Despite Trump’s rhetoric, his talking points rely heavily on fake news

The following article by Adam Peck was posted on the ThinkProgress website July 18, 2018:

He leans heavily on the journalistic efforts of the very same news outlets he demonizes.

Credit: Rick Friedman/Corbis via Getty Images

Let’s not beat around the bush: Donald Trump is a serial liar. Almost everything that spills out of his insecure little mouth or springs forth from his Twitter account is either fabricated, exaggerated, finessed, or truncated. He dismisses as fake any evidence or fact that contradicts his lies. He shares as gospel any cockamamie poll or half-baked rumor that pads his ego. He is a man who operates entirely outside the boundaries of reality, and the problem is only worsening the longer his term drags on.

This is partly because Donald Trump’s media diet is about as healthy as his actual diet. His Fox News obsession is well-documented, but comb through his tweets — particularly the recent ones — and you realize that Fox News might actually be the high watermark. Breitbart, the Washington Examiner, and a parade of nameless sources from which Trump pulls fake numbers out of thin air also feature heavily on his timeline.

Oddly though, when measuring the impact that original reporting has on Donald Trump’s addled brain, the collective efforts of the far-right media fall well short of what the so-called “fake news” has been able to accomplish.

View the complete article on the ThinkProgress website here.