A group of US Congress members, who clearly think little of the separation of powers, have called this month for Donald Trump to receive the Nobel Prize for the as-yet undisclosed peace deal with North Korea. (Letter linked here).

What strikes me is how little reporting in the US there has been asking why members of Congress have thrown their support behind a nomination that the Noble Prize committee says has been forged. It’s been forged not once, but twice. This was known in February.

The matter has been forwarded to police both in Oslo and the FBI. So it’s not even clear if Trump could be awarded the prize, as the basis for his consideration is fraudulent.

From a facts-on-the-ground news story, it’s fairly open and shut.

From the perspective of a massive non-issue to divide and distract the public online through social media, well, it’s possibly just getting started.

As the US media should have learned after 2016 and Hillary Clinton’s “illness”, it doesn’t even have to be true for it to occur on social media. We might very well be seeing the same thing with the Trump Nobel Prize talk. The masses want to believe but the facts don’t support the story.

The Republican backers of Trump in Congress have only added fuel to a fire that will burn brightly for the global public. In doing so, they signed their names to a movement that is based on a lie and forgery in the first place.

Why are the New York Times and the Washington Post not asking this question? Would the Wall Street Journal not ask these politicians what they were doing, giving oxygen to a forged nomination?

They all do good independent reporting. But I fear that in this time of information overload, some ginned up by the White House’s backers, the US media is forgetting that they can ask the questions and they can help set the agenda, too.

So a good question is: what prompted these Congress members to endorse what is a forgery under investigation by Norwegian police and the FBI?

The answer could very well be the poor judgement of the members of Congress. But even that would speak volumes about how these Congress members run their affairs – ignorant, or dismissive of the facts around a nomination that they have nevertheless endorsed.

Forgeries have also played a long role in Russian active measures (see post’s video), so that’s probably another reason for the US media to have a look – and to compare how this is unspooling online. In any case, there is, in my opinion, likely a story here being overlooked by American media.

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