Shocker Poll Suggests Trump’s Lying May Be Huge Weakness for Him

At his marathon rallies, Mr. Trump, using a teleprompter but often going on riffs without it, speaks for upward of 90 minutes. He tells outrageous lies. He employs hateful language. He mixes up names, dates and places.

But the bombastic former president—who at 78 is three years younger than Mr. Biden and with his heavyset frame appears far more physically imposing—does it all with prodigious stamina. Polls show that voters have fewer concerns about Mr. Trump’s age than Mr. Biden’s.

Trump spews lies and hate regularly, but, hey, he does it with an effective display of performative gusto! Oh, well—it’s all just an inevitable background condition of our politics in the Trump era. But news organizations can choose to not treat Trump’s lying this way, and find a better approach. Another problem: Media fact checks are often cordoned off from other types of stories. There has to be some way to better integrate fact-checking into the daily drumbeat of news coverage.

Joe Kahn, executive editor of the Times, recently told Erik Wemple that the paper’s intense focus on Biden’s age is appropriate, because it’s “one of the most important issues on voters’ minds.” That’s true, and again, Biden’s age absolutely is a critical issue. But if the Marist poll is right, far more voters are concerned about dishonesty in a president than about decline associated with aging. Perhaps it’s time to cover Trump’s lying accordingly.

As for making this a political issue that does more damage to Trump—by casting his bottomless dishonesty as a disqualifier, for instance—that’s on Biden and Democrats. Between these Marist numbers and others showing large percentages of Americans view Trump as the shameless liar that he is, the pieces are all there. Democrats just have to put them together.