Donald Trump does best among people who have less access to reliable news outlets. Go figure.

Courtesy of Politico: 

President Donald Trump’s attacks on the mainstream media may be rooted in statistical reality: An extensive review of subscription data and election results shows that Trump outperformed the previous Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, in counties with the lowest numbers of news subscribers, but didn't do nearly as well in areas with heavier circulation. 

POLITICO’s findings — which put Trump’s escalating attacks on the media in a new context — were drawn from a comparison of election results and subscription information from the Alliance for Audited Media, an industry group that verifies print and digital circulation for advertisers. The findings cover more than 1,000 mainstream news publications in more than 2,900 counties out of 3,100 nationwide from every state except Alaska, which does not hold elections at the county level. 

The results show a clear correlation between low subscription rates and Trump’s success in the 2016 election, both against Hillary Clinton and when compared to Romney in 2012. Those links were statistically significant even when accounting for other factors that likely influenced voter choices, such as college education and employment, suggesting that the decline of local media sources by itself may have played a role in the election results. 

That gives new force to the widely voiced concerns of news-industry professionals and academicians about Trump’s ability to make bold assertions about crime rates, unemployment and other verifiable facts without any independent checks. Those concerns, which initially were raised during the campaign, were largely based on anecdotes and observations. POLITICO’s analysis suggests that Trump did, indeed, do worse overall in places where independent media could check his claims.

And as we know Trump also outperforms in places where the local news comes from Sinclair Broadcasting, and where Fox News is the favorite cable news outlet.

We always wonder how Trump can continue to simply make shit up all the time, and not have it destroy his credibility.

The answer is that people don't know that he is making it up unless a reliable news outlet fact checks him.

Which of course is also why there are so many attacks on the established mainstream media, and accusations of "fake news" directed at respected newspapers like the Washington Post and the New York Times.

So long as there are Americans isolated from fact based news reporting there will be a Donald Trump to take advantage of their ignorance.

If we want to help this country perhaps it's time to start buying our friends and family their own subscriptions to some of that "liberal" news media.

CNN's Brian Stetler points out the damage done by Donald Trump's "Addiction to Fox News."

Courtesy of Mediaite:  

CNN’s Brian Stelter today opened by talking about how President Trump‘s “addiction to Fox” is having a lot of real-world consequences. 

He brought up the past week of big news on immigration and troops being sent to the border, following the President’s tweet after watching a segment on Fox News. 

“The line where Fox News ends and where Trump begins,” Stelter said, “is getting blurrier by the day.” 

He brought up the initial Fox News coverage, followed by the primetime coverage, of the migrant “caravan” as indicative of how Trump’s “addiction to Fox and to other pro-Trump commentators leads to impulsive actions.” 

Stelter said deploying the National Guard to the border is a “PR stunt” for a President who “wants to give his Fox friends something to celebrate.”

Very well said.

Donald Trump is addicted to fake news and conspiracy theories, and what better place to find them than Fox News?  (Well, besides Info Wars of course.)

If Trump were just an every day citizen this might be a pain in the ass to his family, but probably nothing more.

But as America's Commander-in-Chief Donald Trump can take the bullshit from Fox News and weaponize it to cause real harm to our country, and our country's allies.

Cambridge Analytica boss caught on camera offering to hire sex workers and offer bribes to compromise politicians.

Courtesy of Buzzfeed: 

The boss of Cambridge Analytica, the analytics firm at the centre of an international storm over the misuse of Facebook user data, has been caught on camera bragging about how the company could blackmail political candidates with sex workers, and telling a prospective client that it has been secretly operating around the world to campaign in elections. 

In an undercover operation by Britain's Channel 4 News, CEO Alexander Nix and two other high-ranking Cambridge Analytica staff took meetings with a reporter posing as a fixer who wanted the data firm's help getting candidates elected in Sri Lanka. 

On Monday evening, Channel 4 broadcast undercover footage from four meetings across three months, with Nix telling the reporter that one of the services of Cambridge Analytica could be to “send some girls around to the candidate’s house”, adding that Ukrainian girls “are very beautiful, I find that works very well”. 

Nix also told the undercover reporter: “We’ll offer a large amount of money to the candidate, to finance his campaign in exchange for land, for instance. We’ll have the whole thing recorded. We’ll blank out the face of our guy and we post it on the internet.”

Representatives of the company also offered to spread fake news about political opponents in order to help sway the elections.

Well gee, no wonder the Trump campaign wanted to work with these guys, they were singing the same tune.

This is what the whistle blower who outed the company's Facebook data mining operation said about this video:   

Wiley couldn’t speak as to how this relates to the firm’s work for the Trump campaign, but he went on to say “there is a perverse company culture inside of Cambridge Analytica, and as the undercover shows, they’re willing to go to extreme lengths to service their clients, and they’ll do anything that helps, whether it’s legal or not.”

Do we really believe that the Trump campaign did not utilize that skills set?

We also learned yesterday that before they started using their possibly illegal tactics to help Donald Trump, that Cambridge Analytica worked for Ted Cruz.

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

Before they ran shady data operations for Donald Trump’s campaign, Cambridge Analytica worked for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) during his presidential bid. Now, the Texas Republican is under fire for hiring the group amid reports that they improperly used Facebook data. 

The Dallas Morning News reported Monday that the Cruz campaign kept Cambridge Analytica on retainer six months after initial reports of the firm using illicitly-sourced Facebook data surfaced in 2015 — a fact the Texas Democratic Party touted in a news release published on Monday. 

“Ted Cruz will stop at nothing to weasel his way into power, even if it means weaponizing stolen information to manipulate people to like him,” Manny Garcia, the deputy executive director of the Texas Democratic Party, said in a press release. “Cruz’s campaign exploited personal information to create psychological profiles on millions of Americans. All to keep lining the pockets of Cruz’s billionaire super PAC donors — like Robert Mercer, who funded this propaganda machine.”

Color me unsurprised that Cruz would resort to tactics like this, nice to see that it might end up biting him in the ass and costing him this election.

Oh, one more thing.

I appears that Cambridge Anaylytica currently has a contract with our State Department: 

Strategic Communications Laboratories, best known for its work with its offshoot and collaborator Cambridge Analytica, appears to have an open contract with the State Department. DefenseOne first noted the contract on a government contracts database, where it is listed as still open.

Well, I ma going to have to take a really hot shower after this post to get the sleaze off. 

Family of slain DNC staffer sues Fox News.

Courtesy of ABC News:

Rich was shot and killed in Washington, D.C., in July 2016. Police said he was shot several times in the back and later died at a local hospital. Rich was 27 years old and worked as a voter-expansion data director for the DNC at the time. 

The May 16, 2017, Fox News article, which allegedly contained "false and fabricated facts," according to the lawsuit, fueled conspiracy theories that Rich was murdered in connection with a massive WikiLeaks data dump of 20,000 DNC emails days after his death. 

In the suit, which was obtained by ABC News, Rich's parents, Joel and Mary Rich, claim that Fox News investigative reporter Malia Zimmerman and Fox News commenter Ed Butowsky reached out to the family under false pretenses to support stories that Seth Rich leaked DNC emails to WikiLeaks. 

The lawsuit claims that Fox News, Zimmerman and Butowsky are liable for the harm caused by the report because they "aided and abetted the intentional infliction of emotional distress" caused by the story about Seth Rich and alleges that Fox News provided with a national platform to develop what the lawsuit dubs a "sham story."

So to be clear Donald Trump's favorite news outlet is being sued for spreading "fake news."

Nice to see that irony has made a full recovery and is back in the saddle.

But Fox News is not the only Right Wing outlet being sued for spreading conspiracy theories.

Courtesy of The Hill: 

A counterprotester at the deadly white supremacist rally last year in Charlottesville, Va., is suing the media outlet Infowars, its owner Alex Jones and seven others for defamation. 

Georgetown Law’s Civil Rights Clinic filed the lawsuit Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia on behalf of Brennan Gilmore, who alleges that Alex Jones and other far-right supporters, including former Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), published stories about him that damaged his reputation and mobilized an army of followers to pursue a campaign of harassment and threats against him. 

Gilmore argues he became the target of elaborate online conspiracies that placed him at the center of a “deep-state” plot to stage the Charlottesville attack and destabilize the Trump administration after he posted a video he captured on Twitter of the car attack that killed Heather Heyer and injured 36 others. 

“From Sandy Hook to ‘Pizzagate’ to Charlottesville, Las Vegas and now Parkland, the defendants thrive by inciting devastating real-world consequences with the propaganda and lies they publish as ‘news,’” Gilmore said in a statement. 

“Today, I’m asking a court to hold them responsible for the personal and professional damage their lies have caused me, and, more importantly, to deter them from repeating this dangerous pattern of defamation and intimidation.”

Damn! First YouTube removes advertising from his videos, and now Alex Jones is getting his ass sued off. 

I would say that today was a banner day for truth and justice, would you not agree?

New MIT study suggests that people simply prefer fake news to real news.

Courtesy of The Atlantic:  

The massive new study analyzes every major contested news story in English across the span of Twitter’s existence—some 126,000 stories, tweeted by 3 million users, over more than 10 years—and finds that the truth simply cannot compete with hoax and rumor. By every common metric, falsehood consistently dominates the truth on Twitter, the study finds: Fake news and false rumors reach more people, penetrate deeper into the social network, and spread much faster than accurate stories. 

“It seems to be pretty clear [from our study] that false information outperforms true information,” said Soroush Vosoughi, a data scientist at MIT who has studied fake news since 2013 and who led this study. “And that is not just because of bots. It might have something to do with human nature.”

.........

Though Vosoughi and his colleagues only focus on Twitter—the study was conducted using exclusive data that the company made available to MIT—their work has implications for Facebook, YouTube, and every major social network. Any platform that regularly amplifies engaging or provocative content runs the risk of amplifying fake news along with it. 

Though the study is written in the clinical language of statistics, it offers a methodical indictment of the accuracy of information that spreads on these platforms. A false story is much more likely to go viral than a real story, the authors find. A false story reaches 1,500 people six times quicker, on average, than a true story does. And while false stories outperform the truth on every subject—including business, terrorism and war, science and technology, and entertainment—fake news about politics regularly does best. 

Twitter users seem almost to prefer sharing falsehoods. Even when the researchers controlled for every difference between the accounts originating rumors—like whether that person had more followers or was verified—falsehoods were still 70 percent more likely to get retweeted than accurate news. 

And blame for this problem cannot be laid with our robotic brethren. From 2006 to 2016, Twitter bots amplified true stories as much as they amplified false ones, the study found. Fake news prospers, the authors write, “because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it.”

Well, that's disheartening. 

How do we actually reach and educate people who are conditioned to only respond to explosive headlines and hyperbolic content?

No seriously, I'm asking.

One of the world's top advertisers is threatening to take their ads offline if digital platforms do not do something about the fake news and extremism on their sites.

Courtesy of CNN: 

Unilever is threatening to pull its advertising from digital platforms that it says have become a "swamp" of fake news, racism, sexism and extremism. 

The forceful warning to digital platforms such as Google (GOOGL) and Facebook (FB) will be delivered at an advertising conference in California later on Monday. 

"We cannot continue to prop up a digital supply chain ... which at times is little better than a swamp in terms of its transparency," Unilever marketing boss Keith Weed will say, according to a copy of his speech obtained by CNN. 

Unilever (UL), which owns brands including Dove, Lipton, and Ben & Jerry's, is one of the world's top advertisers. It has an annual marketing budget of roughly €8 billion ($9.8 billion), and 25% of its ads are digital. 

Weed will say that a proliferation of objectionable content on social media -- and a lack of protections for children -- is eroding social trust, harming users and undermining democracies.

This is the kind of thing that can actually have an impact.

As large and powerful as Google and Facebook are, their power is greatly reduced once you remove their revenue streams.

If enough advertisers follow Unilever's lead it could almost change things overnight. 

These should be given out for free at every library and bookstore we visit.

Ultimately it will not be the government that protects us from manipulation by the Russians, or other unsavory groups.

It will take education to inoculate ourselves from the influence of fake news.

Devin Nunes has his own online propaganda platform paid for with campaign donations.

 Courtesy of CNN:

The campaign committee for House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes has been funding a website billed as a local news outlet. 

The site, CARepublican.com, features headlines ranging from national politics stories to state and local matters and college football. Many of the posts link out to conservative sites like National Review and The Federalist, and the Facebook page for the site labels it a media/news company that is focused on "delivering the best of US, California, and Central Valley news, sports, and analysis." 

The site says it is paid for by Nunes' campaign committee, and the congressman has shared some CARepublican posts on his Facebook page. 

Campaign money? I'm surprised it is not simply funded by the Russians, since Nunes is clearly doing their dirty work for them.

Well if you were looking for some fake news, I think we have narrowed the search a little.

Though actually it might be too late.

Courtesy of The Hill: 

An online media outlet funded by Rep. Devin Nunes’s (R-Calif.) campaign appeared to be down Sunday afternoon after what the site called “heavy traffic and an attack on our servers.” 

“The California Republican,” the name of the site, posted on its Facebook page that those trying to reach the site may encounter an error message. 

As of late Sunday afternoon, the link to the site’s home page redirects back to the outlet’s Facebook page, and links to articles redirect to a broken Facebook link. 

Politico reported earlier Sunday that the Nunes campaign has paid nearly $8,000 to a Fresno-area communications consultant since July for the site. "The California Republican" is listed as a "Media/News Company" on Facebook.

Well that must be terribly inconvenient.

Now how will all the mouth breathers get their phony news and conspiracy theories?

Oh wait, I guess Fox News still exists doesn't it? 

This is an actual official statement from the president of the United States.

A statement by the President: pic.twitter.com/cvzeQIIQfP

— Real Press Sec. (@RealPressSecBot) February 11, 2018

And remember kids "fake news" is any news that reports the truth about Donald Trump that he does not want you to hear.

So that would essentially just be the news.

Just unbelievable that this is actually a missive that comes directly from the guy living in the White House right now.

Right Wingers and Trump supporters are overwhelmingly the largest consumers of fake news on the internet.

Courtesy of Newsweek: 

Fake news published in the U.S. was overwhelmingly consumed and shared by right-wing social media users, a new study from the University of Oxford has revealed. 

Research from Oxford's "computational propaganda project" investigated into the sources of "junk news" shared in the three months leading up to President Donald Trump's first State of the Union address last month. 

On Facebook, they found that "extreme hard-right" conservatives shared more fake news stories than all other political groups combined, while on Twitter, Trump supporters consumed the most fake news. 

"On Twitter, a network of Trump supporters consumes the largest volume of junk news, and junk news is the largest proportion of news links they share," they said.

They should just simply say that liberals are smarter.

Because let's face it, we are.

That is not to say that progressives cannot chase after fake stories as well.

It simply means that as a rule once we discover that they are fake, we do not then make excuses to continue believing them.

Trump gets booed for mentioning "fake news" at World Economic Forum in Davos. Because, why woudn't they boo him?

Courtesy of Think Progress:  

After delivering a speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, President Trump did a brief question-and-answer sessions with WEF Chair Klaus Schwab. The second and final question Trump fielded was about what experiences he had earlier in his life that he thinks prepared him for the presidency. 

Trump’s response was not well received. First, he bragged about his business acumen and claimed he’s “always been successful at making money” — comments that elicited laughter for the crowd. But the laughs escalated to boos after Trump took aim at the “fake news” media. 

“The other thing is, I’ve always seemed to get — for whatever reason — a disproportionate amount of press or media,” Trump began. “And throughout my whole life — someone will explain someday why — but I’ve always gotten a lot. And as a businessman I was always treated really well by the press. You know, the numbers speak and things happen, but I’ve always really had a very good press, and it wasn’t until I became a politician that I realized how nasty, how mean, how vicious, and how fake the press can be — as the cameras start going off in the back.”

The crowd then erupted in boos. Which you can clearly hear on the video.

Foreign journos sitting next to me booed Trump's attack on the press.

— Ishaan Tharoor (@ishaantharoor) January 26, 2018

Apparently after Trump realized this was not one of his rallies he tried to walk it back.

But it was really too late.

By the way the reason that Trump received coverage by the press is because he sought it out constantly.

Remember when Trump pretended to be his own press agent?

Facebook's questionnaire to identify trustworthy news sources leaves a lot to be desired.

Courtesy of BuzzFeed:  

Last week, Facebook said its News Feed would prioritize links from publications its users deemed "trustworthy" in an upcoming survey. Turns out that survey isn't a particularly lengthy or nuanced one. In fact, it's just two questions. 

Here is Facebook's survey — in its entirety: 

Do you recognize the following websites

• Yes 
• No 

How much do you trust each of these domains?

• Entirely 
• A lot 
• Somewhat 
• Barely 
• Not at all 

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed this as the only version of the survey in use. They also confirmed that the questions were prepared by the company itself and not by an outside party.

Uh....is that it?

Do you want InfoWars to be listed as a trusted news outlet.

Because this is how you get InfoWars listed as a trusted news outlet.

Right Wingers and Russian trolls will simply flood the questionnaire with responses and we will end up with Alex Jones, Russia Today, and the White House web page as the only sources listed on our Facebook news feed.

Michigan man arrested after threatening to kill CNN employees over "fake news."

Courtesy of CBS 46: 

A Michigan man was arrested after an FBI investigation, accused of threatening to travel to Atlanta to commit mass murder at CNN headquarters. 

According to federal court documents, the man, from a Detroit suburb, made 22 calls to CNN about a week ago. 

It began with claims of "fake news" and ended with threats of violence. 

The man told a CNN operator, among other things, "Fake news. I'm coming to gun you all down." 

He then called again, saying "I'm smarter than you. More powerful than you. I have more guns than you. More manpower. Your cast is about to get gunned down in a matter of hours." 

He continued, "I am coming to Georgia right now to go to the CNN headquarters to f---ing gun every single last one of you." 

So I have a question.

If this lunatic had been successful in killing a CNN news reporter, would that have made Donald Trump legally responsible in any way?

I mean the man has been fomenting violence against the media since he first rode down that escalator to announce he was going to run for president.

And since this is sure to terrify people in the Atlanta community is Donald Trump not also inspiring domestic terrorism?

Now with people actually looking forward to it Trump pushes back date for his "fake news awards."

The Fake News Awards, those going to the most corrupt & biased of the Mainstream Media, will be presented to the losers on Wednesday, January 17th, rather than this coming Monday. The interest in, and importance of, these awards is far greater than anyone could have anticipated!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2018

Courtesy of The Hill: 

Trump announced last week that he would present “The Most Dishonest & Corrupt Media Awards” on Monday to highlight reporters who run with what he calls "fake news." 

Celebrity chef Jose Andres offered a free lunch at any of his popular restaurants to winners, and the watchdog group American Oversight planned to hand out “Most Dishonest and Corrupt” awards to Trump administration officials on Monday as a response to Trump's plans.

Some folks got themselves a little excited about the possibility of being singled out for one of these "honors."

For instance The Daily Show took out a full page ad in the New York Times.
.@realdonaldtrump, prove you're not semiliterate by reading our full-page ad in the Failing @nytimes! #InItToWinIt #TheFakies #Fakies2018 pic.twitter.com/sSVqah4rlx

— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) January 5, 2018

While Stephen Colbert bought advertising space in Times Square.

Tonight! My desperate bid to get Trump’s disapproval! #TheFakies pic.twitter.com/7exZSesI8m

— Stephen Colbert (@StephenAtHome) January 4, 2018

Now I am a little torn over all of this.

On the one hand these comedians have given Donald Trump positive attention, and clearly he is excited about stringing them along now. 

But on the other hand if he focuses on putting together another reality show like this, he will be too distracted to keep tearing down the country.

Yep, that's a conundrum alright.

States are now pushing for media literacy programs in public schools to battle the proliferation of "fake news."

Courtesy of the AP: 

Alarmed by the proliferation of false content online, state lawmakers around the country are pushing schools to put more emphasis on teaching students how to tell fact from fiction. 

Lawmakers in several states have introduced or passed bills calling on public school systems to do more to teach media literacy skills that they say are critical to democracy. The effort has been bipartisan but has received little attention despite successful legislation in Washington state, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Mexico. 

Several more states are expected to consider such bills in the coming year, including Arizona, New York and Hawaii. 

"I don't think it's a partisan issue to appreciate the importance of good information and the teaching of tools for navigating the information environment," said Hans Zeiger, a Republican state senator in Washington who co-sponsored a bill that passed in his state earlier this year. "There is such a thing as an objective source versus other kinds of sources, and that's an appropriate thing for schools to be teaching."

I am totally behind this effort, and see it as a complete necessity moving forward.

I think on the first day of class, lesson one should be do not listen to a damn thing this guy says.

The Pope calls the spreading of "fake news" a "very serious sin." Seriously?

Courtesy of the AP:

Pope Francis is criticizing journalists who dredge up old scandals and sensationalize the news, saying it’s a “very serious sin” that hurts all involved. 

Francis, who plans to dedicate his upcoming annual communications message to “fake news,” told Catholic media on Saturday that journalists perform a mission that is among the most “fundamental” to democratic societies. 

But he reminded them to provide precise, complete and correct information and not to provide one-sided reports. 

The pope said: “You shouldn’t fall into the ‘sins of communication:’ disinformation, or giving just one side, calumny that is sensationalized, or defamation, looking for things that are old news and have been dealt with and bringing them to light today.” 

He called those actions a “grave sin that hurts the heart of the journalist and hurts others.” 

Look I totally agree with the Popester here that the spreading of fake news is a bad idea.

However does he really want to talk about "disinformation, or giving just one side, calumny that is sensationalized?"

Because I am pretty sure that his entire religion depends on much of that.

For the record there is very little in the Bible that is backed up by actual facts or secular historical documentation.

The entire religion depends on the continued spreading of disinformation and calumny ( the making of false and defamatory statements in order to damage someone's reputation; slander.) Just ask those who have been tortured and killed for heresy or accused of witchcraft.

Yes fake news is bad.

So how much longer will the Pope and his fellow Christians continue to spread it?

Former British Prime Minister says that Trump's attack on the media, and use of term "fake news," is dangerous.

Courtesy of Politico:

Former British Prime Minister David Cameron called out Donald Trump’s attacks on the media, saying his use of term “fake news” was “dangerous.” 

Giving Transparency International UK’s annual lecture in London on Wednesday evening, Cameron said attacks on journalists were “bad news for the fight against corruption.” 

He then turned his attention to the U.S. president, saying: “When Donald Trump uses the term ‘fake news’ to describe CNN and the BBC, that is not just a questionable political tactic. It’s actually dangerous.”

“Of course broadcasters make mistakes and it’s right they correct them,” Cameron said. “But what is being attempted here goes far beyond that. It’s an attempt to question the whole legitimacy of organizations that have an important role in our democracy. 

“Let me put it like this. President Trump: ‘Fake news’ is not broadcasters criticizing you, it’s Russian bots and trolls targeting your democracy … pumping out untrue stories day after day, night after night.”

This is how the world sees the current Commander-in-Chief, as a thin skinned buffoon.

And they are correct to do so.

Really?

CNN’S slogan is CNN, THE MOST TRUSTED NAME IN NEWS. Everyone knows this is not true, that this could, in fact, be a fraud on the American Public. There are many outlets that are far more trusted than Fake News CNN. Their slogan should be CNN, THE LEAST TRUSTED NAME IN NEWS!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2017

Does anybody else's head hurt as much as mine does?

Trump's "fake news" meme is also popular with another group of folks, authoritarian despots.

Courtesy of Politico:

Authoritarian rulers across the globe are adopting President Donald Trump’s favorite phrase to limit free speech, with prominent leaders or state media in at least 15 countries using his “fake news” line to denounce their critics, according to a POLITICO review. 

By aligning themselves with Trump’s words, despots have been able to use the U.S. president as a shield for their attacks on press freedom and human rights, said Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. 

“I’m seeing it more and more,” he said. Trump, he added, “is providing a context and framework for all sorts of authoritarian leaders—or democratic leaders and others who are dissatisfied or upset by critical media coverage—to undermine and discredit reporting.” 

In February, for example, Syrian President Bashar Assad brushed off an Amnesty International report that some 13,000 people had been killed at one of his military prisons by saying, “You can forge anything these days, we are living in a fake news era.” 

In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte has complained of being “demonized” by “fake news.” Last month, with Trump laughing by his side, he called reporters “spies.”

Over the weekend, a state official in Myanmar attracted notice when he said, “There is no such thing as Rohingya. It is fake news,” referring to the persecuted ethnic group. 

Those are hardly the only examples of Trump’s phrase being deployed internationally: In March, Chinese state media dismissed a prominent rights activist’s account of torture as “fake news.” And in May, the People’s Daily ran an op-ed with the headline, “Trump is right, fake news is the enemy, something China has known for years.”

Possibly the worst American export ever!

America, making the world a more shitty place since 2017.

Atheists have adopted Donald Trump's favorite catch phrase, but I do not think he will appreciate how they put it to use.

Courtesy of NBC News: 

Nick Fish, a spokesman for American Atheists, claimed the signs aren’t meant to offend, but to spark a dialogue by adding a topical tag line.

“It’s a way of starting a conversation not just with this organization but within a community,” Fish told NBC News on Wednesday. “The choice is often between being provocative or not being heard at all. If we can start that initial conversation, then we’re doing our jobs to get the ball rolling and get our foot in the door.” 

Since the signs were put up on Nov. 30, many atheists in the affected areas have come forward in support of them, Fish said. These atheists claimed that the billboards made them feel as though they weren’t alone in their community. 

American Atheists, which has gone after Christian groups as well as other organized religions since they formed in 1963, specifically targeted areas that they felt were particularly religiously homogeneous. 

“It’s about targeting areas where religious identity is assumed. Albuquerque is not necessarily a conservative place,” Fish said, “but there is a lot of religious expectation there and we want to challenge that.”

There is of course very little in the Bible that is supported by the facts, so defining it as "fake news" seems perfectly reasonable.

Of course if reason was something that the majority of Christians were to embrace there would be a whole lot fewer Christians.