There is a peculiar and corrosive cynicism at the heart of the modern American right’s relationship with information. It is a worldview where “truth” is no longer a fixed principle to be discovered, but a malleable commodity to be used. It is a world where facts are not standards to be met, but tools to be wielded, and just as quickly discarded when they become inconvenient.
It is a deliberate, systemic strategy of epistemic nihilism that has made good-faith debate impossible. The central operating principle is not “what is true?” but “what helps us win right now?”
’Fake News’ Two-Step
The most obvious and shameless example of this is the “fake news” two-step, a routine perfected by Donald Trump and now performed daily by his acolytes and media allies.
The process is simple. Step One: Relentlessly attack and delegitimize all mainstream sources of information. The “failing” New York Times, the Washington Post, Associated Press, they are all, by definition, purveyors of “fake news.” They are staffed by enemies of the people. Their reporting is not to be trusted. It is a conspiracy to undermine the movement.
Step Two: The moment one of these “fake news” outlets publishes a story, a poll showing a dip in a Democratic candidate’s approval, a crime statistic from a blue city, a report on inflation that serves the narrative of the day, it is instantly laundered into unimpeachable fact. Suddenly, a CNN poll isn’t a lie. It’s a vital data point proving the nation’s decline. A Times investigation isn’t a hit piece any longer. It’s conclusive evidence.
The source’s credibility is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is its utility. The audience is trained to ask not “is this source reliable?” but “does this information hurt the right people?” This creates a closed loop where all information is filtered through a purely partisan lens, and the very concept of an objective, trustworthy referee is destroyed.
Weaponization of Data and the Buried Lede
This cynical utility extends beyond media reports to the world of data and science. Government agencies that produce inconvenient facts are routinely smeared as part of the “deep state.” The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), for instance, is a respected, non-partisan arbiter when it produces a score that can be used to attack a Democratic proposal. The moment it produces a score showing that a Republican tax cut will explode the deficit, it is dismissed as a cabal of out-of-touch bureaucrats.
But the more insidious tactic is the deliberate burial of the lede. It works like this: a complex, hundred-page study is released. Ninety-nine pages of it might conclude that a particular problem is nuanced and that the proposed right-wing solution is unworkable. But on page seventy-three, there might be a single, context-free statistic that, when isolated, seems to support their case.
That single statistic becomes the headline on Breitbart, the talking point on Fox News, the subject of a viral Charlie Kirk video. The other ninety-nine pages of context, nuance, and contradictory evidence are ignored. They cease to exist. The part becomes the whole, and the lie becomes the truth. They will cite a study from an institution they wish to defund, using a data point they have stripped of all meaning, and present it as a slam-dunk.
It is an act of intellectual vandalism.
A Post-Truth Condition
The ultimate result of this behavior is a political environment where the common ground of shared facts has been strip-mined into oblivion. If everything is potentially “fake news,” then nothing is. If any data point can be ripped from its context to mean whatever you want it to mean, then data itself becomes meaningless.
This is the world Donald Trump created and which the MAGA movement now inhabits. It is a world where truth is subordinate to loyalty. He can claim he won an election he lost, that the crowd was bigger, that the economy was better, and his followers will nod along, not because they have independently verified these claims, but because verifying them is not the point. The point is to demonstrate allegiance. To agree with the Dear Leader is to be part of the tribe. To question him with observable facts is to be a traitor.
When a political movement decides that there are no objective standards, no referees, and no facts that must be acknowledged regardless of political convenience, it has ceased to be a political movement in any recognizable sense. It has become a cult of personality, an information-warfare operation whose primary goal is not to govern a country, but to shatter its shared reality into a million warring pieces.