Campaign With Lies, Govern With Lies

The former governor of New York, Mario Cuomo, famously said, “you campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.”

But if you campaign with lies, you will govern with lies.

Donald Trump and JD Vance just became President- and Vice President-elect by relying heavily on cruel, hateful, and disinforming rhetoric. Throughout the campaign, both candidates, their spokespeople, and surrogates relied on overt, unapologetic racism, on targeted anti-trans ad buys and messages, and on attacks on climate change science, policy, and progress, to name just a few examples of their key messages.

We should expect them to spread more hate speech and disinformation after they are inaugurated. And we should understand that we don’t have to stand by helplessly when they do.

Lies our president-elect told us

Disinformation, the intentional spreading of lies, is a form of propaganda. Those who wield it as a political tactic have three main goals: to spur and stoke division, to reinforce political and cultural identities that weaken discourse and democracy, and to maintain or reinforce existing power structures and undermine progress.

The Trump-Vance campaign stoked political division by amplifying Russian disinformation about the federal government’s response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton. This content dovetailed perfectly with their campaign’s anti-immigrant, anti-government, and anti-US-support-for-Ukraine narratives.

There are many ways in which Russia, a petrostate, benefits from its state media outlets and from social media accounts spreading lies during the US election process, but an obvious one is that Russia profits from a US government that undermines international climate negotiations and progress by withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement.

Joseph Goebbels, the chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, disclosed the “secret of propaganda” when he remarked that “those who are to be persuaded by it should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it.”

Over the past decade or so, we have seen strategic and successful efforts from the fossil fuel industry and its allies to cement disinforming narratives into political and cultural identity, and the Trump-Vance campaign joined in whole-heartedly. In their statements and posts, climate science and solutions denial overlapped with other conspiratorial thinking—about COVID19, global economic initiatives, drivers of migration, immigrants themselves, and antisemitism.

It’s hard to find common ground on climate policy when a significant proportion of the public has been sold lies about climate science, scientists, advocates, and progress. This, of course, is the point. Climate disinformation is intended to deny science, deceive the public, delay action, or dodge responsibility. In so doing, it maintains the power of the fossil fuel industry and its political allies and locks the world’s people into an increasingly dangerous future.

Quid pro quote

Come January, the fossil fuel industry has a powerful and shameless ally in the White House. We can expect even fewer brakes on worst impulses and actions in the second Trump administration.

During the 2024 campaign, candidate Trump reportedly offered to “roll back a slew of environmental regulations in exchange for $1 billion in campaign contributions” from the fossil fuel industry. If these allegations are true, it is astonishing and appalling that the President-elect solicited a campaign contribution in exchange for anti-environmental (and anti-health) action, and even quoted his price.

A Senate investigation into the issue has been stymied, lawmakers say, because big oil and gas companies are not responding, though “none of them have denied the accuracy of the reporting.”

Big Oil companies are demonstrated purveyors and chief beneficiaries of climate disinformation, but they’re not in it alone. Big Tech, including some companies that own large online search engines and social media platforms, are fossil fuel industry accomplices—they too spread and profit off climate lies, greenwash their own business practices, and support anti-climate officials, including President-elect Donald Trump.

What to expect while we’re reflecting

I’m not saying, better the devil you know, but this isn’t our first go-around with a Trump administration.

We should be confident that how candidates Trump and Vance behaved in the election is once again how they’ll govern, and that because of the strategic thinking behind Project 2025, a second Trump White House will be better prepared to do serious, long-term harm to the US government, the people in the country, and our climate.

It doesn’t take a crystal ball to predict that we will see continued

• attacks on the truth-tellers, that is scientists and science-based advocates,
• efforts to exacerbate political and social division rather than to help people suffering from climate-fueled disasters,
• lies about climate-fueled disasters and risks (anyone remember Sharpiegate?),
• fuel for conspiratorial thinking that undermines trust in democracy, institutions, science, and other people.

Yes, the administration will change in January 2025, but some things won’t. When confronted with climate disinformation or by conspiratorial thinkers, it’s still best not to waste time on bad faith arguments or in playing scientific whack-a-mole. It’s still best to speak with curiosity and empathy with people you love who’ve been disinformed. It’s still kind and wise to ask them where they’re getting their information, and why it resonates with them.

And if people you care about are attracted to conspiracist thinking, boy, have you got an ACTUAL conspiracy for them—the actions of the fossil fuel industry and its pals (see here, here, and here).

Hold Big Tech accountable, too

I often hear that in the United States, taking action to stop the spread of climate disinformation online is impossible because of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech. I think that, to a certain extent, this is a red herring. As an analogy, I have a right to my opinion but I don’t have the right to publish that opinion in the New York Times.

Many platforms and search engines already have editorial policies, including policies against certain categories of mis- and disinformation. An oft-cited criterion for removing mis- or disinforming content is that, as Meta/Facebook writes, it “directly contribute(s) to the risk of imminent physical harm.”  That’s why, with climate impacts being ever more heavily borne around the world, it’s important to demand that platforms include climate disinformation in their lists of barred content.

Here are some other demands UCS, as part of the global Climate Action Against Disinformation coalition, has for Big Tech:

• Throttle bad actors’ posts. Online climate-disinforming content originates from a small number of accounts. If accounts repeatedly defy anti-disinformation policies, platforms can “throttle” or delay content from those accounts, fact-checking BEFORE allowing posts to go live and spread falsehoods and harm.
• Don’t profit. Platforms and search engines can simply STOP advertising, monetizing, and amplifying climate disinformation.
• Do better. We can all work together to demand that search engines and social media platforms develop new, counter disinformation policies and/or strengthen and enforce existing ones.

Struggle on

There’s a long, hard road ahead of us and a lot of uncertainty. One thing I am sure about is that no effort to clean up and safeguard the systems that inform (and too often, disinform) the world will be wasted. Counter disinformation work is crucial to building a world in which facts, science, truth matter, and democracy ultimately prevails.