I hate to sound like a Tom Friedman-type columnist who draws sweeping conclusions from a conversation with a cab driver, but I'm thinking about the guy who delivered groceries to my house in the evening on Election Day. It was not yet evident that an upset was in the making, but there were some early ominous signs on TV. The grocery driver was from Egypt, a young guy who had become a U.S. citizen. He told me he was a Trump supporter and didn't want a woman to be president. He told me that Hillary lies a lot. I told him that Trump lies more, and he seemed genuinely surprised, asking me for examples. He told me Hillary had sold weapons to ISIS, apparently to make money.
Even though I thought I'd been following the election closely, I had not heard anything about Hillary selling weapons to ISIS. It turns out this was a staple of the fake news that inundated voters during the late weeks of the campaign. So a double lesson learned. One, be aware that some immigrants are going to vote on the basis of illiberal ideas from their countries of origin. And two, know that some people--many people, it seems--are going to be taken in by sources that I, as a fact checker, would want nothing to do with (and which in fairness are not always easy to recognize as such). In short, assume there are quite a few ignorant people out there. It worked for the president-elect.
