…about the lies from the President: per Charlie Sykes, it is the corrosive influence of years of criticism of the mainstream press from conservative media. Sykes argues in his NY Times op-ed that the cumulative effect of attacking the perceived bias and double standards of mainstream journalism was to delegitimize those outlets and “essentially destroy much of the right’s immunity to false information.” Instead of creating  a more skeptical audience, Sykes argues, the conservative news strategy (of which Sykes himself was a part) created an audience that could be easily misled – and opened the door for President Trump

Sykes’ takeaway is prescient: the more the fact-based media tries to debunk the president’s falsehoods, the further it will entrench the battle lines.