Dan Pfeiffer - Battling the Big Lie: How Fox, Facebook, and the MAGA Media Are Destroying America

January 6, 2021, was one of the darkest days in American history. On that cold, cloudy day, more than two thousand Americans, many of them armed, stormed the US Capitol to stop the certification of the election that made Joe Biden president and Donald Trump a giant loser.

After smashing windows and breaking down doors, the mob ransacked offices, desecrated property, hunted members of Congress, and chanted Hang Mike Pence! A murderous rage pulsated through the crowd. Though many carried Blue Lives Matter flags to demonstrate their support for law enforcement, the crowd turned on anyone who stood in the way of their insurrection. Two Capitol Police officers died. Others were beaten down to the pavement with lead pipes, rocks, and ironically, even the pole from an American flag. Some rioters slinked through the halls with zip ties and Tasers, hunting for members of Congress to take hostage and potentially execute. And in case the parallels to a Jim Crow lynch mob were too subtle, a gallows was erected on Capitol grounds.

The viral photo of a man parading throughout the Capitol Building waving a Confederate flag perfectly captured the violence and sedition of that day. More than 150 years after the conclusion of the Civil War, insurrectionists had breached the Capitol and flown the flag of treason. The rioters came within minutes of entering the House Chamber while members were still on the floor. Vice President Pence was evacuated with only moments to spare. An opposing force took the US Capitol for the first time since the War of 1812. After it was all over, the fragility of the American ideal was presented in glaring relief.

The mob included avowed white supremacists, antigovernment paramilitaries, QAnon adherents, and MAGA fanatics in full regalia. There were elected officials, right-wing personalities, and a Texas socialite who had chartered a private plane to join the insurrection. The whole thing was funded in part by the heiress to a grocery store fortune. Participants came from all walks of life and every corner of the country. And despite their unique experiences, they had one thing in common: They had all fallen for the Big Lie; they all believed, without a single doubt, that the election had been stolen from Donald Trump.

There were various iterations of this lie. Some believed Democratic officials in big cities had stuffed ballot boxes; others believed thousands of dead people had voted with help from family members. Conspiracy theories abounded: Trump votes were purged. Voting machines flipped thousands of ballots to Biden. Some swore that China, Venezuela, and a global cabal of Communists and celebrities had played a role in stealing the election from Trump. Each theory was more absurd than the last.

The stolen election argument was debunked over and over. There was zero evidence to support the allegations. Every court rejected the claimsincluding the courts of judges appointed by President Trump himself. Republican election officials dismissed the claims and testified to the integrity of the election.

None of it mattered. Nothing could shake Trump supporters faith in these unfounded claims. The militant agitators at the Capitol were immune to the truth, facts, opposing viewpoints, or evidence. They were willing to break the law, destroy property, and commit murder for a lieand one so easily disproven.

After the rioters left and the property damage was repaired, the people who promoted the Big Lie denounced the violence without reflecting on the role they had played in fomenting it. These same people began recommending a peaceful transfer of power. They finally started referring to Joe Biden as President-elect. Most Republicans attended Bidens inauguration. Even Sen. Ted Cruz, a leader of the insurrection, showed up to rinse the blood off his hands.

In the immediate aftermath of the insurrection, Republicans bemoaned the violence and denounced the perpetrators. Some even had the temerity to mention Trumps name.

But this period of awareness was fleeting.

Before long, history was rewritten. Republicans, on Capitol Hill and out in the country, convinced themselves that the whole thing was not a violent extremist attack on democracy, and the question of who was at fault became a subject for debate. Some in the press, with their own deranged balance, covered this lack of accountability as if the Capitol riot were a he-said-she-said argument instead of a clear and indisputable event born out of the words and tweets of a president who spread lies, incited rioters, and then refused to send help as his own vice president feared for his life from a mob of his voters.

Few Republican elected officials were willing to take on the lies or the biggest liars. When Trump was impeached for his role in inciting the violence, only 10 House Republicans voted to hold him accountable. Less than 10 percent of the Republicans in Congress were willing to publicly sanction President Trump for dispatching his supporters to murder them.

Within months, the majority of people who had voted for Trump believed the election was stolen. Seventy percent of Republicans told pollsters that Biden was an illegitimate president. The Big Lie had become the uniting principle of the GOP, a litmus test, the price of admission to the Republican Party.

Everyone was shocked by what happened at the Capitol and by how quickly and easily it was swept away in a cloud of lies and disinformation. But they should have expected this.

I have spent twenty years in politics, working on campaigns, on Capitol Hill, and in the White House. Throughout that time, I have had a front-row seat to Republicans efforts to bend the truth to their will. Ive watched good people smeared, good policy stymied, and urgent problems go unaddressed. Ive seen America elect its worst president and then almost reelect that person despite a mountain of evidence as to why that would be an epic disaster.

In my various positions, my central task has been to get the message out to the public, to present arguments in the most compelling fashion. That task is now impossible. Politics is no longer a debate about solutions to mutual problems. History, science, and math are no longer seen as immutable truths. They are subject to debate, with no right or wrong answerlike whether LeBron James is better than Michael Jordan. People like to say that Democrats and Republicans now live in two separate realities, but that is incorrect. Democrats live in the real world, and Republicans live in a deeply delusional alternative ecosystem.