Sunday, President Donald Trump tweeted “The Fake News Media works hard at disparaging & demeaning my use of social media because they don’t want America to hear the real story!”  Yesterday, he tweeted “Russian officials must be laughing at the U.S. & how a lame excuse for why the Dems lost the election has taken over the Fake News.”  So let’s take a look at what the President and his ilk consider “real news.”

Alex Jones.  The President has spoken highly of Alex Jones and his InfoWars.com site, even appearing on the Alex Jones Show for some mutual suck-up.  Jones, of course, has peddled such heinous and ludicrous lies as (1) the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was staged, and (2) the U.S. government was involved in (a) the Oklahoma City bombing,  (b) the September 11 attacks and (c) fake Moon landings.  To top off this top-notch investigative reporting, he also pushed the bogus “Pizzagate” conspiracy that Hillary Clinton and John Podesta operated a child sex trafficking ring out of a Washington, D.C., pizzeria. After a deranged man shot up the pizzaria,  Jones finally apologized.

Jones’ own lawyer recently argued in court that Jones is a “performance artist,” who is merely “playing a character.” .  The lawyer said that considering Jones’ statements on his radio show as a reflection of his true outlook is akin to assessing Jack Nicholson based on his performance as the Joker in Batman.

Michael Cernovich. A few months ago, Trump’s tweeting son, @DonaldJTrumpJr, proclaimed “Congrats to @Cernovich for breaking the #SusanRice story. In a long gone time of unbiased journalism he’d win the Pulitzer [journalism’s most prestigious prize], but not today!”  Cernovich also promoted the false Clinton/pedophilia/pizzaria claim.  that inspired a gun-wielding man to show up at the restaurant to investigate the claims (he was arrested).  Cernovich claims his past statements “had been taken out of context” and  were “obvious satire” that had been misinterpreted.

Sean Hannity.  This high-pitched Curly Howard impersonator has pushed a bogus theory of a poor, murdered DNC staffer in a cynical attempt to knock the Trump-Russia scandal/investigation out of the headlines. The original story Hannity has been promoting was so obviously concocted that his own network disavowed it, stating that  it “was not initially subjected to the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require for all our reporting.” This from a network hardly known for its rigorous adherence to facts.  “Upon appropriate review, the article was found not to meet those standards” again, not a terribly high bar, “and has since been removed.”

Finally, Hannity himself has professed, in a statement whose irony is undoubtedly not lost on Jon Stewart, “I’m not a journalist, I’m a talk show host,” thus apparently excusing himself from all standards for accuracy and truth-telling applicable to journalists.

So, perhaps, Trump, the twice-divorced reality TV star is in the midst (or has just completed) another divorce — from reality.  He apparently does not realize that reality TV is not reality.  Nor was running his realty “empire,” which was, in reality, the comfortable bubble of a family business, where his every bluster and bullsh!t proclamation was met with such critical comments as “Oh, Daddy, that’s brilliant!” and “What a great idea sir!”

Or maybe, Trump is just a reflection of  the current, New Age touchy-feely Republicanism, where facts don’t matter.  What is important is what you “feel” or “believe.”  “I feel the press is unfair to me”  or “It is my opinion that many of the leaks coming out of the White House are fabricated lies made up by the #FakeNews media,” as Trump declared on Sunday.

Or maybe Trump’s approach is just a natural reaction to facing “constant negative press covfefe” as he observed last night.