<p><strong>To the editor:</strong></p>
<p>I am pleased to be identified as a liberal Democrat and I wish we had a propaganda machine like the conservatives. Unfortunately, the conservative PACs, Super PACs and Murdoch-funded FOX "News" far outstrip the liberal and independent voices on the airwaves.</p>
<p>We have to depend on the honest reporting of the free press — NBC, CBS, ABC, AP, CNN, NPR — to confront the manufactured news of the conservative machine. Trump and the GOP love to take credit for things that other people have done and things that never happened. Whatever sounds good on Twitter and bumper stickers regardless of the facts. The free press and social media are revealing that fake news is the daily product of Trump and the conservative machine.</p>
<p>Sarah Sanders has trouble keeping up with the changing fiction weaved by the White House overnight. Trump supporters may keep on celebrating fantasy victories. That doesn’t mean the rest of us will continue to swallow the snake oil. Confidence artists always are found out and those who swallowed the line of bull pucky just slink away rather than admit they were conned. Truth and facts are not relative like Gulianni would have us believe. They win over the Big Lie in the end when ordinary people get out and vote.</p>
<p><p style="text-align: right"><strong>Donald Smith</strong></p>
<p><p style="text-align: right"><strong>Franklin</strong></p>
