With dizzying regularity, Trump lies. He says toxic, antidemocratic things over and over again. And he still gets treated like a normal candidate. It’s often the case that the media, presented with another one of his addled rants, will dive in, scoop, and separate enough words to make it seem like he’s got enough actual gray matter gooping around in his skull to form a complete sentence, and present their director’s cut of his wandering mind for public consumption.

The Democrat, first Joe Biden and now Harris, gets called evasive or worse if he-then-she doesn’t respond to Trump’s ridiculous lies. The effect is to legitimize Trump....

This highlights a continuing problem with how the political press deals with a person (a) who historically has very few actual ideas beyond schemes to get himself on television, (b) whose ideas, such as they are, are often unworkable and unconstitutional and un-American and extremist, and (c) who lies about them every time he speaks.

This is ... something that happens many times a week. At his rallies, he lies constantly, makes toxic accusations ceaselessly. Why aren’t news organizations with the resources to do so—the Times, the Post, CNN, the other networks—systematically analyzing and deconstructing those speeches and keeping specific count of the lies and accusations? Isn’t that journalism’s fundamental job—to tell the truth?