or maybe not. These smear campaigns (Swiftboating, Birtherism, Deep State, Ukraine election interference, etc., etc., don't have to be true or worthy of investigation or legal action, just so long as the doubt can be out there in public long enough to do political damage. As in this case, the lunatic fringe will go on to the next fantasy, ignoring the failure of the last one, as if it never happened.

Of course the notion of the big lie is nothing new but it certainly has become the well to which the right wingers revisit time and again, because they see value in it, regardless of its corrosive effect on our political stability.