There's always been guys that buy ink by the barrel, who favored the addage "if it bleeds it leads", who employed their bully pulpit to put their personal agenda's in front of the general public to sway their communal opinion and spur them to action (mostly political), then came Fox Newsification, which is specifically meant to fracture the American body politic cleaving it from Democracy itself in favor of Christofascism
These things are not the same, even if Trump is beaten, and dies in Prison, there has been a poisoning of our core, the south has risen again, and I don't know how we put this genie back in the bottle that had cost so much blood and treasure to achieve at Appomattox