6, as Republicans have largely avoided criticizing Trump's role and response to the insurrection. So the path was paved early for Trump's lies - as outlandish and baseless as they are - to speed down the road to rank-and-file Republicans.Ī similar trend has emerged this past year, since Jan. But when he won, almost all GOP officials swallowed their criticism.Īs Trump went largely unchallenged from his party, he demanded fealty from Republicans, they gave it to him, and his hold on the base grew.
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Ryan and plenty of other Republicans had, during the 2016 presidential campaign, criticized Trump's views and behavior. Six months later, Ryan announced he would not run for reelection. "Every morning, I wake up in my office and scroll Twitter to see which tweets I will have to pretend that I didn't see later," Ryan said in October 2017 at the annual Al Smith Dinner, which includes a political roast. Actually, Paul Ryan, who was House speaker at the start of the Trump administration, made the joke himself. When Republicans in Congress were asked about them, the answer routinely was along the lines of, "I didn't read the tweet." When Trump first took office and was still allowed on Twitter, he would write lots of controversial things. Second, Republican elected officials have enabled Trump's lies Now, there are even more - and even more extreme - voices and outlets on the right, rife with misinformation and disinformation, that are gaining traction.Īn NPR/Ipsos poll released this week showed that a majority - 54% - whose primary source of news is Fox News or conservative media believe falsely that there was major voting fraud in the 2020 election. Fox was created in 1996, about when Gallup found a majority of Americans said they had trust in the media. The decline in mass media coincides with the advent of Fox News, the conservative cable channel. It hit 32% just before the 2016 election, the lowest ever recorded by Gallup. There's fertile ground for that landscape, as trust in the media has declined over the last few decades. Confirmation bias is real - if people believe something, there's likely a link on social media that shows them why they're right (even when they aren't). How did this happen? A couple of reasons:įirst, there's a problem with how Americans are consuming information The independent judiciary, with many judges who were appointed by Republicans and Trump himself, as well as audits in state after state, have rejected Trump's false claims. They've been convinced by Trump, reinforced by right-wing media and enabled by Republican elected officials that his meritless lies about a stolen election are somehow true.
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One year later, and a day after the commemoration on Capitol Hill of that attack, those facts should be indisputable.Īnd yet millions on the right do dispute them.
The mob was egged on by conspiracies and Trump's lies about that 2020 election. It was an effort to stop the procedural certification of a presidential election that Joe Biden won and Trump lost. Supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the U.S.