Millions of Americans were stunned and incredulous on Monday after learning of a possible incident of bias at Fox News Channel.

At a time when so many American institutions have been under attack, the possibility that Fox, one of the nation’s most respected news organizations, might be susceptible to hidden agendas was too much for many to take.

In interviews across the country, Fox viewers expressed disappointment, confusion, and shock that a news network known for its exacting standards had imperilled its hard-earned reputation for fairness.

“I’m devastated by this,” Carol Foyler, a viewer from Scottsdale, Arizona, said. “If we can’t trust Fox News, who can we trust?”

Tracy Klugian, a viewer from Akron, Ohio, said that he had been “walking around in a state of disbelief” since he learned of possible bias at the network. “I’m trying to be strong, but it’s tough,” he said. “I know I speak for a lot of people when I say that today was the day that America lost its innocence.”

But some Fox viewers, like Harland Dorrinson, of Topeka, Kansas, warned of a “rush to judgment” against Fox, urging people to remember the network’s stellar record of journalistic accomplishments.

“Whenever there was a national emergency, whether it was Benghazi, Hillary’s e-mails, or Obama’s birth certificate, Fox News was there,” he said. “One little mistake doesn’t wash all that away.”

“This behaviour is unacceptable,” said local Sheriff Daniel Boyd. “Police officers go through extensive training and experience when it comes to shooting at unarmed black teens. Civilians simply don’t know what they are doing.”

ADULT film star Stormy Daniels has been reportedly killed last night in a US led airstrike in Syria, WWN can confirm.

The controversial porn actress had apparently travelled to the middle eastern country on Thursday in what friends and family members are saying was an unusual move by the dead 39-year-old.

“We have no idea how she got there,” a close friend said last night, “it’s just not a country Stormy would ever visit on a whim, so we’re all very upset and confused as to why she would go to such a dangerous place, considering the predicted missile strikes”.

Investigators on the ground believe Ms. Daniels was apparently filming a documentary when over 50 tomahawk missiles accidentally hit the location she was at, obliterating her and a number of other American women who just happened to be there at the time.

“Coincidentally, several other women who have accused the US President of sexual misconduct in the past have also been killed in the airstrike,” a US military commander confirmed, “what they were doing there, we don’t know, but it seems they are all dead now and that’s all we can say on the matter”.

President Trump ordered a strike on Syria on Friday in response to last weekend’s alleged chemical weapons attack, despite having no evidence.

BLUE EYE, MO—Squashing accusations that President Trump had a sexual encounter with porn star “Stormy Daniels” while he was married to Melania, televangelist Jim Bakker explained to his audience Friday that he had confirmed that Trump was merely scheduling private time with the woman in a hotel suite in order to share with her the good news of Jesus Christ, as he had become acquainted with her and was very concerned that she was not a Christian.

“It is preposterous to assert that a virtuous believer like Mr. Trump would cheat on his beautiful wife so callously, and while their child was only months old,” a solemn Bakker said into the camera as colorful balloons provided a backdrop for some reason. “He was so concerned with the eternal state of Miss Daniels’ soul that he scheduled some alone time with just the two of them, so he could share with her how Jesus Christ had changed his life and how He could also save her from her sins.”

Nearly choking up with tears, Bakker went on to explain how much he loves and looks up to Trump as a model saint.

“Our president even arranged through his attorney to give this woman $130,000 in an attempt to help rescue her from the destructive adult film industry and get her life back on track. What a man of God!”

The televangelist ended his broadcast by wagering that there were probably “many, many more” sex-industry workers like Daniels who could tell a similarly inspiring story about President Trump.

(...) While Sinclair may look like a mechanism of the Trump administration—and indeed he has tweeted his support for Sinclair—it's not as though Americans are any less skeptical of the president's own reliability. Monmouth's data shows Trump is even less trusted than cable news targets like CNN (35 percent of respondents versus 48 percent). Besides, Americans have come to loathe traditional institutions with such intensity that even Trump's well-worn outsider status can't protect him from the ire of the aggrieved citizen.

Given the growing furor of an American populace abused and misused for decades, Trump's brand of chaos was a logical conclusion of the 2016 election. But Trump's assault on the media has been built on an assault on reality, a national gaslighting that has wrought epistemic chaos among what was supposed to be an informed citizenry.

And this is a fundamentally deleterious blow to democracy. No society works if people don't speak the same moral and ethical language, if they can't find a way to communicate—and, more importantly, if they don't trust each other. (...)

Bolton wears many hats. He serves as a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a contributor to Fox News, and controls a Super PAC that used money from the billionaire Mercer family to help elect congressional Republicans.

But one role that has received relatively little scrutiny is his work as chair of the Gatestone Institute, a nonprofit that focuses largely on publishing original commentary and news related to the supposed threat that Islam poses to Western society. He has served in that role since 2013. (Bolton did not respond to an email seeking comment.) (...)

Many of the fake stories have percolated into mainstream U.S. politics. Gatestone was largely responsible for the false claim that there are “no-go zones” through Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Sweden, and other European states where Muslim immigrants have set up a parallel society in which local police no longer enforce the law.

The idea infiltrated the 2016 Republican primary, as Bobby Jindal, Ted Cruz, and Donald Trump repeated the uninformed “no-go zone” claim (to the later great embarrassment of U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands Pete Hoekstra). While many conservative outlets eventually parroted the myth, Gatestone had pushed the idea since 2012 and has published dozens of pieces on the claim since.

As The Intercept previously reported, Gatestone is largely funded by Nina Rosenwald, the heir to the Sears, Rosebuck & Company department store fortune. Though the Rosenwald family was once a champion of Jewish refugees during World War II, Rosenwald has financed a number of efforts to vilify Muslims attempting to escape bloodshed in Africa and the Middle East.

Billionaire heiress Rebekah Mercer, a donor to various far-right causes as well as the Trump campaign, was listed as a Gatestone board member in April 2017, according to the foreign policy-focused website LobeLog. After LobeLog inquired about Mercer joining the board, Gatestone scrubbed any information about her from the site. Donor rolls obtained by LobeLog showed that the Mercer Family Foundation gave $150,000 total to Gatestone in 2014 and 2015.

Bolton has made no effort to conceal his close ties to the forces of Islamophobia. As reporter Eli Clifton noted, Bolton wrote the foreward to a book authored by Robert Spencer and Pamella Geller, two American activists that have led the charge in protesting mosques and spreading conspiracy theories about the threat posed by Islam.

The hate has in someways been a lucrative career path. Bolton, for his efforts, has collected at least $310,000 from the Gatestone Institute in payments, according to publicly available tax disclosures.

The Gatestone website has not only influenced U.S. politics, but also attempted to influence recent European elections in France, the Netherlands, Austria, and Germany. The site has promoted far-right, anti-Muslim populists running for office across the continent. In Germany, politicians from Alternative for Germany, or AfD, the rabidly anti-immigrant far-right party, regularly shared Gatestone articles on Facebook and Twitter during the election last year. Geert Wilders, the Dutch anti-Muslim firebrand, is a guest author on the site.

And now its chair will be the national security adviser to the president of the United States.