It wasn’t @ConorLambPA comment about race and the light treatment of the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol that angered House Rs early this morning. It was his comment about LIES 1/

"Enough has been done here today already to try to strip this Congress of its dignity & these objectors don't need to do anymore. We know that attack today, it didn't materialize out of nowhere, it was inspired by lies, the same lies that you're hearing in this room tonight.” 2/
My @PhillyInquirer colleagues and I have spent months speaking to Pennsylvania voters who support the president and deeply believe in a perceived political reality that is Not. Based. In. Fact. The social media echo chamber where these voters often get their news reinforces it 3/
Before Nov. 3, I met a kind, well-meaning man in PA’s rural Cambria County who told me earnestly that Joe Biden was being controlled by Bernie Sanders through an ear piece. He knew so bc he’d read it online. He deeply believed what he’d read. Should I have told him the truth? 4/
As reporters, we’re trained to lay out the facts. But a huge portion of the electorate doesn’t understand anymore how to distinguish truth from lies. Our profession is built around truth and accountability. And some of the people who are most misinformed call us their enemy 5/
So when House Rs objected to Lamb’s statement last night, I thought. Do they know? Can THEY distinguish truth from lies? Or has this cancer of misinformation infected our elected officials, too? There was almost a fist fight over which reality America should believe 6/
Here are the FACTS. The deeply reported, researched, verified facts about Pennsylvania’s presidential election. Let’s start by debunking the lies Trump told yesterday at the rally where he incited a mob of his supporters to attack the Capitol 7/
False Claim: “Pennsylvania had 205,000 more votes than you had voters.” No. The claim comes from a flawed analysis done by PA Rs who relied on incomplete data and a misunderstanding of how those data are collected. @Elaijuh 8/ https://t.co/OgibSZ3L82
False Claim: “More than 10,000 votes in Pennsylvania were illegally counted even though they were received after Election Day.” Wrong. They literally weren’t counted. PA didn’t include those contested ballots in its certified vote total. @Elaijuh 9/ https://t.co/IVNbWPDhgX

More from Trump

This is mostly right but strikes me as it needing said that I don't think the left or the intelligentsia have the slightest idea how low institutional trust in anything coming from a left mouthpiece is now. Except in-network, the best heuristic is "the opposite of what they said"


If you look at the situation from a predictive models perspective instead of the more rigorous and appropriate (under normal circumstances) "prove your case or gtfo" perspective, trusting the opposite of whatever the left side says has an AMAZING track record, as we know it.

Literally, the best heuristic most people have right now, in terms of how often it gets things right versus *completely* wrong, is "whatever CNN, the NYT, public health officials, and the Democrats said... yeah, the opposite." That is, they're wrong WAY outside of statistics.

They're also not just wrong. They're *completely* wrong, backwards, often transparently covering something up that they don't want known or refuse to believe. This isn't just a legitimation crisis because there's a heuristic: whatever the official left narrative is, is wrong.

There are a few reasons why such a heuristic would be more predictive than not. One of those is conspiracy, and another is mass hysteria with ideological capture. We know at least one of those is happening and have rather strong evidence both are. That makes conspiracy reasonable

You May Also Like