First the Internet enabled and empowered full Fantasyland, then it did so for candidate Trump in 2015 and 2016, feeding him pseudonews on his phone and letting him feed those untruths directly to followers on social media. He is the poster boy for the downside of our digital world. “Forget the press,” he advised people as a candidate—just “read the Internet.” After he wrongly declared during the campaign that a certain anti-Trump protester “has ties to ISIS,” he was asked if he regretted tweeting that falsehood. “What do I know about it?” he replied. “All I know is what’s on the Internet.”
