- We're now joined by Bill Adair, who's the author of "Beyond the Big Lie: The Epidemic of Political Lying, Why Republicans Do It More, and How It Could Burn Down Our Democracy," and also creator of PolitiFact.

Bill, good to see you.

- Thank you for having me.

- Hold on, do you need to do an update on the book, which I read and I found fascinating, given that one of the biggest lies in politics, you know where I'm going, right?

You know where I'm going.

This is the "New York Post," which I know you read every day.

Listen, as we do this program mid-December, is not the biggest lie, one of the biggest lies in the history of American politics, President Biden saying, "I will not pardon my son" many, many times and many, many organizations and Democrats repeating it and then, "Oh yeah, nevermind, I'm pardoning him."

How the heck do Republicans lie more when that's one of the biggest lies ever?

- Well, you know, and I don't say in the book that Democrats don't lie.

- Okay.

(laughs) - In fact, in my lying hall of fame, which I'd like to have built somewhere, I do mention many prominent lies by Democrats including, or many prominent Democratic liars, including Bill Clinton and Lyndon Johnson.

You know, Lyndon Johnson's lies about the Vietnam War, like took us, not only led to the escalation of the war, but led to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths.

So clearly Democrats, you know, lie at an a really significant rate also.

- But Republicans lie more?

- Absolutely, and you know- - And this election doesn't change that, right?

- Exactly, and so- - Go ahead, make the case.

Make the case.

- Well, you know, and this really goes back, so I wrote this book because of my own experience, not just as editor of PolitiFact, but my own experience as a political reporter.

And it goes back to the late '90s when I started as a political reporter covering Congress, and I began to see this pattern, and it just got worse and worse and worse with digital media, with the Fox News Channel becoming a vessel for these lies and creating this echo chamber for Republicans to lie that encouraged them to lie, became an ecosystem for them to lie, that as we saw in the Dominion case, Fox News Channel lost money if it didn't echo those lies.

- The Dominion voting machines that they said, and they promoted the lie that they were rigged, blah, blah, blah, and then had to pay big money 'cause they slandered and libeled the company.

Go ahead.

- Exactly, and so Fox ended up having to pay $787 million for that.

- Oh, is that all?

- But you know, that actually, and I think that just showed the case revealed a lot about our partisan media ecosystem, and it showed that Fox had an incentive, an economic incentive to lie and to allow people on its air to lie, and that's really frightening.

And so I explore this in the book, and I do it in, not through a lot of kind of heavy political analysis, but by telling stories, stories of people who have been victims of lying, one woman in particular, Nina Jankowicz, who we can talk about, who was a victim of lies by Republicans in Congress.

Another guy who I really got fascinated with, who fell for the big election lie in 2020, came to the Capitol, stormed the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, all because he fell for the election lies.

And then I had some fascinating tales in the book about people who decided to lie, and did it for strategic reasons.

So the book is an examination of lying through these tales of people.

- So how about this?

My job, as you know, on one level, is to play devil's advocate, so I'm gonna be advocating another point of view.

Who benefited and who was attempting to benefit on the Democratic side for the years of "lying" about the mental, physical, and cognitive capabilities of President Biden, and how much does that bother you?

Because there was a motive there too, and it clearly was not the case that he was capable of running again until we saw a debate in which Donald Trump, by most standards, wasn't that particularly good, but President Biden was at times incoherent.

That's a pretty darn big lie, don't you think, Bill Adair?

- Oh, I agree with you.

I think it goes deeper than individual lies.

I think we need to look at the news coverage of that, because if we go back, I don't think there was the sufficient news coverage of Biden in that time period that there should have been.

- MSNBC and some who lean to the left, do you think they were sufficiently seriously questioning the cognitive and capable communication skills of the President, or was he getting a pass?

- No, I don't believe they were sufficiently questioning it, and I do think he was getting a pass, so I think we would agree about that.

I'm not sure how much I would characterize those things as lies.

You'd have to go back and look at individual statements to do that, but you know, clearly, we went through this period where he didn't get the scrutiny that he should have.

There was some coverage.

I think if you go back, you look at 2022, there were some occasional stories, but not the sort of coverage that he definitely got in the conservative media, which raised a lot of questions about his fitness for office.

- Okay, let me ask you this.

Is President Trump, as we do this program, and he'll be President, you know, we're in that transition period, do you consider him the most prolific "political liar" of all time?

- Without question, and it's- - How come he wins?

How does he win?

- Well, I think he wins- - How does he win that, then how does he win an election if he's such a prolific liar, please?

- Well, I think clearly, voters decided that, I would be surprised if people who voted for him were unaware of his record for lying.

I think that's well known, and I think that voters, and we saw this in plenty of interviews, people said, "Hey, we know he does this, and we accept this for whatever reason."

So and I think there's no question if you look at the political fact-checkers like PolitiFact, the site that I founded, or "The Washington Post" fact-checker, Glenn Kessler, or "The New York Times" fact checks, or CNN's fact-checker, there's no question that Donald Trump lies on an epic scale.

One thing that's notable, he repeats the same lies over and over and over again, and, you know, to say, "Well, is he making mistakes?"

No, it's unquestionable that he is lying, but the voters decided they're okay with that.

- Yeah, but see, Bill, I'm sorry for interrupting, but doesn't that beg the question, how much does lying, political "lying" really matter to most Americans?

Or is the assumption that most political figures will lie, so no biggie?

- Well, and I think that's a- - Or does it depend upon the lie?

- Yeah, I think we need to have a conversation about that as a, you know, as a nation.

Are we okay with this?

Does truth matter in our politics?

I think it should, and it's really troubling to me that we have gotten to this point that we have a political discourse that is so broken.

We cannot have an honest discourse about climate, we cannot have an honest discourse about immigration, because there is so much lying about it.

Now, that's really troubling, and I think that voters in this election made their decisions for a lot of different reasons.

Now, let's realize this was not a blowout election.

This was an election where Donald Trump won, you know, unquestionably, but it wasn't like it was a landslide, and so we need to look at, I think separate from that, we need to step back and say, "Do we care about honesty among our politicians?"

A lot of people do, a lot of people don't, and why is it that people don't care?

And I think they should, and I think a lot of people agree with me.

- So lemme ask you this.

What do you think our job, and we're in public media, you do what you do.

We have no horse in the race, I don't assume you do either.

What the heck is our job when it comes to political lying and dealing with it?

Is it our job to say, "No, this is the truth"?

- Well, and that's a great question.

I think it is our job to say, "These are the facts.

It's up to you to know the, you know, to take these facts and make decisions as you want."

What what's troubling to me is that we can't have a discussion about these important issues facing our future if we don't agree on the same facts, and I think that is our job as journalists, to present people with common facts so that they can consider those facts in making decisions about policy and politics.

- Hold on one second.

Hold on one second, Bill.

Did you not hear former Trump staffer Kellyanne Conway?

We're a New Jersey based operation, she's from New Jersey.

Did you not hear when she said there are alternative facts?

Did you miss that memo?

(Bill laughing) They're alternative facts, you just didn't get them.

- It echoes in my- It echoes in my ears, Steve.

(Steve laughing) I think that, and, you know, to take her point of view, you know, I think her point could be interpreted as, hey, different people have different ways of approaching an issue, and so that doesn't mean that they just, you know, necessarily dispute a fact.

It just may be that they have different opinions about how to weigh those facts, perhaps.

- One fact, no lie, I got no more time.

So that's Bill Adair.

(both chuckling) He's the author of "Beyond the Big Lie."

Go out there and read it.

Bill, thanks for joining us.

We'll have another conversation, okay?

- Thank you for having me.

- I'm Steve Adubato, that's Bill Adair, and that's no lie.

We'll see you next time.

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