https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/26/medias-unpunished-lies-hurt-the-nation-far-worse-than-trumps-indefensible-tweets/
The grim joke of the 20th century was that one death is a tragedy, 1 million is a statistic. Well, in the 21st century age of information warfare, one man’s libel is an outrage. When thousands do it, we call that ‘the news.’
Donald Trump’s tweets suggesting Joe Scarborough somehow murdered a young woman who died of natural causes nearly 20 years ago are reprehensible. This is in no way because these tweets defame Scarborough. It’s pretty hard to feel bad for a guy whose media presence enabled Trump’s political rise to the point he openly flirted with running as his vice president before making a comic heel turn against Trump. (In fact, back when Scarborough was playing footsie with Trump, left-wing blogs were trafficking in this repugnant conspiracy.) Trump’s tweets are awful because of how they have thrust the deceased girl’s memory and her family into the limelight.
This letter written by the dead woman’s husband asking Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to take down the offending Trump tweets is heart-wrenching. It’s exactly the kind of behavior I feared Trump was capable of in 2016 and loomed large in my mind when I made the decision not to vote for him.
So there’s your ritual malediction against Trump, necessary though it may be. Please don’t pretend to be outraged when now it must be explained, once more with feeling, why a torrent of new condemnations of Trump’s indefensible behavior will have no effect on his supporters or the political dynamic heading into November and beyond. And don’t confuse that with approval of Trump’s rhetoric or tweets.