Trump and his propagandists have been laying the groundwork for these narratives for years. Roger Stone coined the term “Stop the Steal” in 2016. Trump was grooming OANN to replace Fox in January 2017. https://twitter.com/RyanW_Miller/status/1334485456805834753

Roger Stone posted this on FB in the summer of 2018 setting up a narrative about the 2018 midterms being “rigged.”

Here’s an article about a “controversial political group affiliated with Roger Stone and Trump called ‘Stop the Steal.’” It was WRITTEN IN NOVEMBER OF 2016. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/controversial-pro-trump-group-warns-members-avoid-election/story?id=43372037

Anyone paying even the slightest attention to what was happening in right wing media could sense what might be coming. I wrote this in July of 2018, for example. https://link.medium.com/n0SlGPlVUbb 

The now-ubiquitous, MAGA term “deep state” seems to have entered the American political lexicon in the months between Trump’s election and his inauguration, and taken off like a rocket since then. https://twitter.com/sethcotlar/status/1215798073030348801

Same basic timing for a he distinctively Trumpian use of the propagandistic phrase “fake news.” https://twitter.com/sethcotlar/status/1089559446798327808

The “watch OANN not lying Fox” narrative has also been in the works since early 2017 when almost no one had even heard of OANN. https://twitter.com/sethcotlar/status/1109130753470693376

One figure who turns up in most of the threads above is Dan Bongino, one of the people involved with Parler.

This is not some vast conspiracy. It’s just a bunch of cynical grifters recognizing that Trump’s base was comprised of easily duped marks who they could manipulate and monetize in order to gain more wealth and power. This is such basic and stupid propaganda. But it works.