Recently I was reading an article on the January 8 insurrection in Brazil. The writer noted Jan. 8 along with Jan. 6 in the U.S. as examples of what can result from the maelstrom of global authoritarianism, “fake news” and pervasive misinformation. Brazil has also witnessed its own version of the “Big Lie” claiming fraud was behind the ouster of Jair Bolsonaro, and there are various scare stories about the new President Lula da Silva freezing bank accounts or forcing middle class homeowners and renters to house poor people in their homes. You can imagine the kind of stuff I’m talking about and how it can create hysteria in segments of the population in both countries.

But it’s a reminder of something I’ve thought a lot about and written some about over the last few years. We simply don’t have a good theory or understanding of what we’re talking about when we talk about “fake news” and “misinformation.” In most cases we know it when we see it: Jan. 6 was an Antifa operation, millions of “illegals” voting in 2020 gave the election to Joe Biden, young people around the world dropping dead because of COVID vaccines, mass shootings conducted by crisis actors to justify gun confiscation.

As Nicole notes below, The Forward has a new article out based on the immigration files of George Santos’s mother, Fatima A.C.H. Devolder, who died in 2016. A researcher apparently got the file under a FOIA request and shared the documents with the reporter. The key point of the article, unsurprisingly, is that Santos is a huge ass liar. In this case, a big fat liar about 9/11.

His story about his mother dying as the result attack on the Twin Towers broke down somewhat when it turned out she died in 2016. He then claimed that she had been in the Towers on 9/11 and at Ground Zero on subsequent days. She developed cancer because of her exposure to the toxic fumes circulating in the air at the time. That is a very real issue. Numerous first responders and others who spent time at Ground Zero in the days and weeks after 9/11 later developed cancers and other illnesses. Since it’s hard to prove a negative, it’s been difficult for people to definitively state that Devolder was not working at the Towers on 9/11.

The Jewish Daily Forward, the same news outlet that broke the story that Rep. George Santos (R-NY) lied about his heritage, has now seemingly confirmed another suspected Santos fib — that his mother was in the vicinity of World Trade Center on 9/11 and survived the attack.

I say all the following not for a moment discounting the threat Donald Trump continues to be to the American republic. But since the announcement of his reelection bid, immediately after a discrediting electoral defeat more than two months ago, he’s seemed less a swaggering warlord planning his return than a diminishing voice less and less relevant to the political happenings of the day. His claims and attacks become more vitriolic as his volume gets turned lower and lower.

Just this week he launched a broadside against white evangelicals, the most loyal and militant portion of his political base. They were “disloyal,” he said, and he blamed some of the 2022 reverses on them: “I thought they could’ve fought much harder during the election, the ’22 election.” This after an earlier interview where he blamed no-exceptions abortion bans for the 2022 defeats. This is angry desperation, not any ability to read the room.