The media was always biased and the journalistic reputation of 60 Minutes had been inflated. But a basic difference between the pre and post-Trump media was that its activists would at least attempt to build some sort of fact-based narrative. 

The post-Trump media largely does not. It will seize on actual facts and scandals when it can find them, but it’s equally willing to pick up social media conspiracy theories and amplify them with little to no concern over whether they are actually true. The BlueAnon wave has redefined the media as a clickbait hate machine with little interest in anything but the most basic stylistic forms of journalism.

The final product looks like the news the way that a Chinese knockoff of a Rolex looks like it, but the interior has little in common with it. 

And so 60 Minutes deciding to run a story in which the simple existence of a Publix donation to De Santis is proof of something, while disregarding all the evidence contradicting that smear, is just business as usual.

What else would it be? The media doesn’t do facts anymore unless they’re conveniently there. Its base of readers violently hates conservatives and wants material that reinforces its prejudices. It doesn’t care remotely about actual facts or journalistic ethics. No more than it cares about preserving the fillibuster or checks and balances. It’s all ends and the means, the processes, and forms don’t matter.

Evidence is a non-issue for the same reason that due process is dismissed in campus kangaroo courts. Why bother with evidence when it’s obvious to any right-thinking leftist that conservatives are guilty. Anything you accuse them of is either factually true or even if it’s not, is morally true because they’re guilty of the general principle. You don’t really need to worry about proving that Florida favored the rich in the vaccine rollout because Republicans naturally favor the rich. The general premise trumps the specific charge.

It’s like asking the police whether they actually found the drugs on the suspect when everyone knows he’s a drug dealer.

That’s the media and the overall leftist take on evidence when it comes to accusing conservatives of something. The question isn’t whether they’re guilty, but how to build the case.