Trump has shown other politicians, Farrell continued, that it is now “far easier to get away with lying and untruth and not lose support from your voters.”
As a result,
efforts by the Democrats to criticize Trump by harking back to norms of civility and truth may be relatively ineffective. Truth has become a partisan football, at least for the moment.
David Karpf, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington, makes a parallel argument in an article titled “On Digital Disinformation and Democratic Myths”:
The first-order effects of digital disinformation and propaganda, at least in the context of elections, are debatable at best. But disinformation does not have to sway many votes to be toxic to democracy. The second-order effects undermine the democratic myths and governing norms that stand as a bulwark against elite corruption and abuse of power.
An illustration of the effectiveness of the Trump truth-defying operation can be found in an article by McKay Coppins in the current issue of The Atlantic, “The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Re-elect the President.”
Using a false name and portraying himself as an unwavering Trump loyalist, Coppins inserted himself into the digital underworld of the Trump campaign and its maze of interlocking websites, data analytics, text messaging and novel electronic paraphernalia.
Coppins, an astute critic of the Trump administration, found he was becoming strangely and unexpectedly disoriented:
There were days when I would watch, live on TV, an impeachment hearing filled with damning testimony about the president’s conduct, only to look at my phone later and find a slickly edited video — served up by the Trump campaign — that used out-of-context clips to recast the same testimony as an exoneration. Wait, I caught myself wondering more than once, is that what happened today?
Coppins
assumed that my skepticism and media literacy would inoculate me against such distortions. But I soon found myself reflexively questioning every headline. It wasn’t that I believed Trump and his boosters were telling the truth. It was that, in this state of heightened suspicion, truth itself — about Ukraine, impeachment, or anything else — felt more and more difficult to locate. With each swipe, the notion of observable reality drifted further out of reach.
The Trump campaign, free of any serious primary challenge, has the resources — in time and money — to focus on one candidate and a single coherent message. The campaign and the movement it represents will be able to spend 2020 in a drive to imprint on targeted voters its preferred view of reality, the strengths of its candidates and the liabilities of opponents.
As the Washington Post pointed out on Jan. 3,
President Trump’s political operation headed into 2020 with nearly $200 million on hand, according to party officials, giving him a financial war chest that vastly outstrips the resources of his Democratic opponents.
In terms of preparing for the general election, time and money are just what the Democratic candidates — embroiled in what may turn out to be a long and costly fight for the nomination — do not have. When the party finally settles on a nominee, he or she can expect a huge surge in donations. But as both John McCain and Mitt Romney discovered in 2008 and 2012, receiving cash late makes it virtually impossible to catch up in the time-consuming process of constructing a campaign’s digital infrastructure.
In addition, as Coppins points out in his Atlantic essay, the Trump campaign and the right generally are determined to discredit and vilify the media:
What’s notable about this effort is not that it aims to expose media bias. Conservatives have been complaining — with some merit — about a liberal slant in the press for decades.
In the Trump era, Coppins continues,
instead of trying to reform the press, or critique its coverage, today’s most influential conservatives want to destroy the mainstream media altogether.
Coppins cited a July 2017 speech at the Heritage Foundation by Matthew Boyle, the Washington political editor of Breitbart:
The goal eventually is the full destruction and elimination of the entire mainstream media. We envision a day when CNN is no longer in business. We envision a day when The New York Times closes its doors.
Boyle goes on to declare:
Journalistic integrity is dead. There is no such thing anymore. So, everything is about weaponization of information.
One clear signal to Democrats of the effectiveness of the Trump campaign can be found in Wisconsin. Partisan trends there, in a battleground state where Trump is making an all-out effort to repeat his 2016 victory, are revealing. Surveys of Wisconsin voters released by Marquette University Law School in January show a steady movement over the past nine years to the right.
