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"Fox News used the word "hoax" more than 900 times during the first half of 2020, chipping away more truth from America's foundation, precisely at a time when the country was beset by multiple crises and needed honesty and accuracy, compassion and sound science," writes Brian Stelter, chief media correspondent for CNN in his new book, "Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth."
Stelter writes that America hasn't had a functioning CEO since Trump took office.
Instead, Fox News "wingmen fed his worst impulses and helped him deceive the people who voted for him. They encouraged him to perform like a cable news bomb-thrower: to pick fights instead of finding common ground."
Trump performs for TV ratings rather than tangible results and supplies endless content for Fox's talk shows, writes Stelter.
The president who famously said in 2018 "what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what's happening," has suggested that everything could be a hoax."
It's right out of George Orwell's 1984: "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears."
Stelter believes the Trump age is really the hoax age. "Fox viewers came away with the impression that nothing was really knowable. Everything was relative. There were distortions and deceptions in every direction. Up could be down and left could be right and real news could be fake.
'Many people, exhausted by the uncertainty, gave up knowing for sure whether Russia had helped Trump win the 2016 election, or if his administration was doing all it could to end the pandemic."
Having no truth to tell the American people, Trump has pitted people against each other to stir up strife. He has lied over and over again because he gets away with it on Fox, which is his only reality.
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