Gary Naylor writes: "More ex-footballer pundits on the radio last night making evidence-free assertions unchallenged by the presenters or their ex-footballer mates with microphones.
The answer to the second question — why there's a widespread perception that government spending has surged, when it hasn't — is that there has been a disinformation campaign from the right, based on the usual combination of fact-free assertions and cooked numbers.
Doubtless this was no impediment when he was running the bin Laden unit at the C.I.A., but it makes his large geostrategic assertions (let alone his bluff, complexity-free assertions about American history and the essential nature of the Republic) largely worthless.
Evidence-free assertions of threats to life and liberty began to flourish.
How could all those millions of Trump supporters take seriously his fact-free assertions about crime, climate change, the economic power of tax cuts or effectiveness of torture?
Why there's a widespread perception that government spending has surged, when it hasn't -- is that there has been a disinformation campaign from the right, based on the usual combination of fact-free assertions and cooked numbers.
Yet there is no evidence presented by Republicans, aside from the strident, source-free assertions of former Vice President Cheney, desperate to salvage what's left of his reputation, that the torture program led to the capture of bin Laden.
Other categories of tweets include his complaints of bias (Saturday Night Live is a frequent target, as is CNN) and source-free assertions of plots against him (see his idea that "millions of people" voted illegally, or the allegation that there was "serious voter fraud" in several states).
And when pressed for details, Romney gave the sort of answers that led Henry Blodget to opine: "One of the most telltale signs that a company is about to blow up is when its CEO gets indignant at anyone who dares question his detail-free assertions that the numbers will work".
It's possible that Zengerle is offering these fact-free assertions as a way of critiquing them, but it's hard to tell, because these are the kind of sad, lightweight ideas that show up in political reporting like nitrogen shows up in the planet's atmosphere.
And American television networks – from the earliest days of the Republican primaries – have amplified and uncritically analysed Trump's every tweet, insult and fact-free assertion.
