The simple two-word strategy that could stop Trump's lies cold

President Donald Trump lies so often that the media struggles to expose his dishonesty to the public without being accused of bias — but on Thursday one journalism professor offered a suggestion.

“ Every time President Trump asserts a fact at a podium, on a tarmac, or in the Oval Office, the White House press corps should respond with two questions, asked plainly every time: 'How do you know that?' and 'What does that mean?'” wrote Stuart N. Brotman, former president and CEO of The Museum of Television & Radio (now The Paley Center for Media), for The Hill. He went on to explain why this seemingly-simple set of questions can knock Trump and all other serial liars on their figurative heels.

“Used as a standing protocol rather than an occasional follow-up, they would do what shouted questions and next-day fact-checks have not managed to do — make evasion visible in real time and render 'fake news' an insufficient reply,” Brotman pointed out. Elaborating near the end, he explained that the “two-question protocol, used by every outlet in the room, would do three things at once. It would put Trump on the record, or expose the absence of a record. It would make definitional vagueness uncomfortable rather than convenient. And it would restore a shared expectation that assertions of fact come with provenance.”

Although Trump would accuse the questioners of being his enemies, it would be more difficult to convincingly depict them as hostile because the coverage would accurately describe his behavior.

“The coverage then changes,” Brotman wrote. “‘The president did not identify a source’ is a more honest lead than ‘The president claimed.’ ‘The president did not define the term’ is a more honest lead than ‘The president said.’ The press corps is not obligated to convert every dodge into a declarative sentence. Evasion, reported as evasion, is journalism.”

Earlier in the editorial, Brotman listed examples of various Trump lies that could have been exposed in real time if journalists had used this approach.

“Consider the record of the last 10 weeks,” Brotman said. “In his February 2026 State of the Union, Trump told the country that $18 trillion in new investment had poured into the U.S. since he resumed office. His own White House website put the figure at $9.7 trillion, a figure that was itself inflated by vague ‘bilateral trade’ pledges.”

He added, “Trump claimed that an accused killer of a Ukrainian refugee in North Carolina had entered through ‘open borders’; available evidence indicates the suspect is an American citizen. He asserted that Somali residents of Minnesota had ‘pillaged an estimated $19 billion,’ a figure with no identifiable source and no stated methodology.”

Brotman is not the only journalist to call out fellow journalists for insufficient rigor in calling out Trump’s lies.

“For a while now, I’ve been imploring the leaders of our top news organizations to call out Donald Trump’s derangement,” Dan Froomkin, editor of Press Watch and former journalist at The Huffington Post and The Intercept, recently wrote. “My argument is simple: It is the central, underlying explanation for everything else they’re covering.”

Froomkin added, “They won’t do it. Their arguments: It would appear partisan; We don’t want to take sides; And (more reasonably) we prohibit the use of language associated with mental illness unless a person has been diagnosed as mentally ill. (I wrestle with a variation of this last one myself: How do you call him insane without stigmatizing insane people?)”

Speaking to this journalist for Salon shortly before the 2020 presidential election, former Yale University psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee warned that Trump if he lost would attempt a coup (which he did) and the media was insufficiently raising the alarm about obvious warning signs about his psychological inability to accept defeat.

“Just as one once settled for adulation in lieu of love, one may settle for fear when adulation no longer seems attainable,” Lee explained. “Rage attacks are common, for people are bound to fall short of expectation for such a needy personality—and eventually everyone falls into this category. But when there is an all-encompassing loss, such as the loss of an election, it can trigger a rampage of destruction and reign of terror in revenge against an entire nation that has failed him.”

She concluded, “It is far easier for the pathological narcissist to consider destroying oneself and the world, especially its ‘laughing eyes,’ than to retreat into becoming a ‘loser’ and a ‘sucker’ — which to someone suffering from this condition will feel like psychic death.”

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