The problem with Liar’s Poker is once you play you cannot
stop the game.
For many years Republicans have taken advantage of a
phenomenon well known to social scientists. Many Americans, conservatives in
particular, tend to cling more tightly to their beliefs when the media exposes those beliefs as
false. People who believe that climate change
is a hoax tend to become more wedded to that belief after reading a New York Times article detailing how much of the Arctic icecap melted this
January and the environmental consequences of that phenomenon. Given this cognition process, bad publicity is good publicity. The more evidence the Times and related outlets provide that, say, Planned Parenthood improves health outcomes in communities, the more conservative voters can be trusted to support cutting off funds to that organization.
The problem conservatives presently face is they need media allies in their effort to discredit Donald Trump. This requires people primed for over a generation to disbelieve what the New
York Times says about science on page 3, column d to be primed in the next week to believe what the Times
says about Trump on page 5, column b. Media reports on Trump University must be credible in a way that media reports on Marco Rubio's personal finances are not. Alas, life does not work that way. Republicans themselves established the drug that explains Trump's electoral immunity to scrutiny. That Fox News
seems eager to join the Times in discrediting Trump is besides the point. The Republican argument has always been that what
the ordinary citizen feels to be right is right, regardless of what anyone in
the mass media says. Fox News, Republicans are learning the hard way, is no more believable than the New York Times when that outlet contradicts what Trump supporters want to believe.