Ted Cruz ‘s Equine Posterior Achievement Award winning streak has come to an end, with Donald Trump taking a clear majority — 53.3% — this year, relegating Cruz to a distant second. People For the American Way’s Equine Posterior Achievement Award “honors” the politicians and pundits who reach new lows in right-wing extremism.
Trump proved that he truly deserved the award when he boasted recently that he was named “Man of the Year” by WorldNetDaily, the bizarre conspiracy site that thinks President Obama is a demonic leader bent on throwing Americans into FEMA camps.
The Republican presidential frontrunner has shown that he is not constrained by facts. He tweeted, and then defended his decision to tweet, fabricated, racist crime statistics that he said “came from sources that are very credible”. (In fact, they were from a neo-Nazi website.) He falsely claimed that “thousands and thousands” of Muslim-Americans in New Jersey celebrated on 9/11, which he said was unprovable simply because the media was conspiring to cover up footage of the celebrations. He absurdly claimed that the unemployment rate in the U.S. is at 42 percent. He alleged that the Obama administration plans to take in 250,000 Syrian refugees, which helped lead to his call for a blanket ban on all Muslims from entering the country. And, of course, he accused the Mexican government of sending rapists and murderers to the U.S.
As one libertarian writer put it, “Trump is proving himself to be a fabricator of colossal untruths and an expert liar.”
But Trump’s falsehoods are driving the media’s narrative of the 2016 presidential campaign.
Just see how Trump’s suggestion that Cruz may not be able to serve as president because of his Canadian birthplace led to several days of media coverage on the matter, even though experts roundly concur that the Texas senator is in fact eligible.
Trump’s use of paranoid politics, particularly warning that immigrants want to enter the U.S. to commit crimes and that terrorists are crossing the southern border in order to commit acts of terror has proven effective in the GOP primary. This may be because the Republican base has gotten used to years of politicians similarly suggesting that President Obama is an un-American — if not anti-American — leader who is letting immigrants “take” jobs from Americans and ignoring threats from radical Islamists.
When not focusing on the purported threats from the Obama administration, immigrants and Muslims, Trump knows what’s really important: fighting the War on Christmas.
