One of the immediate casualties of Trump’s rise to power, or so we were constantly told, was the truth. Scores of pundits appeared on television and discussed Trump’s habit of obscuring or ignoring the truth altogether. Journalists here and abroad catalogued and constantly updated Trump’s register of lies; we were informed in tones both solemn and (let’s be honest) ecstatic that no inhabitant of the White House had ever lied so fluently.
A rabble of Democratic candidates for the presidency made the restoration of truth a centerpiece of their campaigns. Indeed, candidate Joe Biden often ended his stump speeches with a version of the same refrain: “We choose hope over fear,” he’d declaim. “Unity over division. Science over fiction. And truth over lies.”
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