How bad information spreads in MAGA world

[Nevilledog]

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Brian Stelter
@brianstelter
Right-wing media said it was exposing a scandal. What it really revealed is how bad information spreads in MAGA world. Here's my analysis >>

cnn.com
Right-wing media said it was exposing a scandal. What it really revealed is how bad information...
On Saturday night former President Donald Trump declared that he was the victim of a scandal "far greater" than Watergate. He called for criminal prosecutions and "reparations." He said "in a...
2:11 PM · Feb 16, 2022

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/16/media/durham-report-trump-maga-analysis/index.html

*snip*

The anatomy of a right-wing talking point

The talking points all stem from this: On Friday night, as CNN's Katelyn Polantz and Evan Perez explained in a Monday article, special counsel John Durham "accused a lawyer for the Democrats of sharing with the CIA in 2017 internet data purported to show Russian-made phones being used in the vicinity of the White House complex, as part of a broader effort to raise the intelligence community's suspicions of Donald Trump's ties to Russia shortly after he took office."

The accusation was couched in what Polantz and Perez described as "vague, technical language" in a court filing. It was not accompanied by any indictments or other prosecutorial steps. But pro-Trump media outlets noticed the filing and started to share it on Saturday.

The fact that this supposed "bombshell" had been buried in a motion related to claims about attorneys having a conflict of interest, and not an indictment, was the first sign that the story was not what right-wing outlets said. The second was that the initial stories never actually went beyond the technical language to explain what purportedly happened.

But the ideological outlets that blew the filing way out of proportion weren't incentivized to apply journalistic analysis to the filing. They were incentivized to do the opposite.

Among Trump loyalists, Durham's investigation into the origins of the FBI's Russia probe is a shot at vindication. Right-wing TV and radio shows regularly hype Durham as a hero who is trying to right the perceived wrongs of "Russiagate." Key word: Perceived. Even though government and media investigations confirmed dozens of links between the Trump campaign and Russia, and the candidate welcomed the Kremlin's interference in the 2016 election, Trump boosters insist the issue was a "hoax" that was hyped by media outlets and intelligence officials to hurt Trump.

*snip*

[SWBTATTReg]

1. How bad info. flows? Ha ha, by allowing these thugs a working keyboard, by giving them

access to cultivate and grow sedition or worse.

[Kingofalldems]

2. Yeah Trump's secret pals have latched on to this nonsense.

Kick and rec.