The brother Brad Rothenberger doesn't have

Jonathan Last of The Bulwark reports that Rasmussen, a Republican-leaning polling firm (!), has suggested that the brother of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Rothenberger is CTO of Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications company. Dick Morris picked up the story and ran with it. And naturally, President Trump tweeted that we now know why Rothenberger is so mean to him, and it's unfair, and he's being picked on, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

The story, of course, is all over social media. Only one problem: Brad Rothenberger doesn't have a brother.

No matter. The truth has never been essential to either President Trump or his supporters. Viral lie after viral lie has been spewed forth over the Internet by the far right for the last four years, and TrumpWorld gobbles up every whopper. Somewhere between thirty and forty percent of Americans have constructed an entire artificial reality out of these fabrications, and are secure in it, hermetically sealed from the universe in the zany echo chamber Forty-Five has managed to construct for the folks he once bragged would vote for him even if he committed murder in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue in New York.

And it probably won't get much better. The Mad King will continue to blather and foam at the mouth in exile, and his every rant will continue to resound through the echo chamber to loud and unquestioning applause. But at least the real news media- the folks Mr. Trump says promote "fake news-" won't have to pay any attention anymore. And that means that the rest of us won't have to, either.

Come January 20, here's hoping that the major media just stop covering Donald Trump. He'll continue to make noise. After all, narcissists thrive on attention. It won't cure the hard-core addicts, of course. The lunatic right will continue to do their thing, emboldened and enlarged by four years in power. But if the contagion is restricted to OANN and The Epoch Times and Breitbart and the like, maybe the nation can reach herd immunity.