The misinformation in Americans' minds

 Thom Hartman -The fifteen or twenty percent of Americans  who follow actual news reporting are dumbfounded:

— Only about half of Americans know that Trump set up and wanted the end of Roe v Wade while one-in-five think President Biden is responsible for it,
— More trust Republicans with the economy than Democrats and 46% say Trump can fix the economy compared to 32% for Biden,
— Only a third of Americans know that Republicans appointed the majority on the Supreme Court,
— 46% of Americans say a second Biden presidency will weaken American democracy,
— More than half (55%) of Americans believe the economy is shrinking and we’re in a recession (when it’s growing faster than under any president since FDR and has been for three-plus years),
— When President Biden came into office in 2021, almost two-thirds of Americans approved of his handling the economy and foreign affairs; today that number is fewer than a third,
— Almost half (49%) think the stock market is down for the year when in fact the S&P 500 was up 24% last year and is up more than 12% this year,
— About three-quarters (72%) are sure that inflation is up right now, when the rate has fallen from 9.1% to a current low of 3.4%, far better than the lowest inflation number Reagan had at 4.1% in his entire 8 years in office,
— While unemployment is lower than it’s been in over 50 years, half of Americans (49%) say “unemployment is at a 50-year high,”
— Only 34% of Americans can name the three branches of government while 69% of Republicans believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump,
— As violent weather tears apart America, only 23% of Republicans consider climate change a major threat to our nation’s well-being,
— Today, 58% of Americans say the economy is getting worse daily because of mismanagement by Biden and Democrats in Congress,
— Almost half of Americans (44%) think Social Security will be gone by the time they retire,
— Fully 44% of Americans say the media and politicians are “making too much” of the January 6th assault on our capitol.

How did America reach this point where about half our country thinks up is down, black is white, and Republicans are best trusted with our money and national security? The first imperative for any dictatorial regime is to seize control of the press. Hitler not only shut down all the opposition press and turned all of Germany’s newspapers into propaganda outlets, but ordered Leni Riefenstahl’s propaganda masterpiece Triumph of the Will played in every theater in Germany before every movie. The first thing his soldiers did upon occupying every country he conquered was to seize the offices of the local newspapers and radio stations. More