The Trump era accelerated right-wing media’s descent into a fact-free, “hoax-ified” future
There was one moment during former President Donald Trump’s most recent impeachment trial that can tell us a lot about the future of the conservative media ecosystem. During Trump attorney David Schoen’s February 12 arguments, he accused the Democratic House impeachment managers of selectively editing a video clip to promote what he called “the Charlottesville lie.”
Schoen’s argument wasn’t new, but it was possibly one of the highest-profile invocations of a conspiracy theory that began in fringe circles of the far-right but had slowly become part of Republican Party canon,...