As the world now knows, on April 23rd, during perhaps the most surreal press briefing of all time, the leader of the free world suggested that ingesting toxic bleach, warm temperatures and exposure to carcinogenic ultra-violet light could cure coronavirus. As White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator, Dr. Deborah Birx, stared uncomfortably at her shoes, President Trump directed Under Secretary for Science and Technology (DHS) William Bryan to investigate the possible benefits of injecting bleach and somehow internalizing ultra-violet light to kill the virus. “Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it's ultra-violet or just very powerful light…supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do, either through the skin or in some other way…” To his credit, he did reluctantly concede that medical doctors would have to be involved. Phil Rucker, Washington Post White House Bureau Chief, was then attacked by President Trump for pointing out that people were looking for information and guidance, not rumours, “Phil, I'm the President and you're fake news.”Presidential words.As the makers of Clorox and Lysol pleaded frantically with Americans not to inject or ingest their products, Dr. Diane Calello, Medical Director of the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System, explained that injecting bleach or highly concentrated rubbing alcohol “…causes massive organ damage and the blood cells in the body to basically burst. It can definitely be a fatal event.”President Trump's precarious grasp on reality finally let go fully during these mad few minutes of full-on bat-feces crazy. “I guess if you could collapse the last three and a half years of madness into one clip, that might be the clip…” commented Joe Scarborough on MSNBC.This frolicking carnival reality show might be amusing, if the head huckster didn't have the “nuclear football”. Trump was elected on the basis of celebrity value, but President of anything is a serious job. Clearly, there is a lunatic at the helm. Surprising to many, Fox News conceded that drinking bleach is not a good idea. Surely, even Evil Mitch McConnell and clean-coal fantasists in West Virginia must now acknowledge the terrifying Nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue.Or, perhaps not.The ever-widening gap between rhetoric and reality in post-truth America fertilizes the growth of extremist partisan views that seemingly defy all logic. Partitioned behind information walls of political partisanship, fed by rabid talking-heads and the emotive fact-free opinion forums of social media, real news is easily dismissed by sly spin doctors as “fake news”. This has become critically problematic for Democracy.The Becker Freidman Institute at the University of Chicago published a working paper in April entitled “Misinformation During a Pandemic”, which suggested that FOX News viewers of Hannity vs. Tucker Carlson Tonight exhibited different behavioral responses to COVID-19. Viewers of Hannity were found to be “strongly associated with a greater number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the early stages of the pandemic” relative to viewers of Carlson.Source not only matters; it is a matter of life and death.A March 2018 article in Science “The spread of true and false news online” reported on a study (Vosoughi, Roy, Aral) of 126,000 rumour cascades on Twitter between 2006 and 2017. The results showed that lies spread faster than truth, “False news reached more people than the truth; the top 1% of false news cascades diffused to between 1000 and 100,000 people, whereas the truth rarely diffused to more than 1000 people. Falsehood also diffused faster than the truth.”Social media is pervasive today. PEW Journalism and Media statistics show an alarming disconnect with reality. In a baffling conundrum, the PEW data show that 68% of Americans get news on social media, despite the fact that 57% believe the news they obtain there is inaccurate. 63% of social media news users say that social media does not improve their understanding of current events.Critical thinking is in decline.Startling, but true. We have truly stepped through the looking-glass, into a parallel universe where emotion trumps reasoning, and fiction is fact. The rift between rhetoric and reality is complete. Many prefer the rhetoric. According to the 2017 PISA evaluation of global academic skills, among the 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the U.S. ranked 30th in math and 19th in science.” Recent evidence (PNAS – Bratsberg and Rogeberg 2018) suggests that the generally recognized global decline in intelligence may result from environmental factors, such as education and the effects of media.Critical lessons learned disappear in the wake of the next sensational news cycle. Trapped in a hypnagogic-like state on the guinea-pig wheel of perpetual news, we are doomed to repeat past mistakes.Breitbart began damage control on April 23rd, “Trump used the word "inject," but what he meant was using a process — which he left "medical doctors" to define — in which patients' lungs might be cleared of the virus, given new knowledge about its response to light and other factors.”Fake news.Nudge theory, and historical examples, suggest that Trump's whacko bleach theory will be soon forgotten. Trump had over one hundred staff dedicated to micro-targeting on social media during the 2015 campaign, and it worked.It will probably work again in November.