Republican Sen. JD Vance didn’t exactly have a reputation for honesty ahead of this week’s vice presidential debate, but over the course of roughly 90 minutes, the Ohio senator definitely made matters worse.
A New York Times analysis, for example, said Vance showed “a knack for revising history,” which was a polite way of saying the senator spent the evening lying to the electorate about matters large and small. A Washington Post report added that Vance “dominated on the falsehood meter.”
Which of his lies was the most outrageous? Which of his many falsehoods was the most up-is-down, day-is-night brazen? It’s not an easy call — there are so many to choose from — but it’s easy to make the case that the GOP nominee’s lies about the Affordable Care Act were so ridiculous, he was effectively insulting Americans’ intelligence with his comments:
When Obamacare was crushing under the weight of its own regulatory burden in health care costs, Donald Trump could have destroyed the program. Instead he worked in a bipartisan way to ensure that Americans had access to affordable care.
The fact that the Republican managed to say this with a straight face was, to put it mildly, unsettling. “Gaslighting” is a word that’s often overused, but it applied here.
As HuffPost’s Jonathan Cohn — who knows as much as anyone about the Affordable Care Act and the political fight surrounding it — wrote in reference to Vance’s comments, “This is pure fantasy, literally the opposite of the truth.”
The details are multifaceted, to be sure, but the bottom line is simple: Trump tried to kill the ACA and take health security from millions of American families. He failed, but that doesn’t make his efforts — and his running mate’s brazen lies about those efforts — any less scandalous.
As for why voters in 2024 should care about this, that’s simple: If the Republican ticket takes power, Americans’ health care benefits will be on the line once again. It’s a point Vice President Kamala Harris and her Democratic campaign is eager to drive home in the campaign’s final month. NBC News reported:
The Harris campaign released a series of new ads [this week] targeting battleground state voters featuring Wisconsin farmer Tina Hinchley, who denounced Trump over his efforts to kill the Affordable Care Act, which she credits with saving her life. “It saved my life and my business,” Hinchley says in one of the ads, saying that she survived a brain tumor and breast cancer and now has coverage because of Obamacare. “Donald Trump says he wants to kill the Affordable Care Act. He doesn’t care what that would mean for families like mine.”
The Harris campaign actually released three separate ads featuring the Wisconsin dairy farmer this week, and they’re all very effective.
Coming soon to a screen near you.
