How (Actual) Fake News Is the (Actual) Enemy of the People
Trump lashed out at the media Monday over a Washington Post story about how the White House responded to his racist attacks against four congresswomen of color. “The Mainstream Media is out of control,” he tweeted. “They constantly lie and cheat in order to get their Radical Left Democrat views out their for all to see. It has never been this bad. They have gone bonkers, & no longer care what is right or wrong. This large scale false reporting is sick!”
The president concluded his rant with a familiar refrain: “Fake News Equals the Enemy of the People!”
Indeed, the potential of fake news to hurt real people was demonstrated on Monday, but not at all in the way Trump meant.
Though the president’s definition of fake news is anything that paints him in an unflattering light, actual fake news reports — intentional falsehoods and other inventions disguised as reporting — are resulting in threats to the American people. In the wake of his attacks last week against Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), a police officer from Grenta, Louisiana, wrote on Facebook that Ocasio-Cortez needs to be shot.
He was responding to a web item claiming Ocasio-Cortez said “we pay soldiers too much,” in reference to the budget. (Ocasio-Cortez said no such thing. The site responsible repeatedly publishes unsupported or outright false stories, sometimes as news reports and sometimes under the guise of “satire.”)
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-louisiana-police-death-threat-fake-news-862260/
MAGAts are sure some dumb SOBs.