I Was Talking To…

[Essay]

Reality hit me!

I was talking to a conservative who believes that there are riots in New York City because of the mayor, Zohran Mamdani... and that the news media is hiding it. It floored me that he believed it so strongly and was so divorced from reality.

Republican voters believe things that aren’t true. That’s a problem for the GOP.

The party can’t make good arguments or put forward solutions unless it’s grounded in reality.

MS Now

By Ryan Teague Beckwith

May 24, 2026

Solar power is the cheapest form of electricity to set up in most parts of the world. Tariffs are paid by U.S. importers, who pass along the costs to consumers. And noncitizen voting is extraordinarily rare.

These three statements are facts. You can verify them by looking at scientific research, listening to experts or just reading reliable news outlets.

Recent polls, however, show that substantial numbers of Republican voters simply don’t believe these statements. That’s bad for the country, because it’s harder for us to solve problems and decide how to move ahead when we can’t agree on the facts. It’s also bad for Republican politicians — and they have only themselves to blame.

They seem to be living in their own reality. It really shocked me. It was like someone actually believing down is up!

Led by President Donald Trump, many members of the GOP in recent years have made their case by attacking the underlying facts, making baseless claims and undermining the credibility of independent experts who could contradict them. The result is a party that is increasingly out of touch with voters outside its ideological bubble and unable to come up with good arguments or practical solutions.

Just look at the numbers:

• In a January poll by Morning Consult, 51% of Republicans said tariffs are a “fee foreigners pay for selling products to the United States,” while 38% more accurately said they are “a tax on foreign products that Americans buy.”
• In a March poll by the Pew Research Center, 43% of Republicans said that solar power is more expensive to consumers than most other energy sources, while only 24% said that it’s cheaper.
• In an April poll by Ipsos, 82% of Republicans said that large numbers of noncitizens cast fraudulent ballots in U.S. elections, compared to just 38% of independents and 18% of Democrats.

The sheer number of Republicans who believe things that aren’t true distorts the political landscape. As problems arise, they effectively box Republican politicians out of making certain arguments or trying specific solutions. When Trump’s broad-based tariffs lead to increased prices, how can Republicans in Congress push back if their own supporters don’t see the link?

How can you even have a conversation with them? When you debate someone, usually both sides are grounded in reality—but the right-wing seems to live in a reality of its own! Remember back in 2024 when Trump said Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were “eating pets”? Well, about 52% of Trump supporters said it was “definitely” or “probably” true!

Right-wing influencers keep pushing the lie, and the MAGA crowd eats it right up! NPR wrote back in 2024 wrote,

Using dehumanizing language to describe immigrants is nothing new for former President Donald Trump or vice presidential candidate JD Vance. Accusations of immigrants being criminals, being rapists or poisoning the blood of the nation have become common currency. But this week, the rhetoric seemed to hit a new low: the allegation that immigrants eat pets.

Vance, who represents Ohio in the U.S. Senate, spread a debunked claim about Haitian migrants living in the city of Springfield, Ohio, on Monday, accusing them of abducting pets and eating them.

The claim, which local police say is baseless, was made by far-right activists, local Republicans and neo-Nazis before being picked up by Vance. A well-known advocate for the Haitian community says she received a wave of racist harassment in the aftermath of Vance's post.

That rhetoric was like nectar to the right-wing, even though everyone else was laughing at the absurdity!  

Researchers are well aware of this phenomenon. In fact, Joseph Goebbels is famously credited with the idea: “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.”

The spread of true and false news online

Soroush Vosoughi

Science

9 Mar 2018

Lies spread faster than the truth

There is worldwide concern over false news and the possibility that it can influence political, economic, and social well-being. To understand how false news spreads, Vosoughi et al. used a data set of rumor cascades on Twitter from 2006 to 2017. About 126,000 rumors were spread by ∼3 million people. False news reached more people than the truth; the top 1% of false news cascades diffused to between 1000 and 100,000 people, whereas the truth rarely diffused to more than 1000 people. Falsehood also diffused faster than the truth. The degree of novelty and the emotional reactions of recipients may be responsible for the differences observed.

These right-wing influencers care only about their audience size. The more people who listen, the more money they make. Because of this, they aren't interested in the truth—only in views and engagement. Sadly, for many people, the only place they get their news is from these podcasters, and those podcasters couldn't care less about the truth.

[/Essay]