It’s Time to Stop Repeating Donald Trump’s Lies

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Just a quick note on something I’ve been doing for the past few weeks. I’m not sure how many of you have noticed, but I’m experimenting with refusing to repeat lies—especially Donald Trump’s—when I respond to them.

This morning, for example, I posted a chart showing the number of abortions by week of pregnancy. Obviously I didn’t do this out of the blue. I did it in response to Trump’s absurd statement at a Wisconsin rally that Democrats favor infanticide: “The baby is born, the mother meets with the doctor, they take care of the baby, they wrap the baby beautifully, and then the doctor and the mother determine whether or not they will execute the baby.” This, of course, is Trump’s hyperbolic version of the right-wing’s general notion that liberals favor abortion right up to the moment of birth.

The truth is that although many liberals prefer to see no non-medical restrictions on abortion, 91 percent of all abortions are performed in the first trimester and something like 99.9 percent of abortions are performed in the first two trimesters.

Question: what do you all think of this experiment? Should I keep refusing to give lies more attention? Or would you prefer to know exactly which lies I’m responding to?

UPDATE: And here’s the response to my mini-survey:

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

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