A subheadline in the New York Times magazine, over an article about Donald Trump, Jr., reports, "Of all the president's children, he has the strongest connection to the politics, voters and online disinformation ecosystem that put his father in the White House."
And here I thought that Hillary Clinton's decision not to go campaign in Wisconsin or FBI director James Comey's letter about Hillary Clinton's emails were the reasons Trump is in the White House. I've seen evidence that Russia used online disinformation to try to influence the election, but nothing to indicate that it affected the outcome. The idea that an "online disinformation ecosystem" put Trump in the White House neatly fits the leftist world-view of Times editors and maybe many readers, because it is a way out of confronting the possibility that someone with accurate information would vote for Trump. It's the left-wing equivalent of conservative talk radio hosts describing Democrats as "low-information voters." That allows people to dismiss the idea that voters accurately and sincerely assessed their own situation, interests, and values. Instead it makes the voters passive, the subject of manipulation by the real actors, the disinformation agents.
What's the real "online disinformation ecosystem"? The Twitter platform that allows Trump Jr. to communicate more or less directly with individual Americans? Or the New York Times website that tells readers the president is in the White House because of an "online disinformation ecosystem"?