The morn­ing hosts on Rupert Mur­doch’s FNC had fixed on a minor detail to den­i­grate the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Convention’s vir­tu­al first night, chortling that tele­vi­sion rat­ings were down from four years ago.

It wasn’t quite so. CNN Dig­i­tal had wel­comed near­ly thir­ty-one mil­lion unique vis­i­tors on the first night. The Democ­rats’ open­ing night in 2016 drew an audi­ence of twen­ty-six mil­lion, the Repub­li­cans twen­ty-three million.

But the rat­ings cel­e­bra­tion had an interruption.

Don­ald Trump was live and stick­ing his foot in it. He was ridi­cul­ing Michelle Oba­ma for tap­ing her speech ahead of time, and for under­stat­ing at 150,000 the num­ber of U.S. casu­al­ties from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trump was too self-absorbed to real­ize what he was doing, name­ly dri­ving home a cen­tral theme of Obama’s speech. Ego and a total lack of empa­thy are the defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics of the forty-fifth president.

In Obama’s words: “That’s not just dis­ap­point­ing, it’s down­right infuriating.”

The snip­ing con­tin­ued Tues­day, with Tuck­er Carl­son sneer­ing that Oba­ma had taped her talk at Martha’s Vine­yard. He denounced her speech as a “total lie, a cal­cu­lat­ed lie,” a lie designed to make Amer­i­ca more fearful.”

Michelle Oba­ma wants “domin­ion over you,” he charged.

Low ball was fol­lowed by low ball by anoth­er mul­ti­mil­lion­aire Fox host… Sean Han­ni­ty, who sneered that Bernie Sanders has three houses.

Don’t these peo­ple have any fresh mate­r­i­al? Can’t they stop Trump from the habit, while look­ing out for num­ber one, of con­stant­ly step­ping in num­ber two?

The right wing mis­in­for­ma­tion machine in Amer­i­ca is formidable.

Usu­al­ly, it is able to coor­di­nate themes across the coun­try, for instance, mov­ing from one city to anoth­er to sug­gest that streets are ruled by thugs.

A blovi­at­ing Rudy Giu­liani was sug­gest­ing Mon­day on FNC that Black Lives Mat­ter should be clas­si­fied by the Attor­ney Gen­er­al as a ter­ror­ist organization.

But these shout­ing guys can’t get their acts straight.

The 2020 Demo­c­ra­t­ic tick­et has them flummoxed.

Trump has denounced run­ning mate Sen­a­tor Kamala Har­ris as the most “far left” mem­ber of the Sen­ate. The Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee has decried her for being too harsh as a pros­e­cu­tor. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic tick­et is “the most far left” in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, Han­ni­ty declared on Tuesday.

An hour ear­li­er, Tuck­er Carl­son had described Har­ris as a tool of Wall Street.

It’s awful­ly hard to be all of these things.

The far-right media is dri­ving home its theme of urban vio­lence, and I’ve become used to KTTH host Jason Rantz slan­der­ing my city. But they’re run into gen­uine pub­lic out­rage over slash­ing the post office, dis­con­tent borne of vital tasks per­formed by the Postal Ser­vice apart from deliv­er­ing ballots.

“Democ­rats should be deeply embar­rassed that their lead­er­ship has embraced con­spir­a­to­r­i­al claims about the Unit­ed States Postal Ser­vice,” Mol­lie Hem­ing­way, senior edi­tor at The Fed­er­al­ist, tweet­ed Tuesday.

Huh? Amer­i­cans of all ide­o­log­i­cal stripes, not just Democ­rats, began to sus­pect some­thing fishy with delays in mail ser­vice, sus­pi­cions root­ed in appoint­ment of a Repub­li­can megadonor (Louis DeJoy) as the Post­mas­ter General.

The Democ­rats’ tick­et is pre­sent­ing a basic, very big prob­lem for right wing media. The pub­lic is com­fort­able with Joe Biden.

By con­trast, Don­ald Trump has giv­en us more than three years of West Wing and exec­u­tive branch chaos, with the chaos spread­ing over to his campaign.

Kamala Har­ris is an immi­grant suc­cess sto­ry. The low­est dwellers in right wing media have tried to besmirch her char­ac­ter. What has Rush Lim­baugh called the tick­et? “Joe and the ‘Ho”. Carl­son has con­demned Har­ris for join­ing the tick­et of a man accused (in a con­stant­ly evolv­ing sto­ry) of unwant­ed touching.

The pro­pa­gan­da machine will get its act togeth­er, even if Trump doesn’t.

As if to remind us of this, one­time George W. Bush polit­i­cal aide and Repub­li­can dirty trick­ster Karl Rove was ubiq­ui­tous Tues­day on Fox.

So were junior press aides to Trump, claim­ing the poten­tial for “mas­sive fraud” in mail in vot­ing, offer­ing no sup­port­ing evidence.

Sen­a­tor Lind­sey Gra­ham is all over the place, show­ing that long­time friend­ship with Joe Biden means noth­ing when you are Trump’s strumpet.

Dinesh D’Souza, the pun­dit who ped­dled he’s real­ly from Kenya non­sense against Barack Oba­ma, sneered at Michelle Oba­ma, writ­ing: “With its vac­u­ous plat­i­tudes and emp­ty mor­al­iz­ing, Michelle Obama’s speech was per­fect­ly designed to appeal to shal­low peo­ple for whom the dis­play of virtue sub­sti­tutes for virtue itself.”

No won­der he had the nick­name “Dis­tort D’Newsa” at Dartmouth.

Lis­ten­ers loved the Michelle Oba­ma speech. Her auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Becom­ing, has set­tled on the most-read list for more than a year.

She is nobody for a snot­ty extrem­ist to mess with.

The over­all impres­sion, look­ing at reac­tion since Har­ris was named: Right wing media is seri­ous­ly out of touch with the country.

All the shout­ing is direct­ed at a core group of those Lim­baugh refers to as “dit­to­heads” — a dull, sus­pi­cious, defi­ant­ly uni­formed minority.

Fear can be used to arouse such folk, wit­ness the non­stop images (some pho­to­shopped) of Seat­tle, Port­land, New York and Baltimore.

But the coun­try has pro­gressed in its views on racial jus­tice, and Trump seems tone deaf with his appeal to “sub­ur­ban housewives.”

Still: it’s a dirty game, but some­body has to play it.

If they know what’s good for them, nev­er again will Democ­rats fall into the trap of think­ing or say­ing: “The Amer­i­can peo­ple will nev­er believe false­hoods being thrown at our can­di­date. They are too intel­li­gent for that.”

The pres­ence of Karl Rove on Fox should serve as a warning.