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Welcome back to Can't Handle the Truth, our Saturday column looking back at the past seven days of fake news and hoaxes that have spread thanks to the internet.

Donald Trump blew off steam Friday morning by doing his version of yoga: rage-filled tweets about the "fake media." As I pointed out last week, "fake media" means any negative press whatsoever (He'd accumulated some negative press during the week). But some of Trump's Friday tweets were right in an odd way: Over the past week a vast liberal fake news machine been churning out bullshit for the #ImWithHer crowd. And liberals have been lapping it up. For the most part, liberal enthusiasm for fake stories manifested itself as a boisterous LOL-fest on social media. But someincluding a Democratic senator's recitation of a talking point from a lefty conspiracy blogwas more consequential than that. Let's take a look:

Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey appeared on CNN Wednesday to talk about James Comey's firing and the need for a special prosecutor. Markey got one part right, about subpoenas being issued to some of Michael Flynn's associates. Thenhaving read something, somewherehe leapt without looking. "A grand jury has been impaneled up in New York," he said, wrongly implying that a prosecutorial body is beginning to build a case.

According to the Boston Herald, Markey had been reading conspiracy blogs, including the entertaining, off-kilter politics blog of former UK politician Louise Mensch and the Palmer Report, which is like a low-budget version of the Drudge Report, but for liberals.

Needless to say, citing these sources on TV is a bad look when you've tweeted about the need for honesty and facts from the Trump administration. If literally anyone gave half a shit about hypocrisy in 2017, Markey could have really gotten into trouble for that one.

On Tuesday night, during the news blitzkrieg that followed the firing of FBI director James Comey, a legitimately funny thing came along for liberals to laugh at: White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer gave a timid press briefing with no bright lights and no video, after concealing himself among the White House bushes (or near the buses, as the Washington Post clarified).

On Thursday, John Cohen, the producer of most of the worst children's movies made in the past ten years, tweeted about that legitimately funny thing. Then he went for seconds, tweeting about Spicer wearing mismatched shoes to work that day. The internet's insatiable mouth cooed, "Yum-yum-yum-yum-yum, I love it!" and Cohen racked up likes and retweets. Thousands of people enjoyed it.

But the tweet was flat-out false. First of all, that photo was from March. But more importantly, it shows Sean Spicer not being stupid, but injured and wearing a foot brace. Cohen has since deleted the tweet.

My colleague Eve Peyser covered this already, but in short, Stephen Colbert said the only thing Trump's mouth was good for was being a "cock holster" for Putin. Then came accusations of homophobia, a hashtag about taking away Colbert's job, the further proliferation of the hashtag by Trump fans, complaints to the FCC, and then, supposedly an FCC investigation.

Publications like Teen Vogue cried censorship. Comedians like Mike Birbiglia and Sarah Silverman ran to their usual corner, penning diatribes about free speech.

But while the FCC was actually looking into the matter, that's only because the FCC looks into every complaint it receives.

The above tweet, from someone named Najahta, embeds a clip from Comedy Central's poorly received The President Show, and features Donald Trump impersonator Tony Atamanuik getting an earful from a child who may or may not be an actor. "You're a disgrace to the world," the precious girl says to the comedian, before taking a phone picture. Somehow, the Comedy Central logo is missing from the video, making it look real. OK, maybe not real, but reality-adjacent.

It's a mystery what motivates people to smash that like button, but in my opinion, 400,000 people don't usually get this excited about a Comedy Central clip. More likely, the clip seemed like a moment liberals were just desperately hungry to seeso very hungry that an implausible facsimile with an audible laugh track was enough to fill the void.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

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Four Fake News Stories Liberals Gobbled Up This Week - VICE

New York Times

Is It Time to Move to Norway? New York Times Whenever a Republican gets elected president, it is a standard reflex for die-hard liberals and progressives to wring their hands and moan about moving to Canada or Europe. For those of us who have lived abroad when I was 19, I moved with my ...

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Is It Time to Move to Norway? - New York Times

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Posted: May 13, 2017 12:01 AM

Civilization has been aptly called a thin crust over a volcano. (Liberals) are constantly picking at that crust. -- Thomas Sowell

After Hollywood jackass Jimmy Kimmel was criticized for exploiting his sons illness to push his political agenda and incorrectly insinuating that surgeries for newborns werent covered before Obamacare, he did a follow-up on the subject where he said, I would like to apologize for saying that children in America should have health care. It was insensitive, it was offensive, and I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.

Drop dead, Jimmy Kimmel, you colossal ass.

This is a great example of what may be the most annoying, dishonest thing that liberals habitually do.

Jimmy Kimmel favors a certain political policy. Its one that has been a disaster for tens of millions of Americans, including a lot of children.

Jimmy Kimmel could have said, Obamacare may not be perfect and it may have been sold with a lot of lies, but I believe its worth it for everyone else to pay more so the small percentage of the population with pre-existing conditions and no insurance can be covered. That pitch may not be a political winner, but at least it would be an honest argument.

Instead, Kimmel is essentially arguing that ONLY people who agree with him care about the healthcare of children and the rest of us want children to die.

This sort of rhetoric has become commonplace on the Left and its not just dishonest, its evil. Its bad for the country. It could even potentially split the country apart one day because we wont be able to continue to live with each other. In fact, weve already reached the point where Californias threats to secede are being met with cries of faster please, what can we do to help? from millions of conservatives.

Yes, it may currently give liberals some small temporary political advantage to claim that everyone who doesnt support gay marriage hates gays, everyone who doesnt think rape culture exists supports rape, that everyone who doesnt back free birth control for women hates them, everyone who wants to stop illegal immigration hates Latinos and that everyone who doesnt want to tear down Confederate statues hates black Americans, but it also injects pure poison into our culture.

If you believe someone doesnt want kids to have healthcare, hates gays, hates women, hates minorities and wants more rapes to happen, you will probably detest that person. However, liberals seldom consider that the reverse of this is also true. You will also probably detest people who falsely accuse you of not wanting kids to have healthcare, hating gays, hating women, hating minorities and wanting more rapes to happen. In the Palestinian territories or Syria, there might be significant numbers of people who believe many of those aforementioned beliefs. In America, there are very few. What this means is that there are large numbers of people liberals have inspired hatred towards via falsehoods and also large numbers of people whove grown to abhor liberals after being targeted by their lies.

Put another way, liberals are CREATING an America where its natural to HATE people of differing political views. Not disagree with, HATE.

My initial reaction to hearing Jimmy Kimmels, I would like to apologize for saying that children in America should have health care, comment was thinking that Id enjoy punching him in his smug face.I have no doubt that vast numbers of people that liberals dishonestly call racists, misogynists and homophobes feel exactly the same way. Of course, its one thing to feel that way and its another to actually do it or suggest others do it as many liberals do. We have left-wingers rioting in the streets to stop people they disagree with from speaking at colleges and publicly encouraging each other to physically attack Nazis, while accusing pretty much everyone who doesnt toe the liberal line of being a Nazi.

Weve gotten to the point where someone as inoffensive as Betsy DeVos cant even give a commencement speech at Bethune-Cookman University without gaggles of idiots screaming and booing. If those liberals cant even show a modicum of courtesy for Betsy DeVos at a commencement speech, how do they work with people they disagree with? How do they go to church with them? How do they date? How do they share the same space? If the answer is, They cant do any of those things, then how do we ultimately share the same country?

I have a left-wing acquaintance who is still endlessly complaining about Hillary Clinton getting coverage from the very liberal mainstream media that was too negative for his taste. When I noted that Hillary may have gotten some harsh coverage at times, but Trumps coverage was much worse, I was told in so many words that, Yes, but Trump deserved it. Similarly, have you noticed that liberals dont seem to accept and respect the fact that conservatives found Obama just as loathsome as they find Trump?

Its the liberal mentality that says, People who disagree with us on anything are racist, sexist, homophobic and evil. Therefore, we dont have to treat them fairly. Therefore, their concerns are irrelevant. Therefore, its acceptable to lie about them, take away their rights or even use the IRS or legal system to mistreat them. Therefore, they dont matter. At all.

I loathe liberalism, but I dont hate liberals. I would not be okay with lying about them, preventing them from speaking at universities or attacking them because of their political views. I think a lot of liberals are deeply misguided and put their emotions above logic and the good of the country, but I dont think most of them are evil. Unfortunately, many liberals dont afford conservatives that same courtesy and one day, that may split the country because what brings us together as a nation is becoming smaller than the liberal hatred that is dividing us.

UPDATE: Missile Launched by North Korea Landed in Sea of Japan

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The Liberal Lie So Big It May One Day Split the Country - Townhall

New York Times

If Liberals Hate Him, Then Trump Must Be Doing Something Right New York Times The talk-show host Rush Limbaugh was positively giddy, opening his monologue on Wednesday by praising Mr. Trump for what he called his epic trolling of liberals. This is great, Mr. Limbaugh declared. Can we agree that Donald Trump is probably ...

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If Liberals Hate Him, Then Trump Must Be Doing Something Right - New York Times

We live in a golden age of political stupidity, but I'm not being hyperbolic when I say this: The idea of pulling Judge Merrick Garland off the D.C. Circuit federal appeals court and into the FBI is one of the silliest ideas I've seen anyone in Washington fall for. It's like Wile E. Coyote putting down a nest made of dynamite and writing NOT A TRAP on a whiteboard next to it. It's also an incredibly telling chapter in the book that's been written since the Republican National Convention the story of how Republicans who are uncomfortable with the Trump presidency gritting their teeth as they use it to lock in control of the courts.

On Thursday, as we reported at The Washington Post, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) gave real oomph to an idea that had been bouncing around conservative media. Democrats had vetted and praised Garland when President Barack Obama nominated him for the Supreme Court how, then, could they object to the idea of putting him in charge of the FBI?

[Sen. Mike Lee floats Garland for FBI, a move that would skew D.C. Court of Appeals]

The reasons to object were quickly explained by reporters and by liberal court analysts like Dahlia Lithwick. Garland probably wont want to give up his lifetime tenure as the chief judge of the second-most important court in the land, Lithwick wrote, and surely the most significant bulwark against Trump administration overreach, in exchange for a 12-minute gig on The Apprentice before he uses the wrong color highlighter and gets fired by a crazy person. Among most court-watchers, the scheme was pretty obvious: Lee would give Republicans a chance to tweak a Garland-less court, changing a 7-to-4 liberal majority to a 6-to-5 majority. And in his tweet, Lee was explicit: IfGarland went to the J. Edgar Hoover Building, Democrats wouldn't need a President Trump/Russia special prosecutor.

Yet what Lee apparently realized was that the churn of political conversation in Washington would get his idea looked at seriously.Lee floated the idea before the Senate's final votes of the week, meaning that senators of both parties would be available to reporters for hours. In that time, they were confronted with a shiny object the Garland-for-FBI float with little time to consider it. The conservative Washington Examiner went all-in on the story, getting Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) to say that Garland meets a lot of criteria and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) to say he'd back him, but Garland probably wouldn't want the job. (The Examiner also quoted Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) as saying it would also create a vacancy in the important D.C. circuit, so maybe I like it better the more I think about it. Well, yeah.)

Lee, who does not stop in the hallways to talk to reporters, must have realized that the senators who did would push the idea along. Democrats, after all, came to feel that Garland was a good man robbed of a job their first instinct, when asked about him, was obviously to sing his praises. Their secondthought might be to point out that this was a cartoonishly obvious ploy togive a conservative judge a lifetime appointment on a powerful court. But most people, hearing the idea, might not get to the second thought. Amusingly, a number of liberal opinion-havers glommed onto the Garland idea, apparently unaware that he was still on the court in D.C. From aformer secretary of the treasury:

From a Democratic strategist who literally one month earlier was tweeting about how Garland could hold Trump accountable in the D.C. Circuit.

From Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), who stands to chair the House Oversight Committee if Democrats win the midterms.

To be fair, thequestion put to Cummings was What do you think of the idea, now being floated, to put Merrick Garland in charge of the FBI? His answer: Garland would be fine. That's less hearty than the praise of Summers, whose tweet, as of this writing, is being roundly mocked by the (typically well-behaved) denizens of Politics Twitter.

But is it Summers's fault that the scheme wasn't obvious? Every reporter asking about Lee's idea knew that it was a ploy to open up a seat on the D.C. Circuit. Every Democrat or liberal observer has the power to recognize the ploy. Why have some of them been suckered?

The reason, I think, is a fanciful analysis of Trump's relationship with the GOP that has caused Democrats to make mistake after mistake for the better part of two years. For a long time, Democrats assumed that Trump would lose the Republican nomination. When he didn't, they highlighted Republican critics of Trump inside the party, in the hope of winning them over to Hillary Clinton. Some suburbanite Republicans did come over, but according to the exit poll, 88 percent of self-identified Republicans went for Trump, compared with 89 percent of Democrats for Clinton.

Six months later, Democrats are still obsessed with finding intra-Republican resistance to Trump. Some of that's just accepting reality Republicans control Congress and most of the states, so they can stop Trump when Democrats can't. But some of it assumes an Aaron Sorkin-scripted conclusion to the Trump presidency. At some point, possibly, Trump's own party will stand up to him and bring him down. When Republicans say they want Garland for FBI, Democrats hear Trump's party in rebellion, because that's what they want to hear.

They are getting it exactly backward. Lee, like most Republicans, is willing to grit his teeth through most of what Trump does in exchange for priceless long-term conservative gains in the regulatory state and in the courts. Democrats understand this attitude when Republican voters display it. They know that manyRepublicans put up with Trump so that they could keep Garland off the Supreme Court and replace former justiceAntonin Scalia with a conservative.

Famously, Lee was the first sitting senator to demand that Trump quit the presidential race after the release of live mic recordings that found him crudely joking about sexual assault. If anyone spoke to my wife, or my daughter, or my mother, or any of my five sisters, the way that Donald Trump has spoken to women, I wouldn't hire that person, Lee said at the time. What he said next was more important Trump had become a distraction and needed to allow someone else to carry the banner to defeat Hillary Clinton.What Trump had done was horrible, but not horrible enough to countenance a vote for thecandidate who could keep him from the White House.

At the time, Democrats heard this as the trumpet kicking off a civil war inside the GOP. It really wasn't. Some Democrats want this week's Lee gambit to reveal that Republicans are now bailing on Trump and ready for a real Russia probe. That's not what's happening. So far, the major Republican response to the firing of James B. Comey, from one of the party's leading Trump critics, is to suggest that Trump be given an open slot on a key court that can be filled by a conservative judge.

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The 'Merrick Garland for FBI' scheme shows why liberals lose - Washington Post