Yes… But White House staffers know how terrifying it would be for the public to realize Trump is an actual superhuman, so they put his diapers on him pre-loaded to not tip anyone off.

Just for what passes for fun in this hellscape, who would be worse: Justice Eileen Cannon, or Justice Alina Habba?

I get the snark, but honestly, we are all capable of synthesizing information from multiple sources - a story can be useful even if it supplies just one or more true premises of a valid conclusion.

It’s a valid comment, but I disagree that you have to reach that conclusion.

This poll gives a better picture of US citizens’ ability (or lack thereof) to obtain and understand basic facts when you combine it with actual data. I.e., the facts alone tell us only what reality is, and the opinion poll alone only tells us what Americans think, but together they tell us how well-informed Americans are.

That, in turn, helps suggest (even if proof is harder) how effective right-wing information technology is, how seamless the Fox News/influencer/social media info bubbles are.

And, as depressing as it is, opinions (the perceptions of a party’s or candidates’ culpability and capability) decide elections where reality and opinion are in conflict. 2024 proved at least to me that we have reached an inflection point and entered the Disinformation Age, where propaganda actually can consistently win out against reality by sheer flood of disinformation, if it’s not moderated or regulated.

Republicans and administration staffers don’t believe it any more than anyone else. To anyone in this administration, lies are just tools to win, even if they are just passing them off second-hand.

I guess I’m happy some media is talking about this. When they no longer can stop you, then exercise corruption openly to show everyone the opposition’s helplessness, or to counterintuitively kindle anger against that opposition which appears feckless and powerless.

It’s the reason Putin poisons people in ways obviously traceable to Russia.

It also directly contributes to hypernormalization, since the autocrat will then deny - with obvious lies - the truth of that corruption, which further exhausts the populace who eventually gets tired of trying to keep track of what is true and what is a lie, thereby handing more power to the autocrat to shape reality.

Trump, of course, is speedrunning every step of this.

Here’s the summary of the app from a few months ago: https://thereallo.dev/blog/decompiling-the-white-house-app

1. Injects JavaScript into every website you open through its in-app browser to hide cookie consent dialogs, GDPR banners, login walls, signup walls, upsell prompts, and paywalls.
2. Has a full GPS tracking pipeline compiled in that polls every 4.5 minutes in the foreground and 9.5 minutes in the background, syncing lat/lng/accuracy/timestamp to OneSignal’s servers.
3. Loads JavaScript from a random person’s GitHub Pages site (lonelycpp.github.io) for YouTube embeds. If that account is compromised, arbitrary code runs in the app’s WebView.
4. Loads third-party JavaScript from Elfsight (elfsightcdn.com/platform.js) for social media widgets, with no sandboxing.
5. Sends email addresses to Mailchimp, images are served from Uploadcare, and a Truth Social embed is hardcoded with static CDN URLs. None of this is government infrastructure.
6. Has no certificate pinning. Standard Android trust management.
7. Ships with dev artifacts in production. A localhost URL, a developer IP (10.4.4.109), the Expo dev client, and an exported Compose PreviewActivity.
8. Profiles users extensively through OneSignal - tags, SMS numbers, cross-device aliases, outcome tracking, notification interaction logging, in-app message click tracking, and full user state observation.