Newly announced Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders suggested on Monday that Donald Trump should be attached to a lie detector during the 2020 presidential debates.

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The tongue-in-cheek proposal came when Sanders was asked how he would “engage” with the president if he was on the debate stage with him next year.

“We’ll bring a lie detector along and every time he lies it goes ‘beep’,” the Vermont senator said.

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Sanders tore into the president for his pathological lying:

We’ll bring a lie detector along and every time he lies it goes ‘beep’. That would be the first thing. … I have conservative friends. We all do. They’re honest people. They believe what they believe. I believe what I believe. That’s called democracy. That’s a good thing. But I think the fraud that Trump is, the pathological liar that he is has to be exposed. So we are going to hold him accountable for what he said and what he did. He said he was going to provide health care to everybody, then he proposes to throw 32 million people off the health care that they have. He said ‘I’m a different type of Republican. I’m not going to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.’ And he brings forward a budget that does just that. So I think holding him accountable would be a good start in that debate. 

The Democratic nominee must hold Trump accountable for his lies

No matter who the Democratic nominee is in 2020, it will be a challenge to keep track of all the lies Trump will tell during the campaign, let alone holding him accountable for the lies and broken promises left over from the 2016 campaign.

As The Washington Post has reported in the past, Trump lies more than a dozen times per day. The frequency of those lies will likely intensify during the 2020 campaign as he tries to con enough voters into giving him a second term.

But that’s all part of the Trump strategy – to muddy the waters so much that Democrats and the media aren’t sure which lie to chase.

Instead of taking the bait every time, Democrats would be smart to focus on the lies that matter most – the ones that were central to Trump‘s 2016 campaign and his presidency.

There is no Mexican-funded wall. Instead, Trump shut down the government in an effort to force American taxpayers to pay for the vanity project – all while denying pay for hundreds of thousands of federal workers.

Trump has not looked out for the “forgotten men and women” of the country, as he promised to do. Instead, he has gone after their health insurance while slashing taxes for the wealthy and proposing cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Trump has not drained the swamp. Instead, the level of corruption in the current government makes Watergate-era corruption look like child’s play.

This is a president who essentially lies with every breath. In 2020, Democrats would be smart to hammer him for the ones that matter most.

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Sean Colarossi

Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.