 Frank Rich referenced truthiness again in The New York Times in 2008 , describing the strategy of John McCain 's presidential campaign as being " to envelop the entire presidential race in a thick fog of truthiness " , Rich explained that the campaign was based on truthiness because " McCain , Sarah Palin and their surrogates keep repeating the same lies over and over not just to smear their opponents and not just to mask their own record . Their larger aim is to construct a bogus alternative reality so relentless it can overwhelm any haphazard journalistic stabs at puncturing it . " Rich also noted , " You know the press is impotent at unmasking this truthiness when the hardest @-@ hitting interrogation McCain has yet faced on television came on ' The View ' . Barbara Walters and Joy Behar called him on several falsehoods , including his endlessly repeated fantasy that Palin opposed earmarks for Alaska . Behar used the word ' lies ' to his face . " 
