Platforming Disinformation

Trump’s First Interview—And How To Do Better

Day 8 — December 8, 2024

Donald Trump sat down for his first broad-ranging interview (on NBC ‘s“Meet the Press”), and it featured an endless stream of lies and disinformation. In just a single interview, the man who will soon occupy the White House disseminated untruthful and often uncorrected propaganda on: the economy in his first term; birthright citizenship; January 6; the level of crimes by immigrants; inflation; NATO funding; the 2020 election; his record on health care; and his personal medical records.

NBC did a lengthy fact-check following the interview, confirming many of these false statements after the fact.

What happened in this interview begs the question: why and how do serious media outlets allow themselves to become platforms for propaganda to a large national audience?

And why do they keep doing so again and again.

Just over a year ago, a similarly disastrous “Meet the Press” interview occurred— where NBC documented, after-the-fact, 11 lies Trump told over the course of the interview.

As I wrote then: “if you allowed someone to lie 11 times in such a short amount of time, you did something wrong.”

So I’ll re-make the simple suggestion I made then: Never move on from the FIRST lie until Trump acknowledges it’s a lie.

NEVER.

Literally….end the interview rather than moving onto the next topic.

Why does this matter?

Because Trump and other dishonest subjects go into these interviews KNOWING they can get away with endless lying, for two reasons.

First, in many cases, most of the lies are not even fact-checked.

Second, even if they are fact checked, the liar KNOWS that the interviewer’s goal is to get through a long list of questions. That list of questions, more than truth itself, becomes the goal of the interview.

Which means the liars KNOW that if they simply dodge or repeat the lie just one or two more times, the interviewer will move on to the next topic they’ve planned out.

That allows the liar to firmly plant the flag of one lie, while opening up the opportunity for the next lie—starting the cycle over. Then they repeat the same pattern for the rest of the interview. And suddenly the entire hour served as a platform for propaganda and disinformation.

Yesterday (full transcript here) provided numerous examples of how this plays out. Here’s one:

1. Trump lies about immigrants and crime: “13,099 murderers released into our country over the last three years…"

2. Welker: “—the 13,000 figure I think goes back about 40 years”

3. Trump: “No it doesn't. It’s within the three year period. It’s during the Biden term. That was a fiction that they put that out. This was done by the Border Patrol. It’s 13,099 and it’s during the Biden period of time….”

And that’s it! She lets him continue with his lie firmly established.

Again, it’s that instinct to “move on” to the next question that is the fatal flaw…the best friend of the dishonest interviewee.

All they have to do is repeat the lie one or two times, run right through the initial fact check (if there even is one) with more lies, and exhaust the interviewer until she or he feels like it’s time to move on to the next planned question. And the next lie after that.

And THAT is how you get so many lies and so much misinformation spewed into one interview.

The damage done from this simple pattern is deep.

Every time the interviewer “moves on,” if done incorrectly, it’s a white flag of surrender. Truth loses.

At the very least, it’s a declaration of “both sides” having a point. As if it must not really be a lie. Or as if the truth of the matter is subjective. Or that there are perhaps multiple views of the matter.

Yesterday’s discussion of the 2020 election provides the perfect example. At one point, Welker states that Trump did not win the election. Trump’s response: “Yeah, well, that’s your opinion. But I disagree with it.”

And then he goes on from there. She never returns to the point. Which means he has just established that it the 2020 election outcome is somehow subjective—a personal opinion on which people can disagree. When the suggestion that he won in 2020 is an absolute shameless lie.

But the damage can be even worse than merely making a clear truth a subject of good-faith disagreement.

Back to that lie about migrant crime—Welker’s willingness to move on after he lies a second time leaves the impression that he was correct and she didn't know her facts.

Again, here was his response to her fact check: “No it doesn't. It’s within the three year period. It’s during the Biden term. That was a fiction that they put that out. This was done by the Border Patrol. It’s 13,099 and it’s during the Biden period of time….”

That’s a completely false statement, and she lets it stand.

A viewer who doesn't know the facts, and who watches that back and forth and her decision to move on, would reasonably conclude that Trump was right and her fact-check of him was wrong!

And once that impression is left, the lie just won. The liar just succeeded.

And then when the next questions come, he gets to do it again. And again. And again.

So what’s the answer?

Do NOT move on from the first lie.

Don’t do the very thing Trump and others count on you to do to get their next round of lies.

STOP at that first lie and dig in.

For as long as you need to.

Rebut that lie with every fact and figure and proof point there is. (Having of course planned in advance). Air video clips showing the truth. Whatever it takes.

Just keep going and digging and rebutting.

Make it clear to your audience (and the person you are interviewing) that there is an objective truth on the matter, and also make clear to the person you are interviewing that you will not move on until they acknowledge it.

Do it for as long as it takes to force Trump or the lying subject to acknowledge the lie.

And most importantly, for as long as they refuse to acknowledge it, as much as you want to move to the next question, do NOT!

Yes…if that means end the interview rather than moving on, end the interview.

And make it clear that you will not move to the next question—that you will end the interview if necessary—if they do not acknowledge that what they said is not true.

When this leads to awkward silence or hostility, which it will, fine…stick to it. (Trump counts on that awkwardness and silence so that you will move on. It’s a form of his bullying).

And amid that silence, if Trump still won’t acknowledge the lie, just end the interview.

Get up and go.

But what about all those other questions you wanted to ask?

Forget them!

Those questions (and the lies they surely would’ve elicited) aren’t nearly as important as making a clear statement that you will not allow a blatant lie to be shared on your airwaves.

Stopping at each blatant lie this may be the only thing that convinces the interviewee not to lie in the first place. Or to admit it was a lie. Because at some point, they too will want to move on to other questions.

But even more importantly, this approach is the ironclad guarantee that the forum you provide will not become a platform of repeated lies and disinformation.

You are establishing to the interviewee and your audience that if they keep trying to lie, you will close the forum immediately.

And that guarantees that you won’t host a forum of disinformation.

And that—more than any list of question—serves your most important mission: assuring that your forum is one where truth prevails. Always.

Now, if all those who decide to interview the likes of Trump conducted interviews this way, things would be pretty different, wouldn’t they?

And particularly now that Trump will be president again, armed with propaganda and disinformation, it’s doubly important that interviewers take this approach.

“Fair” for Whom?

One other part of yesterday’s interview troubled me.

At the end, Welker emphasizes to Trump that she hopes he thinks the interview was fair:

“Well, hopefully you thought it was a fair interview,” she says at one point. Then repeats this a few seconds later. “Let me ask — hopefully you think this interview was fair.”

The deeper question in an age of propaganda and disinformation is not whether the purveyor of that propaganda thinks the experience was “fair” to him.

If it’s the interview was fair to the audience.

Was it fair to the viewers?

That’s what matters the most.

And until the media figures out how to interview a serial propagandist and liar, the answer will be a decided no.

The audience—America—was not served well by this interview.

So…STOP at the first lie. Don’t move on.