In a statement released Sunday night, the former president offered both an admission and a proposition. The admission was that the violence that erupted at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was spurred by “the Fake Election results” — which is to say by Trump’s dishonest and unsupported allegations about the 2020 election. The proposition is that some gullible television network somewhere enjoy the “ratings bonanza” of a “public debate” on the “facts, not the fiction” of what happened in the 2020 election.
“I am willing to challenge the heads of the various papers or even far left politicians, who have perpetuated the Real Big Lie,” Trump wrote, “which is voter irregularities and fraud on a massive and determinative scale.”
One is that cons like Trump’s claims about the 2020 election inevitably see the stakes inflated over time. Trump has to do something to maintain the same sense of urgency about his false claims over the election, so he suggests that nothing short of a televised back-and-forth will fit the bill. We’ve seen others who are hustling the same nonsense engage in similar elevations: Gateway Pundit’s pledge of $10,000 to anyone who can debunk something that has long been debunked; MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s insistence that he would get the Supreme Court to hear his ridiculous fraud claims by Thanksgiving. (Thanksgiving, as you may know, was last week.)
Another is that Trump seems an unusual vessel for the right’s popular let’s...
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and its audit contractors have the authority to suspend payments to hospice care providers suspected of submitting false claims or improperly...