A fatal flaw of this argument is it relies on a decades-old conception of the media and technology—one where conservatives can't broadcast their ideas because they lack access to channels of information—to absolve conservative media of its failures today. https://twitter.com/CortesSteve/status/1338669063283888128

By exclusively pinning this on "corporate media" and "Silicon Valley," Cortes is describing an informational landscape dominated by elements hostile to Trumpism. A landscape in which the truth gets choked out by mechanism inhospitable to the truth.

But he's obscuring something.

It's an absurd fiction to suggest right-wing media doesn't have remarkable and far-reaching influence in the information landscape.

Cortes wants to insulate conservative media—which includes people like him—from blame, but this problem is partly of their own making.

If the formidable right-wing media superstructure that currently exists—which prominently includes Fox News, the WSJ, talk radio, to name a few of the many channels—can't persuade enough people to take its talking points seriously, it's no longer just a story about "suppression."

It also becomes a story about how fanatically hard-right conservative organs have had to go in order to retain audiences. But the farther right you go—that is, the more unaccountable Trump sycophancy you exhibit—the less normies give you the time of day.

What ends up happening is anyone to the left of Sean Hannity tunes them out. That's a problem for them. That's a problem of legitimacy. A problem of trust.

You want to go Full Rush? Enjoy not having any buy-in from elements beyond your MAGA-crazed base.

Cortes's argument might have had purchase decades ago. But it's no longer plausible to construe informational channels as the exclusive province of Democratic interests. Look at what wins on FB every single day. Look at what wins in cable ratings every single day.

Conservative media needs to build trust with audiences beyond MAGAWORLD. Until it does this, it will continue to fail its own cause by finding itself incapable of breaching the fringes of its own movement.