We all like to make fun of The View. The hot takes are stupid, the “conservative”–whoever it is this week or month–is about as useful as tits on a bull. Nobody who follows politics even moderately closely takes them seriously.

But The View gets a lot of views, and as with late night hosts who spread disinformation behind the mask of telling jokes, nobody can or does hold them to account for being liars.

And they aren’t only stupid, they are liars and propagandists. They serve a purpose in the media ecosystem, training their viewers to hate and be scared of anybody who opposes The Narrative™. They often know that what they are spewing is false, and know they will not be held to account.

I got onto this rant by running across this on Twitter. At first I shrugged it off, but then I started thinking about it.

Citing ZERO EVIDENCE, Sunny claims the GOP's official position is to raise the voting age to 28.
Literally, no one in a position of influence in the GOP is arguing for that. There was no correction by ABC News. pic.twitter.com/najKP6wb3j

— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) November 14, 2022

Don’t ignore that second clip, because something very interesting struck me as I watched it. Sunny Hostin didn’t accidentally make her comment about Republicans plotting to raise the voting age to 28–an impossibility because the voting age is actually set in the Constitution by the 26th Amendment–she was reading from a script. Watch the clip. This was no slip up. It was planned.

It was a talking point, clearly put out by somebody a lot smarter than Sunny. She didn’t look up the voting statistics of younger voters–she was given a set of talking points to get out there. The powers-that-be, and in this case it was probably the producers of the show, wanted her to say that. I have done enough political talk shows to see my liberal opponents read off a set of talking points sent them by the propagandists. (I never did that because talking points are usually written by people who think they are smarter than they are).

I think it is safe to say that most people who watch the view are what we call “low information voters.” They aren’t political science majors, or even readers of the New York Times. High level information or misinformation will never be a big part of their day–they get their political news and analysis from the women of The View. That is why the show exists,

Nothing shocking about that, of course, except that the fine people at ABC News know that as well as you and I do. Yet far from helping out the women of The View to ensure that they get their facts minimally straight, they are just fine with this sort of deceptive idiocy going out over the airwaves.

One thing to make a mistake, it's another to just make election fraud claims without any basis. Stop. Lying. The House of Mouse @Disney should understand that eventually you won't be able to promo your latest Wakanda Forever crap through people who openly lie about elections.

— Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) November 14, 2022

Is @ABC @ABCPolitics really okay with this? Do they not understand how awful this is? This woman @sunny just literally lied to the entire country about the nature of our voting electorate under the constitution. You're okay with this?

— Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) November 14, 2022

Now lest you think that Sunny Hostin really is nothing but an idiot and made a mistake, she is not the only one to advance this claim. It literally is a talking point being put out over the newswires and being picked up and repeated by others. The news and entertainment world has been sent out to promote an almost, but not completely obvious lie.

It is not a completely obvious lie because the low information voters to whom it is directed are utterly clueless about how the Constitution works. Just as they bought the lie that Joe Biden could wipe away student loan debt with a wave of the hand, they are also being told that new elected Republicans are the ones now preventing it. They don’t know about courts, constitutional limits to power, or any of those complicated concepts. They never learned it in school because systemic racism and trans ideology were their curriculum.

Since Sunny refuses to cite where she heard the ridiculous claim, we had to try and find it. All we could find is a Daily Beast article making the same claim. They cite 1 tweet from an activist who wants 21 and some commentator who said 28. Literally no one with influence.

— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) November 14, 2022

So how does a publication like The Daily Beast–nominally a “news” outlet, come up with a ridiculous claim that gets spread around the world?

They literally found an offhand comment from a Republican and turned it into a Republican conspiracy to raise the voting age. As if a throwaway line from somebody outside of the political world is making policy for the Republican Party.

This is one of the ways that propaganda works. And even high information voters get numb to it, just accepting that it is a normal part of political discourse. Which, of course it is when people are BSing in a dorm room or at the bar, but one used to expect better on nationally broadcast political discussion shows.

The MSM is trash. Thousands of reporters and pundits will shrug, and say Republicans shouldn’t get our undies in a bunch over such trivialities. But that is just plain wrong. It is systematic, coordinated propaganda being spread by ABC, Disney, “news” publications, and it filters out into the culture. It will be repeated ad nauseam by celebrities and pundits and absorbed by low information voters. It is intended to motivate them, just as Joe Biden’s line in 2012 that Mitt Romney is “going to put y’all back in chains.”

The “news” people don’t pile on to correct, so it becomes an accepted fact by people who only pay a bit of attention.

We need to push back, ridicule, criticize, and call out these lies. Not because any individual one matters that much, but because cumulatively they distort our politics and our culture.

When every one of the harridans on this trash show can say whatever they want with the imprimatur of ABC and ABC News, they require constant shaming not just by conservative commentators, who routinely do, but by average people. Every once in a while the average people even win. As did Turning Point USA, who squeezed out a half apology from Whoopi Goldberg for a slander.

I am back to my native pessimism about saving American culture; I do fear that our civilization is lost. But I have spent the past few decades fighting the decline and screaming at the heavens, and by God I can’t stop now.

You shouldn’t either.