In a just world, exposing a "trusted" source or "expert" as a lying sack of feces would discredit them permanently.
Unfortunately, we don't live in a just world. We live in a world of tribalism, willful ignorance, the credulous, and even many decent thinking people who ignore or rationalize away their cognitive dissonance to avoid facing harsh realities.
I found it!
— StewMama- Radically Moderate (@StewMama71) November 9, 2025
Here is George Stephanopoulos admitting to PBS Frontline that the Clinton Admin worked to paint Repubs as “blackmailing the country to get their way” via government shutdown and characterized them as “basically terrorists.” pic.twitter.com/1SxjW8BPIZ
We all, to some extent, rationalize away moments of cognitive dissonance because the world is too complex for anybody's mental model to fit every fact perfectly, of course. But when the source of your cognitive dissonance is the fact that your sources are liars and self-dealers, you would think that a sane person would find new sources and reject their current ones.
But no, many people refuse to do so. Instead, they reject the facts rather than the source or make excuses for them.
Democrats have spent 40 days keeping the government closed as a way to blackmail Trump and the Republicans into giving them concessions on policy issues and spending priorities. Simultaneously, they have been blaming Republicans for all the unpleasant consequences that stem from the shutdown, arguing that if the Republicans just gave in, all the bad things would stop.
It's the same tactic as a kidnapper sending body parts of their hostage until the ransom is paid. It's an ugly tactic, but it sometimes works, so...
The Democrats' enablers in Pravda have generally backed the Democrats' claims that it is all the Republicans' fault, although, to be fair, some have pressed Democrats to explain why that is so. Stephanopoulos, though, is in the "That's (D)ifferent" camp.
Bessent called him on it, and Small George just lies. Because lying has been his job for decades.
George is not nobody, of course. He is ABC's "Chief Washington Correspondent," hosts Good Morning America, This Week, and anchored the nightly news for years. He was Bill Clinton's campaign strategist and spokesman before that, and was caught in so many lies that it would make your head spin if you had to listen to them all at once.
Yet people trust him, just as they trust Rachel Maddow, Martha Raddatz, NPR, The New York Times, and countless other sources. They have seen the lies; they have no reason to trust these people anymore. Yet they do.
You would think that after COVID, or "sharp as a tack," or the Steele Dossier, or the "fine people" hoax, or countless other examples of outright lies and hoaxes, that people would look for better sources.
But that would require leaving the tribe, admitting you were wrong, and revising everything you thought was true.
It's easier to just ignore the cognitive dissonance and accuse the people who are right consistently of being evil. How many times have people told you to "get over" all the COVID lies? Leave it in the past! How many times have people told you that the Hunter Biden laptop was meaningless, despite the fact that Hunter became co-president?
We all know why the Democratic leadership is all-in on censorship—their entire strategy for winning is to lie. But have you thought about why so many seemingly nice and reasonable Democrats support the censorship regime?
It's to relieve that cognitive dissonance. If it's not in front of you, you don't have to confront reality.
We've all seen it in other realms of life outside politics. The person who refuses to go to the doctor when something is clearly wrong. They don't want to deal with reality, so they ignore it. It's irrational, obviously, but sometimes people would rather risk dying than risk having their comfortable bubble of reality blown apart.
It's human nature, I suppose. It's also one reason why societies inevitably fall apart.
