🕷️ Crawler Inspector

URL Lookup

Direct Parameter Lookup

Raw Queries and Responses

1. Shard Calculation

Query:

Response:

Calculated Shard: 133 (from laksa160)

2. Crawled Status Check

Query:

curl -X POST \
  'http://laksa133.int.ahrefs:8124/' \
  -H 'Content-Type: text/plain' \
  -H 'X-ClickHouse-Database: crawler3' \
  -H 'Authorization: Basic YXBpOg==' \
  -d 'SELECT getAhrefsURLFromUnparsed(src_unparsed) AS found_url, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(download_stamp), 0) AS crawl_time, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(props_url_first_seen), 0) AS first_indexed_time, download_http_code AS http_code, src_unparsed AS src_unparsed, src_root_hash AS src_root_hash, history_drop_reason AS history_drop_reason, meta_title AS meta_title, meta_descriptions AS meta_descriptions, attrs_boilerpipe_text AS attrs_boilerpipe_text, attrs_markdown AS attrs_markdown, attrs_readable_markdown AS attrs_readable_markdown, meta_canonical AS meta_canonical FROM crawler3.page_info_local FINAL PREWHERE (src_root_hash, src_unparsed) IN ((getAhrefsRootHashFromUnparsed(getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/11/donald-trumps-fake-news-tactics\')), getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/11/donald-trumps-fake-news-tactics\'))) FORMAT JSONEachRow'

Response:

{"found_url":"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2017\/12\/11\/donald-trumps-fake-news-tactics","crawl_time":1776585841,"first_indexed_time":1512295547,"http_code":200,"src_unparsed":"com,newyorker!www,\/magazine\/2017\/12\/11\/donald-trumps-fake-news-tactics s443","src_root_hash":"16027205805525588333","history_drop_reason":null,"meta_title":"Donald Trump’s “Fake News” Tactics | The New Yorker","meta_descriptions":["In attacking the media, the President has in many ways strengthened it."],"attrs_boilerpipe_text":"Illustration by Tom Bachtell\nLast December,\nVariety\nand other news outlets reported that Donald Trump planned to serve as an executive producer for “The Celebrity Apprentice” while he was President. Kellyanne Conway, appearing on CNN,\ndefended the President-elect’s prerogatives\n, but the next day Trump tweeted that the story was “fake news.” Since then, he has tweeted about fake news more than a hundred and fifty times; on a single day in September, he did so eight times, in apparent frustration over coverage of his Administration’s response to Hurricane Maria’s devastation of Puerto Rico. And, of course, Trump regularly invokes “the fake-news Russian-collusion story,” as he named it last summer. He has attacked coverage of the Russia investigation more than a dozen times on Twitter alone.\n“One of the greatest of all terms I’ve come up with is ‘fake,’ ” Trump\nsaid\non Mike Huckabee’s talk show, in October. (In fact, the phrase “fake news” has been around for more than a century.) The President’s strategy has been successful, however, in at least one respect: he has appropriated a term that had often been used to describe the propaganda and the lies masquerading as news, emanating from Russia and elsewhere, which proliferated on Facebook, YouTube, and other social-media platforms during the 2016 election campaign. These manufactured stories—“\nPOPE FRANCIS SHOCKS WORLD\n,\nENDORSES DONALD TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT\n,” among them—poisoned the news ecosystem and may have contributed to Trump’s victory.\nJudging from the President’s tweets, his definition of “fake news” is credible reporting that he doesn’t like. But he complicates the matter by issuing demonstrably false statements of his own, which, inevitably, make news. Trump has brought to the White House bully pulpit a disorienting habit of telling lies, big and small, without evident shame. Since 2015, Politifact has counted three hundred and twenty-nine public statements by Trump that it judges to be mostly or entirely false. (In comparison, its count of such misstatements by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is thirteen.)\nThe President also publicizes calumnies that vilify minorities. Last Wednesday morning, he outdid himself by retweeting unverified, incendiary anti-Muslim videos posted by Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of Britain First, a far-right group. Through a spokesman, Prime Minister Theresa May responded that Trump was “wrong” to promote the agenda of a group that spreads “\nhateful narratives which peddle lies\n.” The following day, members of Parliament denounced the President, using such epithets as “fascist” and “stupid.” It was a scene without precedent in the century-old military alliance between the United States and Britain.\nTrump’s tactics echo those of previous nativist-populist politicians, but his tweets also draw on the contemporary idioms of the alt-right. This is a loose movement, as the researchers Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis have written, best understood as “an amalgam of conspiracy theorists, techno-libertarians, white nationalists, Men’s Rights advocates, trolls, anti-feminists, anti-immigration activists, and bored young people” who express “a self-referential culture in which anti-Semitism, occult ties, and Nazi imagery can be explained either as entirely sincere or completely tongue-in-cheek.” Trump is no alt-right digital-news geek, yet his Twitter feed is similarly ambiguous. He seems to provoke his opponents for the pleasure of offending them, but when he is called to account he often claims that he was just joking. Sometimes he promotes conspiracy theories to insult personal nemeses, as he did last week when he tweeted\nbaseless speculation\nabout the MSNBC host Joe Scarborough’s connection to the “unsolved mystery” of an intern’s death.\nThe President’s tweets slamming CNN, the\nTimes\n, NBC News, and other media organizations can be comical and weird, but they do serious harm. Last week,\na Libyan broadcaster cited one of Trump’s tweets about CNN\nin an attempt to discredit a report by the network on the persistence of slavery in that country. And, when the leader of a nation previously devoted to the promulgation of press freedom worldwide seeks so colorfully to delegitimize journalism, he inevitably gives cover to foreign despots who threaten reporters in order to protect their own power.\nAt home, the Trump effect is more subtle, but corrosive. The First Amendment does not appear to be in existential danger; on the Supreme Court, Justices appointed by both Republican and Democratic Presidents endorse expansive ideas about free speech, even as they debate interpretations. Yet many of the rights that working journalists enjoy stem from state laws and from the case-by-case decisions of local judges. The climate that Trump has helped create may undermine some of these protections—for example, by prompting state legislatures to overturn shield laws that encode the rights of reporters to protect confidential sources.\nTrump’s alignment with right-wing publishers, such as Infowars and Breitbart, some of which see Fox News as the old-school communications arm of an obsolete Republican establishment, reflects a broader fragmentation of the media. Amid the cacophony of the digital era, publishers and advertisers prize readers who are deeply engaged, not just clicking around sites. News organizations as distinct as the\nTimes\nand Breitbart now think of their audiences as communities in formation, bound by common values. A more openly factional, political journalism need not portend the death of fact-driven, truth-seeking, fair-minded reporting. Yet excellent journalism typically follows a form of the scientific method, prioritizing evidence, transparency, and the replicability of findings; journalism grounded in an ideology can be discredited by the practitioner’s preëmptive assumptions.\nFortunately, in attacking the media Trump has in many ways strengthened it. This year, the\nTimes\n, the Washington\nPost\n, and many other independent, professional enterprises have reminded the country why the Founders enshrined a free press as a defense against abusive power. Among other achievements, the media’s coverage of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation has made transparent the seriousness of its findings so far, and constrained the President’s transparent desire to interfere.\nLast Friday, Mueller dropped his latest bombshell,\na plea agreement with Michael Flynn\n, the former national-security adviser, who admitted that, in January, he lied to the F.B.I. about his contacts with Sergey Kislyak, then Russia’s Ambassador to the United States. The court papers filed with Flynn’s plea lay out a story of how senior members of the Trump transition team asked Flynn to communicate with Russian officials on matters of U.S. foreign policy. The papers also contain a reference to a discussion that Flynn had with “a very senior member” of the transition team, a characterization that suggests that the list of names of who that may be is a short one. The chances that history will remember Mueller’s investigation of Trump and his closest advisers as fake news grow slimmer by the day. ♦","attrs_markdown":"[Skip to main content](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2017\/12\/11\/donald-trumps-fake-news-tactics#main-content)\n\n[![The New Yorker](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/verso\/static\/thenewyorker-us\/assets\/logo.svg)](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/)\n\n- [Newsletter](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/newsletters?sourceCode=navbar)\n\nSearch\n\n- [The Latest](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/latest)\n- [News](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news)\n- [Books & Culture](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/culture)\n- [Fiction & Poetry](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/fiction-and-poetry)\n- [Humor & Cartoons](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/humor)\n- [Magazine](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/archive)\n- [Puzzles & Games](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/crossword-puzzles-and-games)\n- [Video](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/video)\n- [Podcasts](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/podcasts)\n- [Goings On](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/goings-on)\n- [Shop](https:\/\/store.newyorker.com\/)\n\nOpen Navigation Menu\n\n[![The New Yorker](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/verso\/static\/thenewyorker-us\/assets\/logo-header.svg)](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/)\n\n[Comment](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/comment)\n\n# Donald Trump’s “Fake News” Tactics\n\nIn attacking the media, the President has in many ways strengthened it.\n\n![](https:\/\/media.newyorker.com\/photos\/59097b79c14b3c606c10945e\/1:1\/w_270%2Cc_limit\/coll-steve.png)\n\nBy [Steve Coll](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/contributors\/steve-coll)\n\nDecember 3, 2017\n\nSave this story\n\nSave this story\n\n![Image may contain Comics Book and Manga](https:\/\/media.newyorker.com\/photos\/5a21d8bde9768145f837be92\/master\/w_2560%2Cc_limit\/171211_r31128illuweb.jpg)\n\nIllustration by Tom Bachtell\n\nLast December, [*Variety*](http:\/\/variety.com\/2016\/tv\/news\/donald-trump-mark-burnett-celebrity-apprentice-executive-producer-1201937420\/) and other news outlets reported that Donald Trump planned to serve as an executive producer for “The Celebrity Apprentice” while he was President. Kellyanne Conway, appearing on CNN, [defended the President-elect’s prerogatives](https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2016\/12\/09\/politics\/conway-defends-trump-apprentice\/index.html), but the next day Trump tweeted that the story was “fake news.” Since then, he has tweeted about fake news more than a hundred and fifty times; on a single day in September, he did so eight times, in apparent frustration over coverage of his Administration’s response to Hurricane Maria’s devastation of Puerto Rico. And, of course, Trump regularly invokes “the fake-news Russian-collusion story,” as he named it last summer. He has attacked coverage of the Russia investigation more than a dozen times on Twitter alone.\n\n“One of the greatest of all terms I’ve come up with is ‘fake,’ ” Trump [said](http:\/\/thehill.com\/homenews\/administration\/354445-trump-one-of-the-greatest-terms-ive-come-up-with-is-fake) on Mike Huckabee’s talk show, in October. (In fact, the phrase “fake news” has been around for more than a century.) The President’s strategy has been successful, however, in at least one respect: he has appropriated a term that had often been used to describe the propaganda and the lies masquerading as news, emanating from Russia and elsewhere, which proliferated on Facebook, YouTube, and other social-media platforms during the 2016 election campaign. These manufactured stories—“*POPE FRANCIS SHOCKS WORLD*, *ENDORSES DONALD TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT*,” among them—poisoned the news ecosystem and may have contributed to Trump’s victory.\n\nJudging from the President’s tweets, his definition of “fake news” is credible reporting that he doesn’t like. But he complicates the matter by issuing demonstrably false statements of his own, which, inevitably, make news. Trump has brought to the White House bully pulpit a disorienting habit of telling lies, big and small, without evident shame. Since 2015, Politifact has counted three hundred and twenty-nine public statements by Trump that it judges to be mostly or entirely false. (In comparison, its count of such misstatements by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is thirteen.)\n\nThe President also publicizes calumnies that vilify minorities. Last Wednesday morning, he outdid himself by retweeting unverified, incendiary anti-Muslim videos posted by Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of Britain First, a far-right group. Through a spokesman, Prime Minister Theresa May responded that Trump was “wrong” to promote the agenda of a group that spreads “[hateful narratives which peddle lies](http:\/\/variety.com\/2017\/politics\/news\/trump-anti-muslim-videos-theresa-may-1202625844\/).” The following day, members of Parliament denounced the President, using such epithets as “fascist” and “stupid.” It was a scene without precedent in the century-old military alliance between the United States and Britain.\n\nTrump’s tactics echo those of previous nativist-populist politicians, but his tweets also draw on the contemporary idioms of the alt-right. This is a loose movement, as the researchers Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis have written, best understood as “an amalgam of conspiracy theorists, techno-libertarians, white nationalists, Men’s Rights advocates, trolls, anti-feminists, anti-immigration activists, and bored young people” who express “a self-referential culture in which anti-Semitism, occult ties, and Nazi imagery can be explained either as entirely sincere or completely tongue-in-cheek.” Trump is no alt-right digital-news geek, yet his Twitter feed is similarly ambiguous. He seems to provoke his opponents for the pleasure of offending them, but when he is called to account he often claims that he was just joking. Sometimes he promotes conspiracy theories to insult personal nemeses, as he did last week when he tweeted [baseless speculation](https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/arts-and-entertainment\/wp\/2017\/11\/29\/trump-suggested-the-2001-death-of-a-joe-scarborough-aide-is-an-unsolved-mystery-it-isnt\/?utm_term=.8400c31f690f) about the MSNBC host Joe Scarborough’s connection to the “unsolved mystery” of an intern’s death.\n\nThe President’s tweets slamming CNN, the *Times*, NBC News, and other media organizations can be comical and weird, but they do serious harm. Last week, [a Libyan broadcaster cited one of Trump’s tweets about CNN](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2017\/nov\/28\/libya-slave-trade-cnn-report-trump-fake-news) in an attempt to discredit a report by the network on the persistence of slavery in that country. And, when the leader of a nation previously devoted to the promulgation of press freedom worldwide seeks so colorfully to delegitimize journalism, he inevitably gives cover to foreign despots who threaten reporters in order to protect their own power.\n\nAt home, the Trump effect is more subtle, but corrosive. The First Amendment does not appear to be in existential danger; on the Supreme Court, Justices appointed by both Republican and Democratic Presidents endorse expansive ideas about free speech, even as they debate interpretations. Yet many of the rights that working journalists enjoy stem from state laws and from the case-by-case decisions of local judges. The climate that Trump has helped create may undermine some of these protections—for example, by prompting state legislatures to overturn shield laws that encode the rights of reporters to protect confidential sources.\n\nTrump’s alignment with right-wing publishers, such as Infowars and Breitbart, some of which see Fox News as the old-school communications arm of an obsolete Republican establishment, reflects a broader fragmentation of the media. Amid the cacophony of the digital era, publishers and advertisers prize readers who are deeply engaged, not just clicking around sites. News organizations as distinct as the *Times* and Breitbart now think of their audiences as communities in formation, bound by common values. A more openly factional, political journalism need not portend the death of fact-driven, truth-seeking, fair-minded reporting. Yet excellent journalism typically follows a form of the scientific method, prioritizing evidence, transparency, and the replicability of findings; journalism grounded in an ideology can be discredited by the practitioner’s preëmptive assumptions.\n\nFortunately, in attacking the media Trump has in many ways strengthened it. This year, the *Times*, the Washington *Post*, and many other independent, professional enterprises have reminded the country why the Founders enshrined a free press as a defense against abusive power. Among other achievements, the media’s coverage of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation has made transparent the seriousness of its findings so far, and constrained the President’s transparent desire to interfere.\n\nLast Friday, Mueller dropped his latest bombshell, [a plea agreement with Michael Flynn](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/daily-comment\/what-michael-flynns-plea-means-to-robert-muellerand-to-donald-trump), the former national-security adviser, who admitted that, in January, he lied to the F.B.I. about his contacts with Sergey Kislyak, then Russia’s Ambassador to the United States. The court papers filed with Flynn’s plea lay out a story of how senior members of the Trump transition team asked Flynn to communicate with Russian officials on matters of U.S. foreign policy. The papers also contain a reference to a discussion that Flynn had with “a very senior member” of the transition team, a characterization that suggests that the list of names of who that may be is a short one. The chances that history will remember Mueller’s investigation of Trump and his closest advisers as fake news grow slimmer by the day. ♦\n\nPublished in the print edition of the [December 11, 2017](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2017\/12\/11), issue, with the headline “Faking It.”\n\n[![](https:\/\/media.newyorker.com\/photos\/59097b79c14b3c606c10945e\/1:1\/w_270%2Cc_limit\/coll-steve.png)](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/contributors\/steve-coll)\n\n[Steve Coll](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/contributors\/steve-coll), a staff writer, is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize.\n\nMore:[Donald Trump](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/tag\/donald-trump)[Fake News](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/tag\/fake-news)[Muslims](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/tag\/muslims)[Twitter](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/tag\/twitter)[Britain First](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/tag\/britain-first)[Media](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/tag\/media)[Journalism](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/tag\/journalism)[Robert Mueller](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/tag\/robert-mueller)\n\nRead More\n\n[![Michael Flynn, General Chaos](https:\/\/media.newyorker.com\/photos\/59097e3f1c7a8e33fb390734\/4:3\/w_640%2Cc_limit\/170227_r29465_rd2.jpg)](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2017\/02\/27\/michael-flynn-general-chaos)\n\nLetter from Washington\n\n[Michael Flynn, General Chaos](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2017\/02\/27\/michael-flynn-general-chaos)\n\n[![Michael Flynn, General Chaos](https:\/\/media.newyorker.com\/photos\/59097e3f1c7a8e33fb390734\/4:3\/w_640%2Cc_limit\/170227_r29465_rd2.jpg)](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2017\/02\/27\/michael-flynn-general-chaos)\n\nWhat the removal of Flynn as the national-security adviser reveals about Donald Trump’s White House.\n\nBy Nicholas Schmidle\n\n[![What Michael Flynn’s Plea Means to Robert Mueller—and to Donald Trump](https:\/\/media.newyorker.com\/photos\/5a219c91aa21e2554f977d1b\/4:3\/w_640%2Cc_limit\/Davidson-Sorkin-Michael-Flynns-Plea.jpg)](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/daily-comment\/what-michael-flynns-plea-means-to-robert-muellerand-to-donald-trump)\n\nDaily Comment\n\n[What Michael Flynn’s Plea Means to Robert Mueller—and to Donald Trump](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/daily-comment\/what-michael-flynns-plea-means-to-robert-muellerand-to-donald-trump)\n\nBy Amy Davidson Sorkin\n\n[![At Synagogues, Tensions Are Boiling Over](https:\/\/media.newyorker.com\/photos\/69caea8825a8e5f0af05c1ff\/4:3\/w_640%2Cc_limit\/undefined)](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2026\/04\/06\/at-synagogues-tensions-are-boiling-over#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\nAnnals of Religion\n\n[At Synagogues, Tensions Are Boiling Over](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2026\/04\/06\/at-synagogues-tensions-are-boiling-over#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\n[![At Synagogues, Tensions Are Boiling Over](https:\/\/media.newyorker.com\/photos\/69caea8825a8e5f0af05c1ff\/4:3\/w_640%2Cc_limit\/undefined)](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2026\/04\/06\/at-synagogues-tensions-are-boiling-over#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\nDisagreements about Gaza and Zionism have divided congregations.\n\nBy Eyal Press\n\n[![Who Struck It Rich in the Markets When Trump Postponed Bombing Iran?](https:\/\/media.newyorker.com\/photos\/69c6e26d994fd067a02c7bbe\/4:3\/w_640%2Cc_limit\/undefined)](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/the-financial-page\/who-struck-it-rich-in-the-markets-when-trump-postponed-bombing-iran#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\nThe Financial Page\n\n[Who Struck It Rich in the Markets When Trump Postponed Bombing Iran?](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/the-financial-page\/who-struck-it-rich-in-the-markets-when-trump-postponed-bombing-iran#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\n[![Who Struck It Rich in the Markets When Trump Postponed Bombing Iran?](https:\/\/media.newyorker.com\/photos\/69c6e26d994fd067a02c7bbe\/4:3\/w_640%2Cc_limit\/undefined)](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/the-financial-page\/who-struck-it-rich-in-the-markets-when-trump-postponed-bombing-iran#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\nA series of uncannily timed bets on the price of oil and stocks deserves a proper investigation. It’s far from clear that they’ll get one.\n\nBy John Cassidy\n\n[![America’s Orange Jesus](https:\/\/media.newyorker.com\/photos\/69e155cbd62200d09776e6d0\/4:3\/w_640%2Cc_limit\/undefined)](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/letter-from-trumps-washington\/americas-orange-jesus#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\nLetter from Trump’s Washington\n\n[America’s Orange Jesus](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/letter-from-trumps-washington\/americas-orange-jesus#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\n[![America’s Orange Jesus](https:\/\/media.newyorker.com\/photos\/69e155cbd62200d09776e6d0\/4:3\/w_640%2Cc_limit\/undefined)](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/letter-from-trumps-washington\/americas-orange-jesus#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\nReflections on a week in which Donald Trump decided to feud with the Pope while comparing himself to the Saviour.\n\nBy Susan B. Glasser\n\n[![Is Cuba Next?](https:\/\/media.newyorker.com\/photos\/69bb16a4f307f74eb0161765\/4:3\/w_640%2Cc_limit\/undefined)](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2026\/03\/30\/is-cuba-next#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\nLetter from Havana\n\n[Is Cuba Next?](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2026\/03\/30\/is-cuba-next#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\n[![Is Cuba Next?](https:\/\/media.newyorker.com\/photos\/69bb16a4f307f74eb0161765\/4:3\/w_640%2Cc_limit\/undefined)](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2026\/03\/30\/is-cuba-next#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\nTrump’s campaign to topple foreign adversaries encounters a battered but defiant regime.\n\nBy Jon Lee Anderson\n\n[![“The Peace President” Gets Belligerent with Iran and the Pope](https:\/\/media.newyorker.com\/photos\/69dd5c16481facee63d61e4b\/4:3\/w_640%2Cc_limit\/undefined)](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/the-lede\/the-peace-president-gets-belligerent-with-iran-and-the-pope#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\nThe Lede\n\n[“The Peace President” Gets Belligerent with Iran and the Pope](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/the-lede\/the-peace-president-gets-belligerent-with-iran-and-the-pope#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\n[![“The Peace President” Gets Belligerent with Iran and the Pope](https:\/\/media.newyorker.com\/photos\/69dd5c16481facee63d61e4b\/4:3\/w_640%2Cc_limit\/undefined)](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/the-lede\/the-peace-president-gets-belligerent-with-iran-and-the-pope#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\nAfter negotiations to end the war failed to produce a deal, Trump imposed a naval blockade to cut off the Islamic Republic’s ability to trade through the Strait of Hormuz.\n\nBy Robin Wright\n\n[![What Brought Down Eric Swalwell](https:\/\/media.newyorker.com\/photos\/69dfd019bd1b02268bc44678\/4:3\/w_640%2Cc_limit\/undefined)](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/the-lede\/what-brought-down-eric-swalwell#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\nThe Lede\n\n[What Brought Down Eric Swalwell](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/the-lede\/what-brought-down-eric-swalwell#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\n[![What Brought Down Eric Swalwell](https:\/\/media.newyorker.com\/photos\/69dfd019bd1b02268bc44678\/4:3\/w_640%2Cc_limit\/undefined)](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/the-lede\/what-brought-down-eric-swalwell#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\nHow the attention economy produced a moment of congressional reckoning.\n\nBy Jon Allsop\n\n[![How the Internet Fringe Infiltrated Republican Politics](https:\/\/media.newyorker.com\/photos\/69cd3268f8f1289c024c57d1\/4:3\/w_640%2Cc_limit\/undefined)](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2026\/04\/13\/how-the-internet-fringe-infiltrated-republican-politics#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\nThe Political Scene\n\n[How the Internet Fringe Infiltrated Republican Politics](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2026\/04\/13\/how-the-internet-fringe-infiltrated-republican-politics#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\n[![How the Internet Fringe Infiltrated Republican Politics](https:\/\/media.newyorker.com\/photos\/69cd3268f8f1289c024c57d1\/4:3\/w_640%2Cc_limit\/undefined)](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2026\/04\/13\/how-the-internet-fringe-infiltrated-republican-politics#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\nInside the battle for the post-*MAGA* G.O.P.\n\nBy Antonia Hitchens\n\n[![How Trump’s Iran War Could Torch the Global Economy](https:\/\/media.newyorker.com\/photos\/69bdb7513a3a9a3e9bcd9e00\/4:3\/w_640%2Cc_limit\/undefined)](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/the-financial-page\/how-trumps-iran-war-could-torch-the-global-economy#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\nThe Financial Page\n\n[How Trump’s Iran War Could Torch the Global Economy](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/the-financial-page\/how-trumps-iran-war-could-torch-the-global-economy#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\n[![How Trump’s Iran War Could Torch the Global Economy](https:\/\/media.newyorker.com\/photos\/69bdb7513a3a9a3e9bcd9e00\/4:3\/w_640%2Cc_limit\/undefined)](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/the-financial-page\/how-trumps-iran-war-could-torch-the-global-economy#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\nA conflict that was supposed to be brief has sent oil prices soaring and raised the risk of a worldwide recession.\n\nBy John Cassidy\n\n[![Donald Trump’s Case for War Fails to Mention How to Win It](https:\/\/media.newyorker.com\/photos\/69ce50d03765620566de2bf7\/4:3\/w_640%2Cc_limit\/undefined)](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/letter-from-trumps-washington\/trumps-case-for-war-fails-to-mention-how-to-win-it#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\nLetter from Trump’s Washington\n\n[Donald Trump’s Case for War Fails to Mention How to Win It](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/letter-from-trumps-washington\/trumps-case-for-war-fails-to-mention-how-to-win-it#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\n[![Donald Trump’s Case for War Fails to Mention How to Win It](https:\/\/media.newyorker.com\/photos\/69ce50d03765620566de2bf7\/4:3\/w_640%2Cc_limit\/undefined)](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/letter-from-trumps-washington\/trumps-case-for-war-fails-to-mention-how-to-win-it#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\nThe President poses an existential question: Can everything be going according to the plan with Iran if there is no plan?\n\nBy Susan B. Glasser\n\n[![TMZ Gets Political](https:\/\/media.newyorker.com\/photos\/69de6786d01a512837f7553c\/4:3\/w_640%2Cc_limit\/undefined)](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/culture\/the-lede\/tmz-gets-political#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\nThe Lede\n\n[TMZ Gets Political](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/culture\/the-lede\/tmz-gets-political#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\n[![TMZ Gets Political](https:\/\/media.newyorker.com\/photos\/69de6786d01a512837f7553c\/4:3\/w_640%2Cc_limit\/undefined)](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/culture\/the-lede\/tmz-gets-political#intcid=recommendations_the-new-yorker-article-bottom-recirc-personalized_323474c2-da37-4fd6-ac84-1362c99f38f5_closr_bkta)\n\nThe celebrity tabloid has been basking in the Schadenfreude of catching politicians asleep on the job.\n\nBy Paula Mejía\n\n[![The New Yorker](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/verso\/static\/thenewyorker-us\/assets\/logo-reverse.svg)](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/)\n\nSections\n\n- [News](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news)\n- [Books & Culture](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/culture)\n- [Fiction & Poetry](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/fiction-and-poetry)\n- [Humor & Cartoons](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/humor)\n- [Magazine](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/archive)\n- [Crossword](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/crossword-puzzles-and-games)\n- [Video](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/video)\n- [Podcasts](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/podcast)\n- [100th Anniversary](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/100)\n- [Goings On](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/goings-on)\n\nMore\n\n- [Manage Account](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/account\/profile)\n- [Shop The New Yorker](https:\/\/store.newyorker.com\/)\n- [Buy Covers and Cartoons](https:\/\/condenaststore.com\/art\/new+yorker+covers)\n- [Condé Nast Store](https:\/\/condenaststore.com\/conde-nast-brand\/thenewyorker)\n- [Digital Access](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/about\/digital-access)\n- [Subscribe](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/subscribe)\n- [Newsletters](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/newsletter)\n- [Jigsaw Puzzle](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/jigsaw)\n- [RSS](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/about\/feeds)\n- [Site Map](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/sitemap)\n\n- [About](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/about\/us)\n- [Careers](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/about\/careers)\n- [Contact](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/about\/contact)\n- [F.A.Q.](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/about\/faq)\n- [Media Kit](https:\/\/www.condenast.com\/advertising)\n- [Press](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/about\/press)\n- [Accessibility Help](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/about\/accessibility-help)\n- [User Agreement](https:\/\/www.condenast.com\/user-agreement\/)\n- [Privacy Policy](http:\/\/www.condenast.com\/privacy-policy#privacypolicy)\n- [Your California Privacy Rights](http:\/\/www.condenast.com\/privacy-policy#privacypolicy-california)\n\n© 2026 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. *The New Yorker* may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. [Ad Choices](http:\/\/www.aboutads.info\/)","attrs_readable_markdown":"![Image may contain Comics Book and Manga](https:\/\/media.newyorker.com\/photos\/5a21d8bde9768145f837be92\/master\/w_2560%2Cc_limit\/171211_r31128illuweb.jpg)\n\nIllustration by Tom Bachtell\n\nLast December, [*Variety*](http:\/\/variety.com\/2016\/tv\/news\/donald-trump-mark-burnett-celebrity-apprentice-executive-producer-1201937420\/) and other news outlets reported that Donald Trump planned to serve as an executive producer for “The Celebrity Apprentice” while he was President. Kellyanne Conway, appearing on CNN, [defended the President-elect’s prerogatives](https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2016\/12\/09\/politics\/conway-defends-trump-apprentice\/index.html), but the next day Trump tweeted that the story was “fake news.” Since then, he has tweeted about fake news more than a hundred and fifty times; on a single day in September, he did so eight times, in apparent frustration over coverage of his Administration’s response to Hurricane Maria’s devastation of Puerto Rico. And, of course, Trump regularly invokes “the fake-news Russian-collusion story,” as he named it last summer. He has attacked coverage of the Russia investigation more than a dozen times on Twitter alone.\n\n“One of the greatest of all terms I’ve come up with is ‘fake,’ ” Trump [said](http:\/\/thehill.com\/homenews\/administration\/354445-trump-one-of-the-greatest-terms-ive-come-up-with-is-fake) on Mike Huckabee’s talk show, in October. (In fact, the phrase “fake news” has been around for more than a century.) The President’s strategy has been successful, however, in at least one respect: he has appropriated a term that had often been used to describe the propaganda and the lies masquerading as news, emanating from Russia and elsewhere, which proliferated on Facebook, YouTube, and other social-media platforms during the 2016 election campaign. These manufactured stories—“*POPE FRANCIS SHOCKS WORLD*, *ENDORSES DONALD TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT*,” among them—poisoned the news ecosystem and may have contributed to Trump’s victory.\n\nJudging from the President’s tweets, his definition of “fake news” is credible reporting that he doesn’t like. But he complicates the matter by issuing demonstrably false statements of his own, which, inevitably, make news. Trump has brought to the White House bully pulpit a disorienting habit of telling lies, big and small, without evident shame. Since 2015, Politifact has counted three hundred and twenty-nine public statements by Trump that it judges to be mostly or entirely false. (In comparison, its count of such misstatements by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is thirteen.)\n\nThe President also publicizes calumnies that vilify minorities. Last Wednesday morning, he outdid himself by retweeting unverified, incendiary anti-Muslim videos posted by Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of Britain First, a far-right group. Through a spokesman, Prime Minister Theresa May responded that Trump was “wrong” to promote the agenda of a group that spreads “[hateful narratives which peddle lies](http:\/\/variety.com\/2017\/politics\/news\/trump-anti-muslim-videos-theresa-may-1202625844\/).” The following day, members of Parliament denounced the President, using such epithets as “fascist” and “stupid.” It was a scene without precedent in the century-old military alliance between the United States and Britain.\n\nTrump’s tactics echo those of previous nativist-populist politicians, but his tweets also draw on the contemporary idioms of the alt-right. This is a loose movement, as the researchers Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis have written, best understood as “an amalgam of conspiracy theorists, techno-libertarians, white nationalists, Men’s Rights advocates, trolls, anti-feminists, anti-immigration activists, and bored young people” who express “a self-referential culture in which anti-Semitism, occult ties, and Nazi imagery can be explained either as entirely sincere or completely tongue-in-cheek.” Trump is no alt-right digital-news geek, yet his Twitter feed is similarly ambiguous. He seems to provoke his opponents for the pleasure of offending them, but when he is called to account he often claims that he was just joking. Sometimes he promotes conspiracy theories to insult personal nemeses, as he did last week when he tweeted [baseless speculation](https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/arts-and-entertainment\/wp\/2017\/11\/29\/trump-suggested-the-2001-death-of-a-joe-scarborough-aide-is-an-unsolved-mystery-it-isnt\/?utm_term=.8400c31f690f) about the MSNBC host Joe Scarborough’s connection to the “unsolved mystery” of an intern’s death.\n\nThe President’s tweets slamming CNN, the *Times*, NBC News, and other media organizations can be comical and weird, but they do serious harm. Last week, [a Libyan broadcaster cited one of Trump’s tweets about CNN](https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2017\/nov\/28\/libya-slave-trade-cnn-report-trump-fake-news) in an attempt to discredit a report by the network on the persistence of slavery in that country. And, when the leader of a nation previously devoted to the promulgation of press freedom worldwide seeks so colorfully to delegitimize journalism, he inevitably gives cover to foreign despots who threaten reporters in order to protect their own power.\n\nAt home, the Trump effect is more subtle, but corrosive. The First Amendment does not appear to be in existential danger; on the Supreme Court, Justices appointed by both Republican and Democratic Presidents endorse expansive ideas about free speech, even as they debate interpretations. Yet many of the rights that working journalists enjoy stem from state laws and from the case-by-case decisions of local judges. The climate that Trump has helped create may undermine some of these protections—for example, by prompting state legislatures to overturn shield laws that encode the rights of reporters to protect confidential sources.\n\nTrump’s alignment with right-wing publishers, such as Infowars and Breitbart, some of which see Fox News as the old-school communications arm of an obsolete Republican establishment, reflects a broader fragmentation of the media. Amid the cacophony of the digital era, publishers and advertisers prize readers who are deeply engaged, not just clicking around sites. News organizations as distinct as the *Times* and Breitbart now think of their audiences as communities in formation, bound by common values. A more openly factional, political journalism need not portend the death of fact-driven, truth-seeking, fair-minded reporting. Yet excellent journalism typically follows a form of the scientific method, prioritizing evidence, transparency, and the replicability of findings; journalism grounded in an ideology can be discredited by the practitioner’s preëmptive assumptions.\n\nFortunately, in attacking the media Trump has in many ways strengthened it. This year, the *Times*, the Washington *Post*, and many other independent, professional enterprises have reminded the country why the Founders enshrined a free press as a defense against abusive power. Among other achievements, the media’s coverage of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation has made transparent the seriousness of its findings so far, and constrained the President’s transparent desire to interfere.\n\nLast Friday, Mueller dropped his latest bombshell, [a plea agreement with Michael Flynn](https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/news\/daily-comment\/what-michael-flynns-plea-means-to-robert-muellerand-to-donald-trump), the former national-security adviser, who admitted that, in January, he lied to the F.B.I. about his contacts with Sergey Kislyak, then Russia’s Ambassador to the United States. The court papers filed with Flynn’s plea lay out a story of how senior members of the Trump transition team asked Flynn to communicate with Russian officials on matters of U.S. foreign policy. The papers also contain a reference to a discussion that Flynn had with “a very senior member” of the transition team, a characterization that suggests that the list of names of who that may be is a short one. The chances that history will remember Mueller’s investigation of Trump and his closest advisers as fake news grow slimmer by the day. ♦","meta_canonical":null}

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URL	https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/11/donald-trumps-fake-news-tactics
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Meta Title	Donald Trump’s “Fake News” Tactics \| The New Yorker
Meta Description	In attacking the media, the President has in many ways strengthened it.
Meta Canonical	null
Boilerpipe Text	Illustration by Tom Bachtell Last December, Variety and other news outlets reported that Donald Trump planned to serve as an executive producer for “The Celebrity Apprentice” while he was President. Kellyanne Conway, appearing on CNN, defended the President-elect’s prerogatives , but the next day Trump tweeted that the story was “fake news.” Since then, he has tweeted about fake news more than a hundred and fifty times; on a single day in September, he did so eight times, in apparent frustration over coverage of his Administration’s response to Hurricane Maria’s devastation of Puerto Rico. And, of course, Trump regularly invokes “the fake-news Russian-collusion story,” as he named it last summer. He has attacked coverage of the Russia investigation more than a dozen times on Twitter alone. “One of the greatest of all terms I’ve come up with is ‘fake,’ ” Trump said on Mike Huckabee’s talk show, in October. (In fact, the phrase “fake news” has been around for more than a century.) The President’s strategy has been successful, however, in at least one respect: he has appropriated a term that had often been used to describe the propaganda and the lies masquerading as news, emanating from Russia and elsewhere, which proliferated on Facebook, YouTube, and other social-media platforms during the 2016 election campaign. These manufactured stories—“ POPE FRANCIS SHOCKS WORLD , ENDORSES DONALD TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT ,” among them—poisoned the news ecosystem and may have contributed to Trump’s victory. Judging from the President’s tweets, his definition of “fake news” is credible reporting that he doesn’t like. But he complicates the matter by issuing demonstrably false statements of his own, which, inevitably, make news. Trump has brought to the White House bully pulpit a disorienting habit of telling lies, big and small, without evident shame. Since 2015, Politifact has counted three hundred and twenty-nine public statements by Trump that it judges to be mostly or entirely false. (In comparison, its count of such misstatements by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is thirteen.) The President also publicizes calumnies that vilify minorities. Last Wednesday morning, he outdid himself by retweeting unverified, incendiary anti-Muslim videos posted by Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of Britain First, a far-right group. Through a spokesman, Prime Minister Theresa May responded that Trump was “wrong” to promote the agenda of a group that spreads “ hateful narratives which peddle lies .” The following day, members of Parliament denounced the President, using such epithets as “fascist” and “stupid.” It was a scene without precedent in the century-old military alliance between the United States and Britain. Trump’s tactics echo those of previous nativist-populist politicians, but his tweets also draw on the contemporary idioms of the alt-right. This is a loose movement, as the researchers Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis have written, best understood as “an amalgam of conspiracy theorists, techno-libertarians, white nationalists, Men’s Rights advocates, trolls, anti-feminists, anti-immigration activists, and bored young people” who express “a self-referential culture in which anti-Semitism, occult ties, and Nazi imagery can be explained either as entirely sincere or completely tongue-in-cheek.” Trump is no alt-right digital-news geek, yet his Twitter feed is similarly ambiguous. He seems to provoke his opponents for the pleasure of offending them, but when he is called to account he often claims that he was just joking. Sometimes he promotes conspiracy theories to insult personal nemeses, as he did last week when he tweeted baseless speculation about the MSNBC host Joe Scarborough’s connection to the “unsolved mystery” of an intern’s death. The President’s tweets slamming CNN, the Times , NBC News, and other media organizations can be comical and weird, but they do serious harm. Last week, a Libyan broadcaster cited one of Trump’s tweets about CNN in an attempt to discredit a report by the network on the persistence of slavery in that country. And, when the leader of a nation previously devoted to the promulgation of press freedom worldwide seeks so colorfully to delegitimize journalism, he inevitably gives cover to foreign despots who threaten reporters in order to protect their own power. At home, the Trump effect is more subtle, but corrosive. The First Amendment does not appear to be in existential danger; on the Supreme Court, Justices appointed by both Republican and Democratic Presidents endorse expansive ideas about free speech, even as they debate interpretations. Yet many of the rights that working journalists enjoy stem from state laws and from the case-by-case decisions of local judges. The climate that Trump has helped create may undermine some of these protections—for example, by prompting state legislatures to overturn shield laws that encode the rights of reporters to protect confidential sources. Trump’s alignment with right-wing publishers, such as Infowars and Breitbart, some of which see Fox News as the old-school communications arm of an obsolete Republican establishment, reflects a broader fragmentation of the media. Amid the cacophony of the digital era, publishers and advertisers prize readers who are deeply engaged, not just clicking around sites. News organizations as distinct as the Times and Breitbart now think of their audiences as communities in formation, bound by common values. A more openly factional, political journalism need not portend the death of fact-driven, truth-seeking, fair-minded reporting. Yet excellent journalism typically follows a form of the scientific method, prioritizing evidence, transparency, and the replicability of findings; journalism grounded in an ideology can be discredited by the practitioner’s preëmptive assumptions. Fortunately, in attacking the media Trump has in many ways strengthened it. This year, the Times , the Washington Post , and many other independent, professional enterprises have reminded the country why the Founders enshrined a free press as a defense against abusive power. Among other achievements, the media’s coverage of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation has made transparent the seriousness of its findings so far, and constrained the President’s transparent desire to interfere. Last Friday, Mueller dropped his latest bombshell, a plea agreement with Michael Flynn , the former national-security adviser, who admitted that, in January, he lied to the F.B.I. about his contacts with Sergey Kislyak, then Russia’s Ambassador to the United States. The court papers filed with Flynn’s plea lay out a story of how senior members of the Trump transition team asked Flynn to communicate with Russian officials on matters of U.S. foreign policy. The papers also contain a reference to a discussion that Flynn had with “a very senior member” of the transition team, a characterization that suggests that the list of names of who that may be is a short one. The chances that history will remember Mueller’s investigation of Trump and his closest advisers as fake news grow slimmer by the day. ♦
Markdown	[Skip to main content](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/11/donald-trumps-fake-news-tactics#main-content) [![The New Yorker](https://www.newyorker.com/verso/static/thenewyorker-us/assets/logo.svg)](https://www.newyorker.com/) - [Newsletter](https://www.newyorker.com/newsletters?sourceCode=navbar) Search - [The Latest](https://www.newyorker.com/latest) - [News](https://www.newyorker.com/news) - [Books & Culture](https://www.newyorker.com/culture) - [Fiction & Poetry](https://www.newyorker.com/fiction-and-poetry) - [Humor & Cartoons](https://www.newyorker.com/humor) - [Magazine](https://www.newyorker.com/archive) - [Puzzles & Games](https://www.newyorker.com/crossword-puzzles-and-games) - [Video](https://www.newyorker.com/video) - [Podcasts](https://www.newyorker.com/podcasts) - [Goings On](https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on) - [Shop](https://store.newyorker.com/) Open Navigation Menu [![The New Yorker](https://www.newyorker.com/verso/static/thenewyorker-us/assets/logo-header.svg)](https://www.newyorker.com/) [Comment](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/comment) # Donald Trump’s “Fake News” Tactics In attacking the media, the President has in many ways strengthened it. ![](https://media.newyorker.com/photos/59097b79c14b3c606c10945e/1:1/w_270%2Cc_limit/coll-steve.png) By [Steve Coll](https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/steve-coll) December 3, 2017 Save this story Save this story ![Image may contain Comics Book and Manga](https://media.newyorker.com/photos/5a21d8bde9768145f837be92/master/w_2560%2Cc_limit/171211_r31128illuweb.jpg) Illustration by Tom Bachtell Last December, [Variety](http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/donald-trump-mark-burnett-celebrity-apprentice-executive-producer-1201937420/) and other news outlets reported that Donald Trump planned to serve as an executive producer for “The Celebrity Apprentice” while he was President. Kellyanne Conway, appearing on CNN, [defended the President-elect’s prerogatives](https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/09/politics/conway-defends-trump-apprentice/index.html), but the next day Trump tweeted that the story was “fake news.” Since then, he has tweeted about fake news more than a hundred and fifty times; on a single day in September, he did so eight times, in apparent frustration over coverage of his Administration’s response to Hurricane Maria’s devastation of Puerto Rico. And, of course, Trump regularly invokes “the fake-news Russian-collusion story,” as he named it last summer. He has attacked coverage of the Russia investigation more than a dozen times on Twitter alone. “One of the greatest of all terms I’ve come up with is ‘fake,’ ” Trump [said](http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/354445-trump-one-of-the-greatest-terms-ive-come-up-with-is-fake) on Mike Huckabee’s talk show, in October. (In fact, the phrase “fake news” has been around for more than a century.) The President’s strategy has been successful, however, in at least one respect: he has appropriated a term that had often been used to describe the propaganda and the lies masquerading as news, emanating from Russia and elsewhere, which proliferated on Facebook, YouTube, and other social-media platforms during the 2016 election campaign. These manufactured stories—“POPE FRANCIS SHOCKS WORLD, ENDORSES DONALD TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT,” among them—poisoned the news ecosystem and may have contributed to Trump’s victory. Judging from the President’s tweets, his definition of “fake news” is credible reporting that he doesn’t like. But he complicates the matter by issuing demonstrably false statements of his own, which, inevitably, make news. Trump has brought to the White House bully pulpit a disorienting habit of telling lies, big and small, without evident shame. Since 2015, Politifact has counted three hundred and twenty-nine public statements by Trump that it judges to be mostly or entirely false. (In comparison, its count of such misstatements by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is thirteen.) The President also publicizes calumnies that vilify minorities. Last Wednesday morning, he outdid himself by retweeting unverified, incendiary anti-Muslim videos posted by Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of Britain First, a far-right group. Through a spokesman, Prime Minister Theresa May responded that Trump was “wrong” to promote the agenda of a group that spreads “[hateful narratives which peddle lies](http://variety.com/2017/politics/news/trump-anti-muslim-videos-theresa-may-1202625844/).” The following day, members of Parliament denounced the President, using such epithets as “fascist” and “stupid.” It was a scene without precedent in the century-old military alliance between the United States and Britain. Trump’s tactics echo those of previous nativist-populist politicians, but his tweets also draw on the contemporary idioms of the alt-right. This is a loose movement, as the researchers Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis have written, best understood as “an amalgam of conspiracy theorists, techno-libertarians, white nationalists, Men’s Rights advocates, trolls, anti-feminists, anti-immigration activists, and bored young people” who express “a self-referential culture in which anti-Semitism, occult ties, and Nazi imagery can be explained either as entirely sincere or completely tongue-in-cheek.” Trump is no alt-right digital-news geek, yet his Twitter feed is similarly ambiguous. He seems to provoke his opponents for the pleasure of offending them, but when he is called to account he often claims that he was just joking. Sometimes he promotes conspiracy theories to insult personal nemeses, as he did last week when he tweeted [baseless speculation](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2017/11/29/trump-suggested-the-2001-death-of-a-joe-scarborough-aide-is-an-unsolved-mystery-it-isnt/?utm_term=.8400c31f690f) about the MSNBC host Joe Scarborough’s connection to the “unsolved mystery” of an intern’s death. The President’s tweets slamming CNN, the Times, NBC News, and other media organizations can be comical and weird, but they do serious harm. Last week, [a Libyan broadcaster cited one of Trump’s tweets about CNN](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/28/libya-slave-trade-cnn-report-trump-fake-news) in an attempt to discredit a report by the network on the persistence of slavery in that country. And, when the leader of a nation previously devoted to the promulgation of press freedom worldwide seeks so colorfully to delegitimize journalism, he inevitably gives cover to foreign despots who threaten reporters in order to protect their own power. At home, the Trump effect is more subtle, but corrosive. The First Amendment does not appear to be in existential danger; on the Supreme Court, Justices appointed by both Republican and Democratic Presidents endorse expansive ideas about free speech, even as they debate interpretations. Yet many of the rights that working journalists enjoy stem from state laws and from the case-by-case decisions of local judges. The climate that Trump has helped create may undermine some of these protections—for example, by prompting state legislatures to overturn shield laws that encode the rights of reporters to protect confidential sources. Trump’s alignment with right-wing publishers, such as Infowars and Breitbart, some of which see Fox News as the old-school communications arm of an obsolete Republican establishment, reflects a broader fragmentation of the media. Amid the cacophony of the digital era, publishers and advertisers prize readers who are deeply engaged, not just clicking around sites. News organizations as distinct as the Times and Breitbart now think of their audiences as communities in formation, bound by common values. A more openly factional, political journalism need not portend the death of fact-driven, truth-seeking, fair-minded reporting. Yet excellent journalism typically follows a form of the scientific method, prioritizing evidence, transparency, and the replicability of findings; journalism grounded in an ideology can be discredited by the practitioner’s preëmptive assumptions. Fortunately, in attacking the media Trump has in many ways strengthened it. This year, the Times, the Washington Post, and many other independent, professional enterprises have reminded the country why the Founders enshrined a free press as a defense against abusive power. Among other achievements, the media’s coverage of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation has made transparent the seriousness of its findings so far, and constrained the President’s transparent desire to interfere. Last Friday, Mueller dropped his latest bombshell, [a plea agreement with Michael Flynn](https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/what-michael-flynns-plea-means-to-robert-muellerand-to-donald-trump), the former national-security adviser, who admitted that, in January, he lied to the F.B.I. about his contacts with Sergey Kislyak, then Russia’s Ambassador to the United States. The court papers filed with Flynn’s plea lay out a story of how senior members of the Trump transition team asked Flynn to communicate with Russian officials on matters of U.S. foreign policy. The papers also contain a reference to a discussion that Flynn had with “a very senior member” of the transition team, a characterization that suggests that the list of names of who that may be is a short one. The chances that history will remember Mueller’s investigation of Trump and his closest advisers as fake news grow slimmer by the day. ♦ Published in the print edition of the [December 11, 2017](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/11), issue, with the headline “Faking It.” [![](https://media.newyorker.com/photos/59097b79c14b3c606c10945e/1:1/w_270%2Cc_limit/coll-steve.png)](https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/steve-coll) [Steve Coll](https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/steve-coll), a staff writer, is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. More:[Donald Trump](https://www.newyorker.com/tag/donald-trump)[Fake News](https://www.newyorker.com/tag/fake-news)[Muslims](https://www.newyorker.com/tag/muslims)[Twitter](https://www.newyorker.com/tag/twitter)[Britain First](https://www.newyorker.com/tag/britain-first)[Media](https://www.newyorker.com/tag/media)[Journalism](https://www.newyorker.com/tag/journalism)[Robert Mueller](https://www.newyorker.com/tag/robert-mueller) Read More [![Michael Flynn, General Chaos](https://media.newyorker.com/photos/59097e3f1c7a8e33fb390734/4:3/w_640%2Cc_limit/170227_r29465_rd2.jpg)](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/michael-flynn-general-chaos) Letter from Washington [Michael Flynn, General Chaos](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/michael-flynn-general-chaos) [![Michael Flynn, General Chaos](https://media.newyorker.com/photos/59097e3f1c7a8e33fb390734/4:3/w_640%2Cc_limit/170227_r29465_rd2.jpg)](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/michael-flynn-general-chaos) What the removal of Flynn as the national-security adviser reveals about Donald Trump’s White House. 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Readable Markdown	![Image may contain Comics Book and Manga](https://media.newyorker.com/photos/5a21d8bde9768145f837be92/master/w_2560%2Cc_limit/171211_r31128illuweb.jpg) Illustration by Tom Bachtell Last December, [Variety](http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/donald-trump-mark-burnett-celebrity-apprentice-executive-producer-1201937420/) and other news outlets reported that Donald Trump planned to serve as an executive producer for “The Celebrity Apprentice” while he was President. Kellyanne Conway, appearing on CNN, [defended the President-elect’s prerogatives](https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/09/politics/conway-defends-trump-apprentice/index.html), but the next day Trump tweeted that the story was “fake news.” Since then, he has tweeted about fake news more than a hundred and fifty times; on a single day in September, he did so eight times, in apparent frustration over coverage of his Administration’s response to Hurricane Maria’s devastation of Puerto Rico. And, of course, Trump regularly invokes “the fake-news Russian-collusion story,” as he named it last summer. He has attacked coverage of the Russia investigation more than a dozen times on Twitter alone. “One of the greatest of all terms I’ve come up with is ‘fake,’ ” Trump [said](http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/354445-trump-one-of-the-greatest-terms-ive-come-up-with-is-fake) on Mike Huckabee’s talk show, in October. (In fact, the phrase “fake news” has been around for more than a century.) The President’s strategy has been successful, however, in at least one respect: he has appropriated a term that had often been used to describe the propaganda and the lies masquerading as news, emanating from Russia and elsewhere, which proliferated on Facebook, YouTube, and other social-media platforms during the 2016 election campaign. These manufactured stories—“POPE FRANCIS SHOCKS WORLD, ENDORSES DONALD TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT,” among them—poisoned the news ecosystem and may have contributed to Trump’s victory. Judging from the President’s tweets, his definition of “fake news” is credible reporting that he doesn’t like. But he complicates the matter by issuing demonstrably false statements of his own, which, inevitably, make news. Trump has brought to the White House bully pulpit a disorienting habit of telling lies, big and small, without evident shame. Since 2015, Politifact has counted three hundred and twenty-nine public statements by Trump that it judges to be mostly or entirely false. (In comparison, its count of such misstatements by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is thirteen.) The President also publicizes calumnies that vilify minorities. Last Wednesday morning, he outdid himself by retweeting unverified, incendiary anti-Muslim videos posted by Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of Britain First, a far-right group. Through a spokesman, Prime Minister Theresa May responded that Trump was “wrong” to promote the agenda of a group that spreads “[hateful narratives which peddle lies](http://variety.com/2017/politics/news/trump-anti-muslim-videos-theresa-may-1202625844/).” The following day, members of Parliament denounced the President, using such epithets as “fascist” and “stupid.” It was a scene without precedent in the century-old military alliance between the United States and Britain. Trump’s tactics echo those of previous nativist-populist politicians, but his tweets also draw on the contemporary idioms of the alt-right. This is a loose movement, as the researchers Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis have written, best understood as “an amalgam of conspiracy theorists, techno-libertarians, white nationalists, Men’s Rights advocates, trolls, anti-feminists, anti-immigration activists, and bored young people” who express “a self-referential culture in which anti-Semitism, occult ties, and Nazi imagery can be explained either as entirely sincere or completely tongue-in-cheek.” Trump is no alt-right digital-news geek, yet his Twitter feed is similarly ambiguous. He seems to provoke his opponents for the pleasure of offending them, but when he is called to account he often claims that he was just joking. Sometimes he promotes conspiracy theories to insult personal nemeses, as he did last week when he tweeted [baseless speculation](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2017/11/29/trump-suggested-the-2001-death-of-a-joe-scarborough-aide-is-an-unsolved-mystery-it-isnt/?utm_term=.8400c31f690f) about the MSNBC host Joe Scarborough’s connection to the “unsolved mystery” of an intern’s death. The President’s tweets slamming CNN, the Times, NBC News, and other media organizations can be comical and weird, but they do serious harm. Last week, [a Libyan broadcaster cited one of Trump’s tweets about CNN](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/28/libya-slave-trade-cnn-report-trump-fake-news) in an attempt to discredit a report by the network on the persistence of slavery in that country. And, when the leader of a nation previously devoted to the promulgation of press freedom worldwide seeks so colorfully to delegitimize journalism, he inevitably gives cover to foreign despots who threaten reporters in order to protect their own power. At home, the Trump effect is more subtle, but corrosive. The First Amendment does not appear to be in existential danger; on the Supreme Court, Justices appointed by both Republican and Democratic Presidents endorse expansive ideas about free speech, even as they debate interpretations. Yet many of the rights that working journalists enjoy stem from state laws and from the case-by-case decisions of local judges. The climate that Trump has helped create may undermine some of these protections—for example, by prompting state legislatures to overturn shield laws that encode the rights of reporters to protect confidential sources. Trump’s alignment with right-wing publishers, such as Infowars and Breitbart, some of which see Fox News as the old-school communications arm of an obsolete Republican establishment, reflects a broader fragmentation of the media. Amid the cacophony of the digital era, publishers and advertisers prize readers who are deeply engaged, not just clicking around sites. News organizations as distinct as the Times and Breitbart now think of their audiences as communities in formation, bound by common values. A more openly factional, political journalism need not portend the death of fact-driven, truth-seeking, fair-minded reporting. Yet excellent journalism typically follows a form of the scientific method, prioritizing evidence, transparency, and the replicability of findings; journalism grounded in an ideology can be discredited by the practitioner’s preëmptive assumptions. Fortunately, in attacking the media Trump has in many ways strengthened it. This year, the Times, the Washington Post, and many other independent, professional enterprises have reminded the country why the Founders enshrined a free press as a defense against abusive power. Among other achievements, the media’s coverage of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation has made transparent the seriousness of its findings so far, and constrained the President’s transparent desire to interfere. Last Friday, Mueller dropped his latest bombshell, [a plea agreement with Michael Flynn](https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/what-michael-flynns-plea-means-to-robert-muellerand-to-donald-trump), the former national-security adviser, who admitted that, in January, he lied to the F.B.I. about his contacts with Sergey Kislyak, then Russia’s Ambassador to the United States. The court papers filed with Flynn’s plea lay out a story of how senior members of the Trump transition team asked Flynn to communicate with Russian officials on matters of U.S. foreign policy. The papers also contain a reference to a discussion that Flynn had with “a very senior member” of the transition team, a characterization that suggests that the list of names of who that may be is a short one. The chances that history will remember Mueller’s investigation of Trump and his closest advisers as fake news grow slimmer by the day. ♦
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