In His Second Term, Trump Fuels a ‘Machinery’ of Misinformation
Mr. Trump’s first four years in the White House were filled with false or misleading statements — 30,573 of them, or 21 a day on average, according to one tally….This time, Mr. Trump is joined by a coterie of cabinet officials and advisers who have amplified them and even spread their own. Together, they are effectively institutionalizing disinformation.
While it is still early in his term, and many of his executive orders face legal challenges that could blunt the impact of any falsehoods driving them, Mr. Trump and his advisers have ushered the country into a new era of post-truth politics, where facts are contested and fictions used to pursue policy goals.
Kate Starbird, a scholar of disinformation at the University of Washington, described it as a “machinery of bullshit,”
Mr. Trump justified the pardons of hundreds of rioters convicted of the violence, including assaults on police officers, at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by maintaining that “they didn’t assault” anyone
Mr. Trump justified the pardons of hundreds of rioters convicted of the violence, including assaults on police officers, at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by maintaining that “they didn’t assault” anyone
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the vaccine skeptic who now runs the Department of Health and Human Services, claimed that the measles vaccine routinely kills people every year, though scientists say that is false.
Elon Musk…called Social Security “the greatest Ponzi scheme of all time,” implying that one of the most popular government programs is a criminal activity.
Americans have increasingly drifted from traditional news organizations and landed instead on a digital cacophony of podcasts, livestreams and social media feeds where partisanship, fury and resentment generally prevail over a balanced deliberation of facts. The political left has its favorites, but this new media ecosystem is today dominated by the right.
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