Weaponizing Reality: An Introduction to Trump’s War on the Media

Abstract

Donald Trump wasn’t just a sign of a broken reality; he was the beneficiary of it. Mainstream consensual reality had shattered a long time ago; it was just that shattering hadn’t gone mainstream. As the right understood, when reality becomes a free-for-all, then reality becomes available for the taking. It becomes a weaponizable force for anyone with the power to seize and lay claim to it. This is what Trump achieved. Reality itself was seized, and the valid claims of ‘fake news’ were reversed back against the mainstream media themselves, sucking the reality out of their journalism.