Like any demagogue, Donald Trump employs different lies for different needs. But dishonesty is the core of his existence. The Republican Party has had a more tumultuous conversion experience to Trumpism. Republican Senator Ted Cruz, for example, has had to revise his condemnation of Trump as a “pathological liar” to suit the demands of a party in which lies, pathological and otherwise, have become increasingly valued currency.

That’s the context in which to understand a video by the Heritage Foundation, which surfaced recently. Heritage, the home of Project 2025, the authoritarian blueprint for a second, aspirationally permanent, MAGA reign, fancies itself a think tank. But Heritage has a long history of propaganda about voter fraud, which is the subject of the video.

A credible think tank would analyze facts and produce a response based on reality — albeit with its own ideological spin. No part of that process serves MAGA interests in stoking doubt about election outcomes or generating fear of Democrats manipulating the vote through wireless thermostats, Chinese bamboo-laced ballots, Italian satellites or other forms of magic that both the addled and unprincipled in MAGA ranks find so compelling. The claim that hordes of noncitizens are risking deportation to cast a felonious drop into an electoral sea of more than 150 million votes is no less deranged. (As a rule, all imaginary votes cast by noncitizens are cast for Democrats.)

Trump may be Liar Supreme, but Heritage preceded the former president into the voter-fraud game. Indeed, Heritage has spent decades engaged in “analysis” of voter fraud, raising allegations, questions, doubts and fears. Yet Heritage has steadfastly refused to get a firm grip on its topic.

Years of foundation labor have produced an “election fraud” database, which the group posts on its website. The database, Heritage states, represents just a “sampling” of fraud. Heritage simply won’t finish the job and produce a comprehensive list. It’s not hard to understand why. A less slapdash approach would merely confirm what credible research and election audits have found: Claims of significant voter fraud are utterly false.

The Heritage video, which was promoted on X by Elon Musk, a consistent purveyor of falsehoods himself, was shot without the subjects’ knowledge. According to an X post by Heritage’s “Oversight Project,” the video of interviews at an apartment complex in suburban Atlanta “shows numerous non-citizens admitting to being registered voters. A staggering 14% of the non-citizens spoken to admitted to being registered to voters [sic].”

This is pure nonsense, as a New York Times report established. First, registering to vote is different from actually voting. Second, extrapolating from one apartment complex to the entire state of Georgia is ridiculous. Third, it appears these people didn’t even register. “State investigators found no evidence that any of the seven people on the tape had ever registered to vote,” the Times reported. A spokesman for Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told the Times that the video was “a stunt.”

From the portion of the video posted on X, it’s not even clear most of the Spanish speakers understood what they are being asked by the interviewers, who falsely claimed to represent a company that registers Hispanics to vote. Most in the video are asked, in Spanish, if they are “registered” — not if they are “registered to vote.” So, it’s not clear what respondents meant when they answered in the affirmative. Perhaps the election context was provided to them, but it’s unclear from the video. Residents mostly seem eager to rid themselves of the prying strangers.

Of course, if the Heritage “researchers” had any interest in the subject they purport to document, they could have investigated whether any of the people living at the address were indeed registered to vote in the state of Georgia. Voter rolls are accessible to the public. But that would have taken all the fun out of it while making a mockery of their claim that “the integrity of the 2024 election is in great jeopardy.”

Propaganda seeks to invert the truth, and in this the video succeeds. Noncitizens do not pose an existential threat to US elections because noncitizens do not vote in remotely sufficient numbers to alter outcomes. A Georgia state audit released in 2022 found that zero noncitizens had voted in Georgia.

The GOP, on the other hand, is a serious and growing threat. The US already survived one Trump coup attempt in 2021. With help from the likes of Heritage, Trump is laying the groundwork for another if he loses in November and faces the likelihood of prison for a lengthy list of crimes.

Truthful Republicans, such as former Representative Liz Cheney or former Arizona Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers, have been driven from the party after recoiling from the lies and violence of Jan 6. Obeisance to Trump’s deception and criminality is the price of membership in the GOP’s authoritarian ranks, and the sole measure of party loyalty. In 2016, Trump’s pathology made plenty of Republicans uncomfortable. It’s 2024 now. Lies rule.

____

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Francis Wilkinson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering US politics and policy. Previously, he was executive editor for the Week and a writer for Rolling Stone.

©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com/opinion. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.