Trump And Fox News Are America’s Disinformation Terrorists

They Are At War With Us

I am writing this to you from Central Florida, where a major hurricane will hit in a few hours. Millions of people in the United States, including those in the path of the storm and the previous one, Helene, believe all sorts of nonsense about this weather event. They believe that FEMA is not responding to the disaster, that the agency has spent the money on immigrants, that President Joe Biden has a weather weapon targeting red counties, that Donald Trump is leading relief efforts.

They believe these lies and misinformation because of Trump and his propaganda ally, Fox News.

A consistent bane of my personal and professional life is that I do not think liberals and the Democratic Party take these threats seriously enough. Too often I have seen the sentiment that “nobody can really believe that” or the dismissal of those disseminating this information as merely “Russian bots.”

It is real and it’s a spectacular, neverending assault on the fabric of our social lives. Conservatives, while not a majority of the populace, truly believe these lies – and they vote and act accordingly. These are people who believe that they must vote for Republican candidates to prevent left wing weather weapons and forced transgender surgeries on their kids, to protect their dogs and cats from hungry dark-skinned immigrants, that the Democratic Party is transitioning the U.S. economy into full communism.

Trump and Fox push these thoughts into heads, and it needs to be taken more seriously.

It was mindboggling over the weekend to see Gov. Tim Walz appear on Fox News Sunday for an interview steeped in normalcy, while on the same airwaves the next morning Fox was pushing the absolute lie that Biden had left storm victims to fend for themselves. The Democratic Party, from the highest levels of its leadership like Biden and Harris, and especially the all-powerful consultant class, does not take the Fox threat seriously. They still cling to the insane fantasy that by appearing on the network they pierce the veil of misinformation and can reach out and convert some wavering MAGA voter.

It is a twisted delusion. Appearing on Fox helps to legitimize the most dangerous source of right-wing propaganda in the U.S., and arguably the world. A Democratic leader – from Walz to Sec. Pete Buttigieg to the White House Press Secretary – speaking freely with Fox, chumming it up with propagandists like Peter Doocy, helps to undermine the truth. The party is aiding and abetting one of the world’s most destabilizing forces by keeping up this practice.

It is of supreme importance to debunk the gusher of lies that flows from Trump and Fox, along with senior figures in the Republican Party and other right-wing media. I have dedicated a significant chunk of my life to this, including nearly a decade and a half at Media Matters for America. But debunking can only do so much. The public at large needs to know the truth and is open to information that makes them see Trump/Fox are congenital liars, but it isn’t enough.

Democrats and liberalism needs to show up to this game, and both the party and the movement have been sorely lacking.

The Democratic Party needs to open its fucking mouth. The party needs to have a take on everything in the world, on a 24/7/365 basis. The information vacuum needs to be filled and fed every waking moment. The party has an obsession with going silent, with picking the right spot and the perfectly crafted sentence timed for maximum impact. But in reality, we need something at the ready all the time. The mainstream media is utterly broken and wishing for them to suddenly “do better” and heal is a fool’s errand. So the party must be oriented around servicing the beast as it is, and it is a beast fueled by “take” culture.

On a larger scale, liberalism needs to articulate itself in the public square. There needs to be well funded liberal media, from news sites to podcasts, TikToks and YouTube channels and things that haven’t been thought up yet. Liberalism needs to get over the notion that the poorly timed and executed Air America, from nearly thirty years ago, was “proof” that liberal media can’t work. Liberals are not that different from conservatives when it comes to consuming media catered to them. Get off the collective high horse. Liberals love the endorphin rush of a conservative being “owned” by a fellow traveler as much as Fox News watchers get off on Sean Hannity dunking on the Democratic Party. People love this stuff, you just need to give it to them.

And the funds exist. Every cycle, individuals and major donors throw millions of dollars at candidates in races we all know they can’t win, or even to ones that have something of a shot. While the donations to winnable seats shouldn’t cease, it would be far more useful to fund a liberal media that could move the country more towards “blue,” instead of drying up and dying with each disappointing November.

There are going to be more storms like this and more events that right feels more craven and crass in pushing the Big Lie about. We can’t sit back and just keep lamenting this. We are under attack, and we need to fight.

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— Oliver

Follow me, Oliver Willis, on Threads @owillis1977

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I absolutely love watching the Washington Commanders win while Kal sits on my lap. He doesn’t care too much about the outcome of the game, to be honest.