When Ron DeSantis announced his presidential campaign via Twitter Spaces this week, it should have given the Florida governor a bigger platform from which to push lies.

However, as glitches and other technical issues delayed his announcement by nearly 30 minutes, costing him hundreds of thousands of viewers in the process, the truth of the moment was evident. DeSantis can sign statutes that allow schools to hide America’s racism. He can create a police force designed to suppress the vote. He can use the levers of government to engage in a culture war with Disney. But try as he might, DeSantis cannot ban the truth.

That’s what makes this Republican presidential primary election so different. Truth itself is on the ballot, and if DeSantis or any of his competitors hope to win the GOP nomination, they must do more than defeat the other candidates. They must also defeat the truth.

The fight against truth didn’t start with DeSantis. It began when Donald Trump won the presidency after years of repeating the racist lie that former President Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Trump went on to make 30,573 false or misleading statements over the course of his presidency.

As for Trump, the lies seem to have raised his political stock. He is the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination.

If they hope to erode his lead, Trump’s Republican rivals must embrace at least some of his lies. Some parrot the ridiculous notion that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Others pretend that criminal investigations of Trump are a witch hunt. Still others, like U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, claim that racism is a thing of the past.

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