Where do they get these wacky ideas?
by digby
John Amato at Crooks and Liars caught this on CNN. I’m guessing this kooky theory was circulated on Facebook:
[O]n CNN’s News Day program, a group of Trump supporters said many wacky things, including how much they distrust the media and trust what their friends send them on Facebook.
“Six buses lined up and people were getting off the bus with KKK shirts on and BLM shirts, I’m like what? That may not sound credible to a lot of people, to us who don’t trust the media, that could be very credible.”
Camerota said, “That was a moment for our latest Trump voter panel and what they were saying there is that they believe that many of the protesters in Charlottesville were paid actors, bused in to cause trouble… I asked them to show me the evidence, so after our taping, they sent us this video that they saw on Youtube.
“This was all a setup, you understand the whole thing. First of all, you’re not going to have on a KKK t-shirt and you’re not going to have on a Black Lives Matter t-shirt getting off the same brand of buses, parked back to back. We’re talking bumper-to-bumper. Not in the same area, bumper-to-bumper. I’m glad that the woman who told me this is okay, because she was in that alley. It was not in the street where those people got hit.”
Camerota explained, “In other words, their source of this theory is some guy in a car whose friend told him she saw buses in an alley arriving. That video I just showed you has been viewed more than 840,000 times.” [my emphasis — d]
This is a big problem folks.
As someone who consumes a lot of news circulated on social media I can tell you that there is a flood of actual fake news out there. It’s not on the mainstream media as Trump says. It’s mostly on right wing sites circulated through Facebook and twitter. But there’s a fair amount of fake left media as well. Since people are anxious to confirm their biases, there is a gigantic market for this stuff.
Caveat emptor.
.