Thread by @kohenari

I had a fascinating conversation yesterday with a very nice man in his 70s who gets all of his news from Fox. He wanted me to explain why no one is showing the video of Joe Biden bragging that he demanded that Ukraine fire the prosecutor for investigating his son.

I said, "Which tape is that?!" His response was, "That's the problem with this country. It's been around for a long time but Fox News is the only channel that will show it." I said, "And Biden says he got the prosecutor fired for investigating his son? I'd like to see that."

So we looked for it on my phone and we found it. And we watched it together. And Joe Biden says that he got the prosecutor fired because he was corrupt. There's no mention of his son, no mention of any investigation. And the guy looked at me like he'd just proved something to me.

So I said, "That video doesn't say what you told me it says." And he said, "Of course it does; you just heard it. He's bragging about making them fire the prosecutor." And I said, "The prosecutor was corrupt. Everyone demanded that they fire him. He should have been fired."

"But he was investigating Biden's son, that's what happened," he tells me. "Nope. That's what you're being told is true, but that's not how the timeline works. The company with Hunter Biden on its Board was under investigation in 2014-2015, not in 2016 when he was pushed out."

It didn't matter how many accurate news stories I showed him or that the video didn't say what he thought it said. The only thing that mattered was Trump said Biden was crooked and a bunch of Trump's cronies on Fox repeated it over and over. That's the mess we're in.

I have to add, this isn't a stupid man to whom I was speaking. This is what Fox and Breitbart and the Federalist and Ben Shapiro and Trump have done to our country. As long as the lie looks enough like the truth and matches what people want to believe, it works. And the lie pays.