The Atlantic

Why Fact-Checking Doesn't Faze Trump Fans

The president’s backers aren’t impervious to reality: Confronted with untruths, they concede he was wrong, but don’t waver in their support for him.
Source: Scott Morgan / Reuters

The era of Donald Trump has brought with it what one might view as either a golden moment or a dark age for fact-checking. The president’s extremely loose regard for the truth, even for a politician, has produced a surfeit of fresh grist to verify—or more often, debunk. Yet it doesn’t seem to make a great deal of difference. Trump’s approval rating is in the basement, but it’s his inability to get anything done and his legal troubles that seem to be hurting him; his dishonesty was already manifest during the campaign. If the bleaker view is right, then truth is a casualty of the age, and stories like (their word) are little more than

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