Thread by @MattGertz

1. President Trump, Fox News, and other pro-Trump propaganda outlets created an impermeable information bubble for the Republican base.

2. Within that bubble, it is canon that the 2020 election was ripe with voter fraud and that Trump actually won if you only count the "legal votes."

3. The Trump legal strategy is an absolute joke, because courts largely exist in the real world where evidence needs to be produced, and there's no evidence for the mass voter fraud because it didn't happen.

BUT!

4. The Trump political strategy now revolves around trying to prevent certifications in key states in hopes of throwing the election into the House of Representatives. apnews.com/article/joe-bi…

5. That pushes power down to the sorts of people -- local Republican officials, state legislators, and members of Congress -- who are more likely to either personally exist within that right-wing media info bubble, or can be influenced by people who are.

6. My sense is still that this won't work. But it appears to be a more favorable landscape than the courts, and certainly one that creates a great deal of instability and risk.

7. And a great deal of the reason that it won't work relies on the key states having Democratic officials in important statewide positions, which is not a guarantee in the future.

8. It is very easy to imagine a pro-Trump purge of Republican electeds who don't play ball with what really looks like a coup attempt in plain sight based on mass invalidation of ballots and elections.

9. And very hard for me to imagine the GOP walking back from this edge and becoming a party with any appreciation for basic precepts of democracy.

10. And it all begins with the right-wing information bubble. If you don't spend time there, understand that right now it is a constant stream of conspiracy theories and bullshit that the election was stolen. Vanishingly few exceptions, and those will be marginalized.

11. This is what is happening on the network that some Trumpists are abandoning because they see it as insufficiently pro-Trump. mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-n…

12. Here are two of the president's closest Fox advisers.

13. And here's what's happening deeper in the fever swamps.

14. The Trump-Fox feedback loop is powering an assault on democracy: mediamatters.org/fox-news/trump…

And right-wing propagandists and GOP leaders are pushing the country toward the abyss: mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-n…

Now in post form: Trump’s coup depends on the right-wing information bubble
mediamatters.org/fox-news/trump…