Trump’s repeated lies about his record on Iraq go unchallenged on TV news

[Commentary] In the long-running war between the media and Donald Trump’s marvelous talent at fabrication, the media finally scored a point. Trump doubled down on the preposterous claim he made earlier, that Sen Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) father was seen with Lee Harvey Oswald several months before JFK’s assassination—a claim that originated in a National Enquirer cover story in April. “It was a major story in a major publication,” Trump told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, on Good Morning America. “You can’t knock the National Enquirer.” Oh, but you can.

Sen Cruz and his father both denied any association with Oswald, and Politifact gave it a “pants on fire” rating, the lowest possible designation on the falsity scale. In a less common form of fact-checking, Jake Tapper at CNN took a full two minutes on his show The Lead to debunk Trump’s claim, which he called “bizarre, and completely uncorroborated.” Tapper was hailed for his display of forceful truth telling, with media critic Jay Rosen calling it “one of the highlights of the campaign” on Twitter. But the praise directed at Tapper for essentially doing his job is a function of the media’s failure, particularly on TV, to call out Trump’s lies. Now that Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee, that has to change.