Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg (wearing a $900,000 watch) announced yesterday morning that across their over-seven-billion-user-strong social media empire—Facebook, Instagram, Threads, WhatsApp—they’ll be dialing back on fact-checking. They’re also preparing to promote more “political” content (among other changes that support those two moves, like no longer filtering out trash-talking queer people or immigrants and moving what’s left of their Trust & Safety team from liberal California to conservative Texas).

Here’s the problem: Republican politicians rely on lies, distortions, and falsehoods to sell most of their policies and candidates.

They must do this because the reality of their actual goals (cut billionaires’ taxes, increase pollution, gut worker and consumer protections, defund schools and medical care, privatize and cut Social Security and Medicare, subsidize oil companies, outlaw abortion, etc.) are so repellent to most Americans.

The Democratic Party, on the other hand, has been shockingly scrupulous for decades about telling the truth, at least with regard to policy. The last “big lie” I can remember coming from the Dems was LBJ’s claim that North Vietnam had attacked us at the Gulf of Tonkin. And that was 60 years ago!

I did a search for “Democratic lies” using two different AI programs, Google, and DuckDuckGo. The worst I could find were, according to those search sites:

— Only the rich will pay more taxes under proposed policies.
— A transition to green energy won’t cost any jobs.
— Sanctuary cities reduce crime rates universally.
— Social media platforms primarily suppress left-wing voices.
— Trump’s Project 2025 wasn’t actually Trump’s project.
— Expanding federal funding for education guarantees improved student outcomes.
— Kamala Harris falsely claimed Trump encouraged Putin to invade U.S. allies.
— Harris mischaracterized a border security bill as the “strongest in decades.”
— Tim Walz falsely attributed a quote about ruthless use of power to JD Vance.
— Illinois Governor JB Pritzker........

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