After the interview, Matthew Yglesias wrote an item in Vox with the headline “Donald Trump gave an interview this morning that should be shocking — but we’re numb.” Sample:

A few observations about all this:

• In a normal election cycle, a candidate making an offhand racist remark about a sitting US senator would be a big news story.
• In a normal election cycle, a candidate making an offhanded lie about the state of his personal finances would be a big news story.
• To be totally honest, even in a normal election cycle a candidate exhibiting total confusion about the mechanics and merits of monetary policy probably wouldn’t be that big of a news story but it would at least get some attention.

***

It’s 56 days and a few hours until the election; one of the candidates is still stonewalling about his tax returns; both of them, who will be 69 (HRC) and 70 (Trump) on election day should be offering full health information, but at least what Hillary Clinton has offered so far is not a self-evident joke; and the race tightens up. Just noting for now an interview that in any other year for any other candidate would itself be the stuff of campaign-altering news. I am trying not to remain numb.

2. Washington Post, “The Hillary Clinton email story is out of control.” An editorial-page counterpart to Bernie Sanders’s “We’re sick of hearing about your damned emails.” It concludes:

Imagine how history would judge today’s Americans if, looking back at this election, the record showed that voters empowered a dangerous man because of . . . a minor email scandal. There is no equivalence between Ms. Clinton’s wrongs and Mr. Trump’s manifest unfitness for office.

Imagine indeed.

***

3. New York Times, “A debate disaster waiting to happen.” This is the lead editorial, about Matt Lauer’s unfortunate handling of the “Commander-in-Chief Forum.” Sample:

If the moderators of the coming debates do not figure out a better way to get the candidates to speak accurately about their records and policies — especially Mr. Trump, who seems to feel he can skate by unchallenged with his own version of reality while Mrs. Clinton is grilled and entangled in the fine points of domestic and foreign policy — then they will have done the country a grave disservice.

Whether or not one agrees with her positions, Mrs. Clinton, formerly secretary of state and once a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, showed a firm understanding of the complex issues facing the country. Mr. Trump reveled in his ignorance about global affairs and his belief that leading the world’s most powerful nation is no harder than running his business empire, which has included at least four bankruptcies.

“Grave disservice.” “Reveled in his ignorance.” This is an editorial rather than a news item, but it marks a different tone from most campaign-year coverage of debates.

***

4. WaPo, “Gary Johnson’s Aleppo gaffe was bad. But Trump’s ignorance is worse.” The “gaffe” is of course Gov. Johnson’s “What is Aleppo?” question yesterday on the Morning Joe program. The significant word in this headline is “worse,” which sets up a distinction between, rather than the familiar “They’re all shading the truth!” false-equivalence grouping of, the errors and offenses of the candidates:

It’s refreshing, at least, to hear a national candidate [Johnson] acknowledge error and vow to do better.

Contrast that with Donald Trump, who in a televised national security forum Wednesday offered a staggering array of ignorant and mendacious assertions—and acknowledged no regrets about any of them.

***

One by one, sentiments like some of these have appeared in some outlets over the the weeks. Perhaps it’s a coincidence that they all appear at the same time. But perhaps it indicates how the unprecedented nature of the campaign has been provoking and requiring a different approach by the press. One way or another, it is worth noting with 59 days to go.

Mike Lofgren, the longtime Senate staffer and defense expert turned writer (The Party Is Over, The Deep State) expands on an implication of Hayden’s and Morell’s comments. That is, Trump’s comments are not merely indiscreet; they are also almost certainly untrue. Lofgren writes:

Two points:

1. Employees of the intelligence community who give briefings to high-level officials do not, repeat, do not advocate for their pet policies. These people would not be presidential appointees but almost certainly career civil servants (or the foreign or intelligence equivalent of a civil servant) If they were asked, “what do we do about X?” they would demur on the basis of it not being their department. They know they are not there to advocate for policies. This applies doubly for personnel briefing presidential candidates because of the extreme political sensitivity. As for criticizing the policies of their bosses to a human megaphone like Donald Trump, it is inconceivable they are that stupid.

Of course the briefers didn’t actually advocate anything, as Trump first implied, so he fell back on what philosopher Karl Popper would have called a statement devoid of factual content, because it cannot be falsified: the briefers’ body language told him they disagreed with Obama’s policies. Sure, it did …

What he’s managed to do is put those briefers in an extremely embarrassing situation. In a Trump presidency, we could expect a lot more of that: generals and civil servants being nonchalantly thrown under the bus as if they were contractors or tradesmen being stiffed on the bill for their services at Mar a Lago.

2. So what if Putin has an 82 percent approval rating? We can argue about the validity of that figure, but let’s assume it’s true. It is completely irrelevant with respect to which policies are ultimately in the U.S. national interest. I dare say Xi Jin-ping is similarly popular in China, particularly with regard to his aggressive assertion of sovereignty over virtually all of the South China Sea. But that popularity has no bearing on what US policy towards the matter ought to be, particularly when an international tribunal has rejected China’s claim. The point Trump is making is a pretty ominous one when you deconstruct it: authoritarian populist leaders ought to get their way because of their alleged popularity.

***

Here we are, 60 days until the election, with the nominee discussing the classified information he’s heard, and the GOP establishment from Ryan and McConnell on down still saying: He’s fine!  

2. Richmond. The Richmond Times-Dispatch is nearly as reliable and Republican as the DMN. At least since Ronald Reagan’s first run in 1980 it has always endorsed a Republican for president.

Until this past weekend, when it officially endorsed the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson. Its editorial was not as reality-based as the DMN’s, in pretending that Johnson might win the election and ignoring the simple fact that either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be the next president. But as a marker of unusual developments it again deserves note.

Bonus item on Trump-era politics: This morning Gary Johnson made a grievous error when he asked “What’s Aleppo?” on a TV show. This will probably hurt him quite a bit. Errors like this have hurt previous candidates from Sarah Palin to Rick Perry, and now presumably Johnson as well. Consider, then, how Trump racks up similar misstatements practically every day and just keep going.

***

3. D.C. The third item was published in the New York Times but has the D.C. dateline because its author, James K. Glassman, has long lived and worked here. I’ve been friends with Glassman since our time together on the college newspaper decades ago. I’ve known that since at least the Ronald Reagan era he also has been a dependable Republican voter. He was a senior State Department official under George W. Bush and then was founding director of the George W. Bush Institute, at the Bush center within SMU in Dallas.

In his op-ed for the NYT, Glassman extended the logic and real-worldism of the Dallas Morning News editorial by saying that Republicans who find Trump unacceptable should recognize the importance of actually supporting Hillary Clinton:

I have voted for every Republican nominee for president since 1980, but I will not this time. Mr. Trump’s appalling temperament renders him unfit to be president, and his grotesque policy formulations mock the principles of liberty and respect for the individual that have been the foundation of the Republican Party since Abraham Lincoln. …

This is, whether we like it or not, an election between Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton, period. And that means that if you want to stop Mr. Trump, you have no choice but to vote for Mrs. Clinton. There’s no sitting this one out.

Glassman mentions the many Republicans who have said “never Trump” without taking the next step of saying “therefore, Clinton”:

I have some sympathy with this position, but it is a cop-out. If you think Mr. Trump is so lacking in experience and judgment that he shouldn’t have his finger on the nuclear trigger, then you are saying he is not just a bad candidate; you are saying he is a threat to the nation. You have an obligation to defeat him, no matter what you think of Mrs. Clinton.

These developments are noted for the record, with 60 days and some hours until the election, with the polls tightening, and with ever-clearer evidence of the kind of man the GOP believes should become president. Congratulations on their intellectual honesty and civic courage to Republicans like Glassman and those at the DMN.

2. Russia. The exchange between Lauer and Trump about Vladimir Putin seemed even more jaw-dropping when seen on TV than it reads in print. Emphasis added:

LAUER: Let me ask you about some of the things you’ve said about Vladimir Putin. You said, I will tell you, in terms of leadership, he’s getting an A, our president is not doing so well. And when referring to a comment that Putin made about you, I think he called you a brilliant leader, you said it’s always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his country and beyond.

TRUMP: Well, he does have an 82 percent approval rating, according to the different pollsters, who, by the way, some of them are based right here. Look, look…

LAUER: He’s also a guy who annexed Crimea, invaded Ukraine, supports Assad in Syria, supports Iran, is trying to undermine our influence in key regions of the world, and according to our intelligence community, probably is the main suspect for the hacking of the DNC computers…

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Well, nobody knows that for a fact. But do you want me to start naming some of the things that President Obama does at the same time?

LAUER: But do you want to be complimented by that former KGB officer?

TRUMP: Well, I think when he calls me brilliant, I’ll take the compliment, OK? The fact is, look, it’s not going to get him anywhere. I’m a negotiator.

We’re going to take back our country. You look at what’s happening to our country, you look at the depleted military. You look at the fact that we’ve lost our jobs. We’re losing our jobs like we’re a bunch of babies. We’re going to take back our country, Matt. The fact that he calls me brilliant or whatever he calls me is going to have zero impact.

What is unprecedented here: a presidential nominee favorably comparing the autocratic leader of an increasingly aggressive and problematic power to the current commander in chief of the United States. Here’s why I’m acutely aware that this sort of thing just is not done:

Forty years ago right now, when I was working for candidate Jimmy Carter in his run against incumbent President Gerald Ford, I was grinding out one of the day’s 10 speeches, this one about the failures of the Nixon-Ford foreign policy. A newsmagazine photo had recently appeared of Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev sitting chummily together at an informal session at a summit meeting. By this time Nixon was the resigned-in-disgrace former president, whose legacy was dragging down his successor, Ford. Brezhnev was in his final years at the top of the USSR.

As the impetuous young speechwriter, I had thrown in some line about how neither one of them, Nixon or Brezhnev, was that big a fan of real democracy, nor attuned to the real hopes of their people [etc etc]. What I threw in was about one percent as disrespectful as what Trump said tonight about Obama and Putin. But it was immediately cut out, and I was immediately brushed back, by everyone who had a chance, from Carter himself to Jody Powell to anyone else within earshot. Carter said words to the effect of, “We don’t talk about a president that way.” We could say Nixon had betrayed the public, yes. Liken him to, or place him below, a Soviet or Russian leader, no.

Other amazing fact from seeing tonight’s session: It obviously matters to Trump that Putin calls him “brilliant”! This is exactly what one-time CIA head Mike Morell meant when saying that Putin, an experienced intelligence operative, had very skillfully played to Trump’s vanities, and made him (in Morell’s words) “an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.”

On the other hand, good followup by Lauer on this one.

***

3. Intelligence briefings. Remember the concern, when Donald Trump began getting classified briefings, that he would blurt out or misuse information he heard there?

How do his briefers feel after hearing this?

LAUER: Did you learn new things in that briefing?

TRUMP: First of all, I have great respect for the people that gave us the briefings. We — they were terrific people. They were experts on Iraq and Iran and different parts of — and Russia. But, yes, there was one thing that shocked me. And it just seems to me that what they said President Obama and Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, who is another total disaster, did exactly the opposite.

LAUER: Did you learn anything in that briefing—again, not going into specifics—that makes you reconsider some of the things you say you can accomplish, like defeating ISIS quickly?

TRUMP: No, I didn’t learn anything from that standpoint. What I did learn is that our leadership, Barack Obama, did not follow what our experts and our truly — when they call it intelligence, it’s there for a reason — what our experts said to do….

And I was very, very surprised. In almost every instance. And I could tell you. I have pretty good with the body language. I could tell they were not happy. Our leaders did not follow what they were recommending.

Forget the body-language part. If this is true, it’s an outright betrayal of the people who briefed him and the terms of confidentiality he accepted. If it’s not true, it’s just another lie. In either case, it is yet again something we haven’t seen from past nominees.

***

That’s all I can stand to note about this session, with 61 days to go.

2. To illustrate possible disproportionality:  David Farenthold of the Washington Post has been fearless and indefatigable in tracking the story of Trump’s failure to follow through on the vast majority of the charitable “commitments” he claims to have made, and his involvement in outright pay-to-play schemes involving his shady and lawsuit-plagued Trump University.

The most prominent recent example involves the Attorney General of Florida, Pam Bondi. As Farenthold describes it: Bondi was considering an investigation of Trump University; the Trump Foundation donated $25,000 to her campaign; she dropped the investigation. Bondi also spoke this summer at the GOP convention. You can argue about motivations on all sides, but there is no doubt that this sequence of events occurred—or that the IRS has fined Trump for a violation of tax laws in the case. The AP also had a very tough story on the Trump-Bondi case back in June. For the record, both Trump and Bondi deny that this was meant as a payoff or bribe.

This case differs from the “clouds” and “doubts” and “appearance of coziness” in most of the Clinton-scandal episodes, in that—whatever the motives—the transfer of money was followed by the desired result. In the Clinton cases, you’ll see phrases like “donors sought access” (rather than got access) or “while no hard evidence of favoritism exists...” That’s because the “play” part of pay-to-play generally did not occur.

The NYT, which has been all over the Clinton Foundation story, had noticeably failed to mention the Bondi case—until just now, when a story introduces it in the context of a criticism Bill Clinton has made of Trump. See for yourself, with my emphasis added:

Addressing an issue that has dogged the campaign, Mr. Clinton defended the Clinton Foundation. And he criticized Mr. Trump over his own foundation, referring to a Washington Post report that found that his charitable organization paid the Internal Revenue Service a $2,500 penalty this year after improperly giving a political contribution to a campaign group with ties to the attorney general of Florida, Pam Bondi.

Again: I admire, defend, respect, sometimes write for, and am a decades-long print subscriber of the NYT. But I don’t understand why its reporters can say on their own authority that a certain issue has “dogged the campaign” for one candidate, while couching hard legal evidence about the other as part of the charge-and-counter-charge “They all do it!” fray of the campaign. This paragraph is quite a remarkable distillation of what I was talking about in the previous post.

***

3. Over the weekend Trump’s running mate Mike Pence said he would release his tax returns very soon, and that Trump would release his when “the audit is completed.” Two facts about this posture of Trump’s have been known for a long time (as I laid out in #51, back in July).

First, that the IRS itself completely dismisses an audit as any barrier to releasing the returns. Fine with us for you to disclose them! the IRS has said. Second, if Trump stonewalls until the election, he will be the first nominee since Richard Nixon to do so—and Nixon’s own duplicity is much of the reason this has been an ironclad expectation since then.

A third possibility is one Matt Cooper of Newsweek raised last month: that the returns might not even be under audit. All we have to support that belief is Trump’s own word. But we also had his word that the NFL had sent him a letter complaining about scheduled dates for the debates, which the NFL immediately denied; and that the Koch brothers had sought a meeting to offer him support, which they also immediately denied. As Cooper points out, if there’s a real audit, there’d be a letter from the IRS saying so. That would not be a reason to stonewall on the returns, but it would be one step toward substantiating his excuse.

***

4. Bonus reading for the day: Josh Marshall on the Bondi case and differential scandal coverage; Daniel Drezner on the same theme Tom Levenson on the Clinton “scandals” and the heavy reliance on “while there is no evidence of special favors...”; David Roberts from early this summer, on the foreseeability of this kind of coverage; David Graham from earlier today on whether Trump was telling the truth earlier on when he bragged about donating to politicians to win favors, or now when he says there were no strings attached to his donation to Pam Bondi. Sixty-two days and a few hours until election day.

As a soothing break, here was the view from our back porch on Labor Day afternoon, in northwest D.C. three miles from the White House. America is returning to a state of nature, led by its politics.

This might not be clear from the picture, but these things were full-sized—the one standing, and the other one, also antlered, resting in the bamboo. They turned and glared at me as if I should be getting off their lawn rather than vice versa. That will change when we get a new administration.

That is: The argument of the previous 90-odd entries in this series is that Donald Trump is something genuinely new in the long history of major party nominees. He has absolutely no experience in public office. Almost every day he says or does something that by itself would have disqualified previous nominees. He does not have policies so much as emotional stances. What he has done renders irrelevant the normal “Trump says, but critics answer” approach to journalism. Donald Trump says, “Mexico will pay for that wall!” All relevant figures in Mexico say, “Like hell we will.” And Trump says it again the next day.

***

For the most part, the political press has kept its nerve. It has “normalized” Trump much less than I expected. But this past week, as national polls predictably tightened, enough signs of a normalizing approach emerged to deserve mention. Maybe I’m noticing them because I’ve been out of touch and am seeing a week’s news all at once. Here are some examples:

1. The immigration pivot. Everyone in media-land is aware of the shift in the NYT’s coverage of Trump’s very busy final day of August. On August 31, in the daytime, he made his surprise trip to Mexico to meet Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto. That night, he was back in Arizona to give a very hard-edged speech on immigration.

In between those two events, the print edition of the NYT ran the lead story you see in the opening image, which it essentially rewrote for its online editions. This led to the oddity of the printed paper I held in my hand saying the exact opposite of what the online version of the “same” story said, “Dewey Defeats Truman”-style. That is: The print version says that Trump is “shelving” his deportation plans and making a dramatic shift toward a more favorable tone on Mexicans and immigrants. The online version says the reverse.

Timing and deadline problems are built-in challenges for journalism. What I found significant in this case was not the detailed mistake (saying Trump was shelving his plan, when he was not ) nor the larger conceptual error (that Trump was making “a spirited bid for undecided American voters to see him anew”). Rather it was the seeming demonstration of the journalistic instinct to be on the lookout for a “spirited bid” like this, since it is what reporters think “should” be taking place. After all, this is what a “normal” candidate would do; implicitly the story presents the Trump campaign as normal.

Political reporters love the details of a race. I love these details myself. They respect (if sometimes dislike) people who know the rules and play to win, much as sportswriters respect (if dislike) Bill Belichick. They know that the savvy move for the skillful professional would be a pivot to the center, so they’re looking for it to occur.

Again, deadline snafus happen to everyone in journalism. What’s interesting is that the quirk of timing seems to have revealed a readiness to start treating Trump as a “normal” candidate with a real campaign. It’s also interesting that the Times’s editorial page, which presumably labors under deadline pressures at least as great as those for Page One news, had a very tough lead editorial in that same print issue, which was not thrown off by any notion of a pivot.

***

2. “Racially Charged Accusations.”

On August 25, Hillary Clinton gave a very detailed speech on the network of white-nationalist, “alt-right,” and plain-old-racist organizations that Donald Trump had directly and indirectly encouraged and consorted with. Trump responded by saying in interviews, “she’s a bigot.”

To get a sense of how very un-equivalent these arguments and accusations were, you’d probably have to read Clinton’s speech, which you can do here. It was a carefully detailed indictment, which started with the Justice Department suit against Trump for racial bias in renting apartments; went through anti-black managerial practices at his casinos; discussed his leadership of the false “Birther” crusade against Barack Obama; and concluded with Trump’s recent “Mexican judge” comments and other claims. You might disagree with her conclusions, but you’d have to agree that she set out an actual case.

Trump’s response was just to use the word “bigot” and make his “What the hell do you have to lose?” appeal to black voters. There was no detailed case about Hillary Clinton’s supposed bigotry—literally, none. There was just the one word.

Again, you don’t have to agree with Hillary Clinton. But to imagine that she and Donald Trump were doing the same thing is something reporters would never do in any other realm. (“Harvard, Stanford disagree on which is older.” “Ledecky, rivals trade barbs over race results.” “O.J., ex-wife, have difference of views.”) Yet the Washington Post headline and story above were representative of the tactics-only way in which this latest “scrap” was played, and the reluctance to assess for readers the merits and fidelity-to-fact of the cases the candidates made. Sample from the Post:

The blisteringly direct accusations brought the subjects of race and bigotry, previously undercurrents, to the surface of this year’s presidential election. And the exchanges hinted at just how nasty the verbal battle between Clinton and Trump could become in the roughly 10 weeks until the general election.

Clinton’s aim is to diminish Trump in the eyes of Americans uncomfortable voting for someone who appeals to racists, perhaps even winning over some moderate Republicans. Trump is fighting that image by appealing to minority voters while questioning Clinton’s record on race issues, noting that Democrats have long controlled cities where many African Americans continue to live in poverty.

It was all about positioning and tactics, not about underlying truth of either side’s views. Here are similar examples from Politico:

To say it again: I’m directing attention less to the comments of the candidates, although they were significant, than to the reflexes reporters showed in response.

***

3. They’re all crooks.  Last week the Associated Press put out a flatly untrue tweet about an investigation it had conducted into “pay for play” during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State. You can see it below. As I type, this message is still part of the AP’s feed, despite having been widely disproven and even mocked. (Why it’s wrong: the AP came up with its claim that “more than half” the people Hillary Clinton met while Secretary were donors, only by deciding not to count the overwhelming majority of people she met.)

You can read more on the AP story and what was wrong with it here, here, here, here, here, and here. I mention it as an illustration of both the residual “presumption of shadiness” when it comes to the Clintons, from the Whitewater “scandal” onward, and the power of the “both sides do it” instinct in the press. If you’re going to cover some objectively unprecedented developments on Donald Trump’s side—from his refusal to release tax returns or a plausible medical report, to the apparent phoniness of his purported charitable contributions, to the IRS’s recent penalty for a genuine pay-to-play violation in Florida, to his wife Melania’s visa status—then it seems only “fair” to balance that with attention to scandals on the other side. That is so even if the latter scandals never quite identify a quid-pro-quo and instead are made of “clouds” and “doubts” and “questions.”

The larger question of how and why Bill and Hillary Clinton have attracted the “presumption of shadiness” is explicitly beyond my ambitions here. For putting her current email-and-foundation problems in perspective I found useful: this piece by Paul Waldman in the WaPo, this one by Matthew Yglesias in Vox, this one by Alex Kaplan in Media Matters, this one by Nancy LeTourneau in The Washington Monthly, this by Josh Marshall, and this by Charles Pierce in Esquire. Karen Tumulty argues today in the WaPo that Hillary Clinton’s suspicion of the press has only made the press more suspicious in return, and that a vicious cycle has set in, to the advantage of the people who are intentionally trying hard to discredit her.

Kevin Drum, of Mother Jones, who has read his way through the entire latest FBI report on emails itemizes its findings and concludes (emphasis in original):

If you read the entire report, you’ll find bits and pieces that might show poor judgment on Hillary’s part. …

That said, this report is pretty much an almost complete exoneration of Hillary Clinton. She wasn’t prohibited from using a personal device or a personal email account, and others at state did it routinely. She’s told the truth all along about why she did it. ... She and her staff all believed at the time that they were careful not to conduct sensitive conversations over unclassified email systems. And there’s no evidence that her server was ever hacked.

There’s remarkably little here. If you nonetheless believe that it’s enough to disqualify Hillary from the presidency, that’s fine. I have no quarrel with you. But if the FBI is to be believed, it’s all pretty small beer.

The point that most of these pieces emphasize is the disproportion between headline coverage of “clouds” and “questions,” versus evidence of actual wrong-doing. (For instance, this is the meat of one recent “scandal”: the former Bill Clinton aide Doug Band asked for Hillary Clinton’s help in getting a diplomatic passport to accompany Bill Clinton on a trip to release two young Americans held in North Korea. And, he didn’t get any special help.)

The point I am making involves the power of the press reflex toward “balance.” It is so much more comfortable for all of us—reporters, editors, headline-writers, everyone—to be saying, “See, we’re covering scandals on all sides” rather than having to argue, “There are questions here—and there is something different and more serious there, and it’s worth telling them apart.” This is one more dislocation of the era of Trump.

***

4. Weaponized disinformation.  Last week Neil MacFarquhar of the NYT had a fascinating story about the strategic value Vladimir Putin’s Russia assigns to spreading false information. Please read the story for yourself, but here are a few samples, with emphasis added:

The fundamental purpose of dezinformatsiya, or Russian disinformation, experts said, is to undermine the official version of events — even the very idea that there is a true version of events — and foster a kind of policy paralysis. …

Although the topics may vary, the goal is the same, Mr. Lindberg and others suggested. “What the Russians are doing is building narratives; they are not building facts,” he said. “The underlying narrative is, ‘Don’t trust anyone.’”…

The central idea, he said, is that “liberal democracy is corrupt, inefficient, chaotic and, ultimately, not democratic.”

Another message, largely unstated, is that European governments lack the competence to deal with the crises they face, particularly immigration and terrorism, and that their officials are all American puppets. …

[Russian media] depict the West as grim, divided, brutal, decadent, overrun with violent immigrants and unstable. … RT often seems obsessed with the United States, portraying life there as hellish.  

Life that’s hell. Leaders who are all crooks. Government that’s paralyzed and failing. No such thing as the truth, since everyone lies. The Russian media, according to the story, view promotion of these concepts as an actual weapon toward the destruction of adversary cultures. Meanwhile, in 2016, with 65 days until the election, the United States is creating its own supply.