Ms. Salazar’s first instinct was to accuse Tablet Magazine, where I used to be an editor, of practicing “race science” when it cracked open the story in August about inconsistencies in her background and raised questions about her account of converting to Judaism . A few days before voters went to the polls she softened it a bit for Rolling Stone: “I regret not having the foresight to anticipate being misunderstood.”

But none of it mattered. She won 58.5 percent of the vote — 20,603 to her opponent’s 14,614.

In the run-up to the election, only Citizens Union, a good government group, dropped its endorsement on the grounds that Ms. Salazar had provided incorrect information about her “academic credentials.” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez doubled down on her support for the candidate, saying, through a spokesman, that she remained behind her “100 percent.” Cynthia Nixon, who in July called Ms. Salazar “the future of the Democratic Party,” never wavered, nor did the New York City comptroller Scott Stringer. And the Democratic Socialists of America threw its organizing support behind her.

A known liar is now heading to Albany. At least she’ll be in good company?

No matter how many things Ms. Salazar makes up, it seems unfair to liken her to our post-truth president, who lies on a much grander scale and who has the power to do far, far greater damage.

And yet, the willingness of Ms. Salazar’s supporters to look past her fabrications sounds eerily familiar to the justifications Trump supporters made in 2016: Yes, he’s distasteful and prone to exaggeration. But he’s promising to pass policies we like. Supporting him is a price worth paying in pursuit of our goals.

Even the right’s dismissal of anything critical of Mr. Trump as fake news has its left-wing equivalent. On Friday on the website Jacobin, a democratic socialist writer celebrated Ms. Salazar’s win and dismissed the press’s “unprecedented smears.” There was, he says, “no smoking gun” and the whole thing could be chalked up to hostility to her political views — or, worse, to some kind of right-wing conspiracy.

In this, her supporters were helped by one story where her testimony rings true. Ms. Salazar is one of a dozen women who have accused David Keyes, until this week a top aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, of sexual misconduct. He denies the allegations, but I know several of the women who have accused Mr. Keyes and I am convinced they are telling the truth. Given the pattern of his alleged behavior, I have every reason to believe that Julia Salazar is, too.

But her supporters are now using this episode to paint a broader falsehood. They’re implying that the critical reporting was ginned up by right-wing Zionists to discredit her — that she’s a victim of a targeted campaign rather than a woman who was victimized by a man but also one who fabricated parts of her past for political gain. Just like Mr. Trump’s supporters, her fans have reserved much of their hostility for the media, which had the chutzpah to ask basic questions of a person running for elected office.

The right has been damaged beyond belief by its embrace of Mr. Trump. That Trumpian logic and Trumpian loyalty is now beginning to infect the left is nothing to cheer.