Selling Lies Through Social Media

That machinery was first developed to sell Obamacare and then the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, followed by Russiagate and, more recently, Covid restrictions.

It is a story that Samuels knows well. He is the author of a much-discussed 9,500-word New York Times Magazine article, “The Aspiring Novelist Who Became Obama’s Foreign Policy Guru” (May 5, 2016), based on a dozen hours of taped interviews Samuels conducted with Deputy National Security Director Ben Rhodes, the lead spin doctor behind the sale of the Iran nuclear deal. And having been provided inside access to how the Iran deal was sold, he had no trouble recognizing that the narrative of Donald Trump as a Russian-controlled asset was being sold in the same way.

In that 2016 NYT piece, Samuels coined the term “echo chambers” to describe a process whereby the White House and its wider penumbra of think tanks and NGOs “generated an entirely new class of experts who credential each other on social media in order to advance assertions that would formerly have been seen as marginal or non-credible.” That process was made easier by the rapid decline of the mainstream media, and with it, traditional subject-area gatekeepers to keep the government honest.

In their discussions, Rhodes made no effort to hide his contempt for the press corps. “They literally know nothing,” he told Samuels. Once newspapers maintained foreign bureaus. Now, they call the White House to explain to them what’s happening, Rhodes confided. The average reporter may have an Ivy League degree, but he is 27 years old and his only reporting experience is political campaigns.