The Gotcha Game
At the debate, Tim Walz called Vance’s bluff, but Republicans have doubled down on election denial. Where does that leave us?
With multiple leading Republicans — including those with key electoral responsibilities — leaning into the Big Lie again and refusing to recognize the results of the 2020 election, something serious is afoot. It seems like they weren’t just counting on Margaret Brennan not to fact-check, but for everyone in America to give them a pass.
But before we get into that, today’s a big voter registration deadline. Many states require your registration — whether it’s done online, in person, or postmarked — be submitted 30 days before Election Day — and that is today.
So check your registration deadlines at Vote.org; make sure you are registered (at Vote.org or at Can I Vote, and if there’s anyone you can reach out to who might be wavering on the value of voting, whatever the reason — now’s the time.
Now missing the deadline isn’t the end of the world, ordinarily — provisional ballots are an option for latecomers. But with Republican strategy hinging on disenfranchising as many people as possible, why take that chance?
A request for those who haven’t yet joined us: The interviews and essays that we share here take research and editing and much more. We work hard, and we are eager to bring on more writers, more voices. But we need your help to keep this going. Join us today to support the kind of independent media you want to exist.
When Tim Walz confronted J.D. Vance on his continuing election denialism — asking him flat out at the debate whether Joe Biden had won the presidential election in 2020 — Vance couldn’t bring himself to answer, responding, mostly, that he was “focused on the future.” Notably, he couldn’t even just lie, or nod. Just ducked the question.
A damning non-answer, yes, but damnation be damned — Vance’s proxies only dug in this week. Making the rounds of the Sunday news shows this week, the speaker of the house and the junior senator from Arkansas similarly found themselves unable to respond to direct questions from interviewers that Biden had won the presidency in 2020 — dismissing the very question as a “gotcha.” Maybe Biden became president, they admit, but not fairly. And of course, they have a lot of concerns about election security, they tell reporters they hear from the people.
Certainly, there’s no point in actually arguing these points. Are they all “focused on the future” to the extent that they’ve forgotten the past? Were they just too focused on outlining detailed policy positions? Or is there something else at work behind the wave of gaslighting here (there is the matter of all of these behind-the-scenes maneuvers to disenfranchise voters)? Also, one wonders, why are these folks being interviewed at all, as if they were serious?
This all comes against a backdrop of lies and disinformation that accelerated this week in response to Hurricane Helene. In this case, the former president led the charge with a barrage of lies against Biden and Harris, claiming that the administration had refused to aid flood-stricken North Carolina, had refused to contact governors to offer assistance, and perhaps, even that the agency was broke because its funding had been appropriated to assist supposedly illegal immigrants. All lies, of course…but FEMA had to spend their time putting together a debunking strategy and campaign, for all that’s worth.
But this, of course, is nothing new. We’ll get to the former president in a minute, but just consider Vance’s own response, when confronted with the fact that his racist attacks on his Haitian constituents in Springfield, Ohio, were not eating anybody’s pets.
“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
That’s the supposed hillbilly elegist’s version of a higher truth. Language as action, meaning aside.
Does it even matter what politicians say to the press? Who’s listening, watching, and reading, and what are they looking for from those candidates? More significantly, does it matter what relationship their words have to the truth, so long as the words — as actions — pull the right levers?
Meanwhile, after months of bucking requests from major news organizations, the Harris-Walz campaign has decided to break the silence with a solid week of media appearances. Following Walz’s weekend Fox News interview, the candidates have appearances booked on “60 Minutes,” Alex Cooper’s “Call Her Daddy” podcast, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” “The View,” The Howard Stern radio show, Steven Colbert of “The Late Show,” and a town hall with Univision.
Whether this will do much to change the campaign’s relationship with the press remains to be seen — as New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie points out, for a significant portion of commentators, Harris’s media appearances don’t seem to count as media appearances any more than her policy statements appear to count as policy statements.
Now that the Republican and Democratic campaigns appear to be equally available to the press (speaking of evasiveness, Trump, for his part, seems to have canceled on “60 Minutes”), it’s worth thinking about what’s asked of them, and why. Who is it that wants specifics, and what specifics do they want? At this point, the Democratic campaign has offered a platform and presented policy. And vibes, yes.
But to dismiss Harris’s campaign — after all of this — as one of “vibes” is typically to miss that the strongman’s appeal is in the realm of emotion, on the same grounds, at best. Words matter, but not in the way many in the media expect.
Your support makes The Ink possible. We’d be honored if you’d become a paid subscriber. When you do, you’ll get access each week to our regular posts and our interviews with the most thoughtful people out there — and you’ll be able to join the conversation in our comments section.
Where does that leave us? The Democratic Party and its leadership are relying on the media to push back against misinformation, a strategy that has been in place since Trump’s birther claims, through his escalator campaign announcement, and continuing with today’s repeated falsehoods and denials.
There’s still no sign of a unified, impactful response from those opposing MAGA—in other words, a message as concise and memorable as the "MAGA" slogan itself.
Labeling Republicans as liars doesn’t resonate. It sounds more like a schoolyard insult than a strategic effort to educate and rally Americans around the values of decency and democracy.