that her office is a subscriber: it paid $7,150 for a yearlong subscription starting last January.
Nonetheless, Trump posted in all-caps that it "LOOKS LIKE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS HAVE BEEN STOLLEN [sic] AT USAID, AND OTHER AGENCIES, MUCH OF IT GOING TO THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA AS A 'PAYOFF' FOR CREATING GOOD STORIES ABOUT THE DEMOCRATS." More
Trump cannot stop lying - it is part of his character. Once he is out of office, his followers may lie a little less because they won’t be so afraid of him. Thus, the key is to do what we can to remove him from office or limit the damage he does. My suggestions:
Write our elected officials to oppose his policies.
Since Trump’s prime motivation in life is his business and his ego, we should:
Stop listening to him live to limit our own damage from exposure to evil
Condemn his lies whenever we can
Do the above for his supporters too - Musk, the Republican Party, Fox News.
Fox, X and other right wing media should be boycotted.
There should be regular protests at every property owned by Trump, Musk and Fox News and at major events of the Republican Party
We should support the Democratic Party as the only legitimate party in the U.S. that supports our Constitution and the rule of law, even if we disagree with other policies.
Conservatives should work to establish a new party based on the rule of law and explicit rejection of Trump.
The index to my prior essays (mostly post 5 November 2024) is here.
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I learned early in life that honesty was the best policy. Yes, it’s the right thing to do, but let’s not expect a halo for it. It’s the smart thing to do. It saves time, money, face, and public and familial perception. I remember a mother at the library saying she never checked out some children’s books, but her child corrected her to say they had. Is that the way you want your child to see you, and to follow your example? I think we should designate a “lie to a Republican elected official”day, and just tell them nothing true. The advantage a liar has is the honest people are feeding them actual truth which they can use. Let’s tell them only lies - how about April 1, but never tell them, “April Fools!”.