This has been the fundamental mechanism through which political media operates my entire life. The right makes a bunch of noise about a fake scandal, the mainstream media "covers the controversy," & normie voters get the vague impression that Dems are constantly involved in scandal.
This awful saga is a good glimpse into how MAGA gets propaganda laundered into mainstream discourse by making just enough noise to get news outlets to treat their outrage as a "controversy," which then requires even-handed treatement of both sides' stances: newrepublic.com
One fake scandal after another after another. Eventually someone does a report or an investigation that "reveals" that it was all fake all along, but by then the damage is long done. Political reporters know how this works & they participate willingly. If Dems take a trifecta in 2028, expect to see this ramped up to deafening levels: Dems are obsessed with revenge, they are "criminalizing politics," they are trying to jail their opponents, etc. etc. The naked, grotesque hypocrisy will not even slow anyone down. MSM will gleefully participate. This is why I keep saying: if Dems are serious about accountability, they need to be ready to bull their way through the scolding & tut-tutting that is inevitably going to greet even the mildest attempts. It will come from Rs, from pundits, from journalists, from centrist Ds. It'll be relentless. I suspect that Trump 2 will be a bit like Covid, in that a) no one will really want to think about it once it's over, in part because b) everyone will be vaguely ashamed of how they acted during it. Almost everyone was complicit so almost everyone will just want to forget it & "move on." I'm a big supporter of accountability & I really want Dems to pursue it, but I just want everyone -- pols & ordinary Dem voters -- to be prepared for the scale of the pushback against it. It's going to be immense. It will take intense focus & commitment to really follow through on it.