Lies & misinformation
Could “America’s great, deliberate mistake” (Marc Johnson, Tribune Nov. 15) have been made without Fox News? MAGA supporters parrot predictable and demonstrable falsehoods such as undocumented people would vote illegally for Democrats, crime rates have soared under Joe Biden, our economy is weak, and illegal immigrants are raping and pillaging. But the most despicable and egregious lie was to constantly deny that Biden won in 2020.
Sen. Mitch McConnell told Michael Tackett, his authorized biographer in “The Price of Power,” that Donald Trump’s defeat in 2020 “only underscores the good judgment of the American people. They’ve just had enough of the misrepresentations, the outright lies almost on a daily basis, and they fired him. And for a narcissist like him, that’s really hard to take.”
Fox insists on calling itself a news organization yet they did everything possible to spread lies and disinformation about the supposedly “rigged” 2020 election. Trump still insists, without evidence, that he won. No matter that Fox agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems nearly $800 million in a court settlement after they sued for defamation.
Trump 2.0 will certainly evolve and recalibrate itself within the unified, powerful ecosystem of right wing “news,” online content and viral disinformation becoming even more powerful with artificial intelligence. The billionaire owners are making windfall profits using predictive algorithms to confuse and divide us. Fox’s market capitalization is now approaching $20 billion. Lies and misinformation will become even more dangerous as we enter the purgatory of “America’s great, deliberate, mistake.”
Joe Cladouhos
Grangeville
