President Trump lies constantly to the American public. It’s damaging our democracy and undermining Americans’ future.

Consider Social Security. It is an efficiently run program of earned benefits that protects workers in retirement. In his recent speech to Congress, Trump promoted the Elon Musk-created lie that Social Security is paying benefits to people who are hundreds of years old. This seems designed to create a bogus justification for cutting a lifeline that prevents millions of older and disabled Americans from falling into poverty.

Scientific research also saves lives. But that hasn’t kept Trump from targeting it with lies. Trump claimed that the government spent $8 million “for making mice transgender,” to which he added, “This is real.” No, it is not real. Medical researchers studying cancer and asthma use mice that have been genetically altered to make testing more relevant to humans. These are known as transgenic mice. Trump’s lie was, as Rolling Stone magazine put it, “designed to go viral in the right-wing misinformation machine.”

This machine is years in the making. In the 1980s, right-wing donors began pouring money........

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