In the 2016 presidential campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump dropped the phrase fake news into the national lexicon to tremendous (and disastrous) effect. He understood how much people value the truth as an idea, and how much they despise being lied to.

Trump knew if you can cast doubt in someone about another entity (a person, a politician, party, a segment of the population), if you can make someone believe they’re being misled, they will revolt against the perceived offender and won’t require much, if any, evidence to do so.
Their visceral response to the mere suggestion of deception will be so great that it will supersede both clear logic and measurable proof.
In that state of scalding indignation at the supposed lie being proffered, data, facts, and objective reality will be largely irrelevant in convincing them otherwise, because they’ll inevitably contend that those arguments, too, could be fake. And down the rabbit hole they go.
Throughout the campaign and his young, myth-laden presidency, Trump’s truth-telling rating on https://t.co/9RjYg9hoNZ has continued to hover somewhere between Pants on Fire and Pinocchio.
The Washington Post reported that the president offered false or misleading statements more than two thousand times in his first year in office. And yet he himself ascended to the Oval Office largely by casting doubt on the veracity of his opponents, pundits, and critics.
By painting the media at large as untruthful, and his political adversaries as all compulsive liars, he was able to dismiss any unfavorable words and to convince a good portion of the electorate that he alone would “tell it like it is.”
Leveraging people’s aversion to deception and the resulting paranoia the suggestion breeds, he made them feel he was the only one they could trust.
Once convinced of that, the toxicity of his delivery and the incredibility of his claims were simply accepted by his duped supporters as the hallmarks of being a "straight shooter."

- Hope and Other Superpowers

https://t.co/5GeR6hcb0b

More from Trump

Enough! Reporters doing it again. Both-sidesing. U enable Trump's propaganda by doing this

Reporter's both-sides question:

"What was your role in what happened at the Capitol?

Proper question:

"Are you going to take responsibility for your role in inciting insurrection?"


The press enabled the storming of the Capitol because they never held GOP accountable for pushing #TheBigLie that election was stolen

I have been yelling about this for months. Starting here where @TerryMoran got it right

But after press returned to form


Not long after Nov 4th press started both-sidesing again. Question Republicans were asked over & over was:

"Do u think Biden won?"

This enabled the coup

The proper question at minimum:

"Why are u enabling this charade? Why are u spreading


After repeatedly yelling that press wasn't demanding answers of GOP for spreading #TheBigLie I hoped this political violence on Dec 10th would finally get press to demand answers. But no. They continued to both-sides


I noted how impotent the American press was acting by treating #TheBigLie as credible. The press is supposed to hold people in power accountable, but beside @TerryMoran on election night, they by and large
It’s not clear how Dr. Sean Conley has determined Trump will no longer need to isolate only 10 days after symptom onset.

Looks like the CDC Guidelines say Trump should be in the category that needs to isolate for 20 days after symptom onset.👇

Plus ...



2. Fauci on Thursday used a (test-based) approach, in which case, per Fauci:

Trump needs to isolate for 10 days after symptoms RESOLVE (not symptoms onset) and then two negative tests.

Note: based on his coughing on Hannity last night, Trump’s symptoms haven’t resolved yet.


3. Here’s a longer quote from Fauci (via @MarionRenault):

https://t.co/oRdrtxQe80


4. Also noteworthy: on Hannity last night, Trump wouldn’t say he’s tested negative.👇

Thus failing one of the conditions required by Fauci for Trump to be considered no longer contagious.


5/5. This resource on coronavirus (UpToDate) has been specially made available to the public. It describes the test-based and non-test-based approaches.
@Nick_Carmody @NBCNews @BandyXLee1 @Narcopath_UK @narceducator The same tactics used with Trump were used with Hitler by the Evangelicals to set up someone who exhibits qualities as an AntiChrist into a role of a Saint but this time targetting Muslims as Killers of Americans & still using gay people as abomination of God to con churches...1/

@NBCNews @BandyXLee1 @Narcopath_UK @narceducator This was by design and process that developed over 60 years of psychological influencing through a collaboration of the entertainment world, religious broadcasts, oil/gas loyalists who bastardized the US Constitution, and #KochNetwork #DarkMoney orgs connected to DeVos...2/

@NBCNews @BandyXLee1 @Narcopath_UK @narceducator Judeo-Christian America never existed. 1A was designed to removed Roman Catholic Church of England hold over the newly formed US Government. It demands zero influence of religion over law or government decisions. The Virginia Baptist insisted on it w/ Thomas Jefferson...2/

@NBCNews @BandyXLee1 @Narcopath_UK @narceducator Judeo-Christian is coined from Nitzche's book "The AntiChrist" that means Jews converting to Christianity. It is used in the context we see today to tie in a Jewish Jesus into the Torah so that the strict rules of the Torah are elevated to a Christian philosophy. A paradox...4/

@NBCNews @BandyXLee1 @Narcopath_UK @narceducator It is a paradox because Jesus was a rebel Jew. He defied the teachings of the Torah which pissed off the Pharisees - Jewish religious leaders. He elevated poor & people society condemned to same level as leaders. He is nothing like what we see today as American Christianity...5/

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"I lied about my basic beliefs in order to keep a prestigious job. Now that it will be zero-cost to me, I have a few things to say."


We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.

Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)

It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.

Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".