Meanwhile, Republicans complained of how fast Democrats pushed the impeachment investigation and vote, leaving journalists to point out that the current process lasted about as long as the GOP took to impeach Bill Clinton -- a few months.
One difference is that Donald Trump was impeached during his first term as president, which prompted his supporters to claim that even if he is convicted by the Senate (highly unlikely as things are now, but that could change) and removed from office, he could still try for elective office again.
No, he couldn't. The Constitution is clear. But that doesn't stop Trumpians from chanting that claim many times.
It's an old strategy. Say something loud enough, long enough, to enough people often enough -- easy in this digital world of instant worldwide social media -- and some will start to believe it, partly because they get tired of hearing, so they start to think maybe it's true.
Doing it this way bypasses the mainstream media, whose job it is to expose misleading information and flat-out lies as soon as they appear.
The downside to this is that repeating a lie in the reporting on the strategy, even when exposing the lie, only gives it more exposure.
Besides, as Mark Twain once wrote, "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." That's a variant on Jonathan Swift, who wrote in 1710, "Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it."
That's the predicament still faced by truth monitors in mainstream media today. Gossipers fly through the World Wide Web faster than journalistic fact checkers can turn on their computers.
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