PolitiFact's 'Lie of the Year' and its impact on the Ohio town caught in the middle - PBS NewsHour

[Rhiannon12866]

The 2024 campaign was unlike any in modern American history. But one thing united candidates across the political spectrum, they were all searching for messages that would resonate with voters. The team at the fact-checking organization PolitiFact investigated hundreds of claims to separate fact from fiction. As Ali Rogin reports, one comment stood out as Politifact’s 2024 Lie of the Year. - Aired on 12/25/2024.

[SouthBayDem]

1. Remember Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock?

Those were Senate candidates who fumbled away otherwise winnable elections due to their idiotic, repulsive comments about pregnancy from sexual assault.

But they were running in 2012, when online political rhetoric wasn't as poisoned as it is now.

Case in point: The county where Springfield is located voted 64% for T---p/V---e this year. From what I could gather in the precinct-by-precinct results, they also won most of the voting districts in Springfield itself.

[Rhiannon12866]

2. Agree that this is insane. What does it take to convince these voters that they are voting against their own interests??

[swong19104]

4. It's not whether it's for or against their own interests

it has to hurt them so hard that they themselves die a slow and painful death while their loved ones also die in a similar manner. After they lose their home, their car, their every worldly possession, that is.

I mean, they won't learn anything because they're dead. But at least their vote won't happen.

[Self Esteem]

3. I'd actually say that the lie helped Trump.

Feels like we're through the looking glass now where absurd lies can actually work. Trump didn't get damaged by that lie. People believed it. We're fucked.

[Walleye]

5. Yes, it seems almost silly that we're always searching for the right "message"

What message would make racists stop hating? All the good work we have done toward that aim over the decades has been undone by one man

[rampartd]

6. the transgender stuff was pretty egregious as well

no one ever sent a boy to school and came back a girl. i don't think teachers or librarians encourage transgender stuff. i never heard ms harris say anything about paying for surgery for prisoners.

lie of the year? "they're eating the cats" is a good choice, but more important is that the top 100 nominations are all from trump.