Is this simply our beloved "fake it till you make it" ethos at work again?
American (and maybe other?) political parties are in the business of creative storytelling as a means to the ends of their special interests.
They do sleight of hand with their political platforms, why not also with their disposable hired actors?
The part I find amazing about situations like this, is the default starting position of "it's American politics, things you'd normally go to jail for, are structurally unenforceable here".
This should never be allowed.
"Man is the symbol-using (symbol-making, symbol-misusing) animal, inventor of the negative (or moralized by the negative), separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making, goaded by the spirit of hierarchy (or moved by the sense of order), and rotten with perfection"[1]
We have to start somewhere.
To me, it seems obvious and intuitive that "fake it till you make it" is a mostly harmless comment on mentality for confidence. You act calm and confident talking to the person you want to date when you see them at a party, even though internally you're nervous and scared. You act like a big business deal is routine for you even though it's actually make-or-break for your company.
Suggesting that it means "fraud is ok" seems preposterous to me, the sort of thing that my intuitive reaction is to think "Nobody could honestly believe that, they're being intentionally difficult". But the world is a big place, full of people whose brains work very differently, who process language very differently, who grew up in different cultures and were taught different lessons about how the world works.
Which is all to say, no of course this isn't "fake it till you make it". But that it'd be interesting if some sociologist did research on what level of acting, deceiving, misrepresenting, etc different folks see the line between "fake it till you make it" and "dishonesty" or "fraud".