by: Mollie Hemmingway, read in 2021

xiii "... in a victory lap masquerading as a news article in Time magazine that referred to the individuals and institutions behind the efforts to oust Trump as a "well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.""
xv "If you believe things went terribly wrong in the 2020 election, well, you're not crazy, and you're not alone. But most of all, you're not wrong."
36 "Without irony or shame, the magazine reported that "[t]here was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes" creating "an extraordinary shadow effort" by a "well-funded cabal of powerful people" to oppose Trump. Corporate CEOs, organized labor, left wing activists, and Democrats all worked together in secret to secure a Biden victory. For Trump, these groups represented a powerful Washington and Democratic establishment that saw an unremarkable career politician like Biden as merely a vessel for protecting their self-interests. Accordingly, when Trump was asked whom he blames for the rigging of the 2020 election, he quickly responded, "Least of all Biden.""
122 "When President Trump worried that statue removers wouldn't stop with the confederate figures, the media roundly mocked and derided him. Yet all their experts, fact checks, and smug assurances were completely wrong. Trump was right."
309 "In sum: the Washington Post anonymously printed fabricated quotes it knew were from a secondhand source in the office of a politician publicly hostile to Trump, couldn't confirm the quotes with additional sourcing, still attributed them to the sitting president of the United States, and used those quotes as a basis to speculate the president had committed a crime.

But it gets much worse. Several other major media outlets-including NBC, ABC, USA Today, PBS, and CNN-"confirmed" the fabricated quotes from the Post's anonymous source by citing their own anonymous sources."
326 "The media lied about Trump's successes, made up damaging stories, and worked with anonymous sources to publish fake stories for four years. White House press correspondents reacted histrionically to everything the president said or did. Corporate media hid or downplayed the Trump administration's accomplishments, such as historic peace agreements in the Middle East, no new wars, hostage rescues, the repositioning of the country to take on China, bolstering U. S. energy production so that the country was less reliant on foreign adversaries, and the strengthening of NATO by directing countries to fund more of their own defense. The pre-COVID wage and job growth was creating what Trump called a "blue collar boom," which was a boon to all ethnic groups, but it was downplayed in favor of liberals' alleging Trump was racist."
330 "The 2020 election is just the tip of the iceberg. The left's vehement anti-Trumpism--and willingness to lie, contort reality, and ruin Trump supporters to advance its agenda--has undermined half the country's faith in America's most vaunted institutions. Restoring that trust will take a gargantuan effort. And regrettably, it does not look like anyone in the political and cultural establishment is willing to do the work required to do so."