it’s not just Trump. it’s a key dynamic of the contemporary right. parody sites make up bullshit, are explicit and overt that it is bullshit, but influencers forward it in less plainly attributed way until it’s a thing everybody knows in MAGA-land. 1/

you can call out its origin to what passes for public intellectuals in that crew, and they’ll cheerfully concede it’s fake, in its details if not its essence. (think Vance’s simultaneous concession and defense of the “eating dogs and cats” lie.) 2/

but it will still be a thing that everybody knows. it shapes people’s unexamined baseline priors, their sense of what is plausible, how the world works. /fin