Yes, 55 percent of Democrats actually believe the idea that Russia changed votes to favor Trump, either “definitely” or “probably” happened. That’s “forget the grassy knoll, Kennedy committed suicide” level conspiracy stupid. For this to be true it would not only require Trump and Putin to have conspired together, but for everyone investigating that alleged collusion to have been in on it as well since everyone investigating it, from Congress to the Justice Department, has said no votes were changed.

How could so many people believe something so obviously false? It’d be easy to just say they’re stupid; “dumb liberals” and all that. But it’s something worse. It’s the media and the Democratic Party consciously giving people that impression on purpose in an attempt to make their voters think Trump is an illegitimate president. When people who know better, people in positions of trust and authority, say things like, “The Russians ‘hacked’ the election,” there is no doubt of their motive. These are people whose professional currency is words, this many of them this often saying something deliberately misleading isn’t by accident.

Yet when you turn on CNN or MSNBC, no matter the time of day, this conspiracy theory is presented as fact, they’re only just waiting for the handcuffs. There is no critical thinking, no questioning of the narrative they’ve constructed – Hell, they may even believe it themselves at this point they’ve repeated it so often. It’s self-imposed Stockholm Syndrome, if that’s possible, and the audience, or at least more than half of them, have joined in the conga line.