According to the latest polling, 43.1 per cent of Americans have a favourable view of Donald Trump and 46 per cent say they will vote for him.

This changes everything about politics, it seems to me, or rather clarifies the change that has happened.

Trump is a convicted felon who lies all the time and who says and does things every day that would normally disqualify a person from democratic high office, yet he’s on the threshold of becoming president of the United States for the second time.

How is it possible?

It’s the consequences of mass communication being swamped and distorted by social media, along with the weaponisation of free speech by plutocrats.

Fact checking put to test

The output of social media companies is vast and their business models do not allow checking or moderation in advance, so the world is being swamped with stuff that is a combination of great entertainment, truth and insight, as well as lies and conspiracy theories.

The principle of free speech has been pressed into service to mean that it all must be allowed, so the consumers can choose for themselves.

But they can’t, and never have been able to, which is why editors and fact checkers have always administered what was published.

Now they’re not employed in most mass media, with the result that angry citizens can choose the lie that best suits their resentment.

Anger rising

And there are a lot more angry people now because of the rise of inequality, the way high house prices and inflation have raised the cost of living, and the way immigration appears to be uncontrolled, and often is.

As Charlie Warzel wrote in The Atlantic magazine over the weekend: “The world feels dark; for many people, it’s tempting to meet that with a retreat into the delusion that they’ve got everything figured out, that the powers that be have conspired against them directly.”

Trump’s lies are not mistakes, or a symptom of cognitive impairment (although there seems to be some evidence of that as well). It’s a strategy.

Strategy in play

He is using social media, especially Twitter now that Elon Musk has leapt on his wagon, literally leaping in fact, as well as Fox News, to create a false world in which it becomes impossible to tell truth from lies.

The foundation of his political movement is the Big Lie: That the 2020 election was stolen, that he is the rightful president.

The idea that this is just about Donald Trump, and that once he loses next month – if he loses – the “Reagan Republicans” can regain control of their party and politics can get back to normal, is a delusion.

Even if he doesn’t win, Trump’s success already has shown the way for his successors to do it better. Trump may be some kind of demagogue savant, but he’s also pretty stupid; you’d have to think a smarter version would probably win in a landslide.

Russian links

I mean, look at the revelation in Bob Woodward’s new book, War. He recounts how Trump secretly shipped Covid-19 testing equipment to Russian President Vladimir Putin for his personal use at a time when Americans could not get it.

It was an astonishing piece of craven stupidity by a national leader who was going to seek re-election. How could he think it wouldn’t come out?

Trump denies it of course, and his communications director calls Woodward an incompetent sleazebag, and “a boring person with no personality”, but the Kremlin has confirmed the story! How is it not instantly disqualifying?

Yet so far the revelation appears to have had little impact on the election campaign or Trump’s polling numbers. He remains neck and neck with Kamala Harris.

Facts matter

And then there was that moment during the vice-presidential debate when Republican candidate JD Vance revealed that “the rules were that you weren’t going to fact check us”.

The other night, 60 Minutes host Scott Pelley told viewers that Donald Trump had agreed to an interview but then backed out, with his campaign complaining that it was because they were going to fact check the interview.

Last week, CNN fact checker Daniel Dale had a story headed: “Six days of Trump lies about the Hurricane Helene response.”

In it he detailed how Trump and his campaign had, day after day, lied about failures by the Biden/Harris administration in responding to Hurricane Helene in southern USA, including a claim that “Kamala spent all her FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Administration] money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants, many of whom should not be in our country.”

Next day he claimed that the government is handing out only $750 in aid (in fact, the initial emergency payment for food and groceries is $750, but there are multiple grants available for home rebuilding up to a total of $42,500, the upper limit set by Congress).

All of Trump’s false claims are published somewhere, and believed by many, because we are in a post fact-checking world.

Murdoch sideshow

A sideshow to the main event about social media has been playing out in Reno, Nevada, where Rupert and Lachlan have trying to persuade a judge to allow the terms of the family trust to be altered so that Lachlan can be in full control of Fox News and News Corporation when his father dies, instead of sharing control with his three siblings.

The mere existence of this court case exposes the problem.

The case has been heard in camera, but Rupert Murdoch’s argument seems to be that the companies’ financial success relies on their right-wing bias, which would be undermined by the more left-leaning James, Elizabeth and Prudence if they got control, which they are proving correct by fighting their father and brother in court.

The family succession drama is riveting, but more important is the confirmation that the right-wing bias and distortions by the Murdoch companies is all business model, not belief.

That means even if Rupert and Lachlan lose in Reno, and Fox and News Corp move to centre when Rupert dies, some other wannabe billionaires will take their place – perhaps even Lachlan himself.

The publication of unchecked lies and baseless conspiracy theories, whether by social media or Murdoch, is about making money.

Donald Trump isn’t the first politician to use that greed and turn it into power, but he has been the most blatant and successful so far.

He won’t be the last.

In his book The Men Who Killed The News, Eric Beecher calls it the “loophole in democracy”. It needs to be closed.

Alan Kohler writes weekly for The New Daily. He is finance presenter on the ABC News and also writes for Intelligent Investor