Trump, TV and Oh Fuck It I Don't Fucking Care Anymore

Oh dear, people are clutching their pearls wondering if one reason Trump is actually causing harm for people because he spends so much time staring at FOX News like a fucking idiot.

First, he posted that he had authorized federal troops to protect what he dubbed “War ravaged Portland”. Then he shared an AI-generated video promising fake alien health care technology from a conspiracy theory popular in QAnon forums. In both instances, Trump seemed to rely on Fox News footage — or at least what he seemingly believed to be Fox News footage. These so-called med beds do not exist. By sharing the AI footage of himself, Trump is giving his MAGA followers false hope that he will soon grant them access to the elites’ magic product.

Trump defenders, as they are often wont to do, rushed to laugh off the incident as a harmless joke. But a quick social media search reveals that a lot of people who are dying or watching a loved one fade away with cancer and other illnesses really believed it. QAnon-type spaces were excited at the possibility that Trump would finally release all the hidden cures. Many MAGA believers have refused medical treatment because they believe med bed tech will restore their health in minutes. This is both depraved and heartbreaking.

As the med bed example demonstrates, Trump is growing more vulnerable to being influenced by selective or sensational media coverage — and less likely to vet whether what he is seeing or hearing on those segments is grounded in current facts. In another instance from Saturday, he took Fox News visuals and narrative frames — this time real, although outdated — to order consequential real world action in Portland.

"But Xmastime", you say in the voice of Craig “Ironhead” Heyward from those soap commercials (RIP), "didn't you try to warn everybody about this at the presidential debate last year before 8 million people walked into a voting booth & voted for this jagoff?"

Sigh. Yes I did, faithful readers, YES I did: 

Who knows how many important things get lost in the blizzard of bullshit that streams out of Trump's mouth on a minute-by-minute basis, but one of the more remarkable things everybody seems to have missed is that right after he dropped his whole "they're eating your pets!" line at the debate, he immediately followed it up with:

Everyone's completely ignored it because of course it got swallowed up by the whole eating pets thing, but "I saw it on tv!" is LITERALLY what the go-to punchline for "my insane dad/grandpa is addicted to watching Fox News all day" has been for almost 30 years; suggesting that anyone would possibly say that is a shortcut to making it understood that this person is a fucking lunatic who should immediately be put out to pasture. I know we've all gotten immune to "this would've ended anyone else's campaign immediately" with Trump, but this is a curiously specific reverse-Shibboleth that has been, as far as I can tell, completely ignored.