I’m looking at you, Donald Trump.

When I know someone is blatantly lying to me, I’m understandably angry. I have an even lower tolerance for this nonsense when the person lying is a politician on the news. Unfortunately, our presidential candidates are not above making false statements. Fact-checkers have been having a field day with Donald Trump (and Hillary Clinton to a lesser extent); after a week of fact-checking, Politico found that Trump told an untruth every 3.25 minutes, while Clinton made a false statement every 12 minutes. While neither of these figures is good news for voters, it is telling that Trump lies almost four times as much as Clinton.

It’s understandable if someone gets a figure slightly wrong; we’re not robots after all, and politicians have to be well-versed in so many subject areas. But there’s no excuse for extreme exaggerations and unsupported statements. We elect politicians to represent and carry out the will of their constituents, the American people. This means politicians and political candidates have sway over large portions of the population; their supporters are likely to see them as credible figures. False statements can and do have real impacts on the beliefs and actions of real people.

Let’s take recent claims of the presidential election being run questionably. I’ve written about this several times, but the facts don’t back up claims of “rigging” and voter fraud. In fact, there is evidence to the contrary. A comprehensive study by Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor, found that out of 1 billion ballots cast between 2000 and 2014, only 31 credible incidents of voter impersonation occurred. And no presidential election has ever been won by such a small margin.

Still, Trump has called the election rigged on multiple occasions. Basically, Trump is inciting voters to question the results of an election upon which our democracy is based; almost half of voters believe there will be widespread voter fraud, according to a Politico poll. It gets scary super quickly; just read what these Trump supporters told a Boston Globe reporter:

Jeannine Bell Smith, 65, schoolteacher: “We’re going to have a lot of election fraud. They are having illegals vote. In some states, you don’t need voter registration to vote.”

Steve Webb, 61, carpenter from Ohio: “Trump said to watch your precincts. I’m going to go, for sure. I’ll look for…well, it’s called racial profiling. Mexicans. Syrians. People who can’t speak American. I’m going to go right up behind them. I’ll do everything legally. I want to see if they are accountable. I’m not going to do anything illegal. I’m going to make them a little bit nervous.”

Dan Bowman, 50, contractor: “If [Hillary Clinton is] in office, I hope we can start a coup. She should be in prison or shot. That’s how I feel about it. We’re going to have a revolution and take them out of office if that’s what it takes. There’s going to be a lot of bloodshed. But that’s what it’s going to take…I would do whatever I can for my country.”

(For the record, the Trump campaign said in a statement that they “reject violence in any form and will not allow it to be a part of our campaign.”)

I don’t really understand how someone can proclaim an election that hasn’t happened yet is definitively “rigged,” but let’s unpack these quotes anyways:

• Once again, there isn’t any reliable evidence to support Smith’s claim that there will be “a lot of election fraud.” And you definitely need voter registration to vote in all fifty states. Also, the most basic requirement of voter eligibility is U.S. citizenship, so no, “illegals” will not be voting in the election.
• Webb said he will “racially profile” people and “go right up behind them.” While he claims he’ll be doing everything legally, Webb has described what is most likely a classic case of voter intimidation. And, yes, voter intimidation is illegal.
• Bowman has taken it a step further. While he doesn’t actually say he’ll participate in the “bloodshed” he describes happening if Clinton is elected president, his claims that she should be “shot” are chilling.

As much as I wish these people and their words were figments of my imagination, they’re not. Trump should be taking responsibility for feeding his supporters falsehoods that very likely had something to do with how riled up some of them are about the “rigged” election. I mean, they’re literally describing committing crimes against Clinton supporters!

I get that when you see someone as a reliable source of information, it can be easy to become complacent. You might start accepting their words as truth. But we live in an age when fact-checking is ridiculously easy — as long as you have access to the internet and understand how to determine the reliability of sources, you too can be a fact-checker. And fact-checking Trump has become even easier, with many news sources dedicating resources to specifically verifying the candidates’ claims.

I wish candidates weren’t allowed to get away with blatant lies, but the fact of the matter is that many of them have extremely loyal fan bases. So all we can do in the meantime is not accept things at face value, and speak up when someone says something you know isn’t true.

I’ll leave you with this “The Daily Show” video, in which correspondent Jordan Klepper interviews people at a Trump rally and humorously uses their own logic against them. It’ll probably cause amusement and frustration in equal parts.

Image: Gage Skidmore