Last week, conservative and far left Twitter went crazy as Nancy Pelosi was purported to be buying pricey Florida real estate. Conservatives said this showed the out-of-touch elitism of the Democrats, while the extreme far left said it showed Pelosi’s career of rewarding political donors was culminating with a purchase of real estate worth $25 million.

The problem is that it was all false. As we’ve pointed out on this site many times prior, a spin cycle exists where any figment of the imagination or any skewed narrative if played properly becomes a mainstream conservative talking point. The number of well-funded conservative publications and TV networks has ballooned in recent years, creating a situation where any half-truth or outright lie if played properly can get its 15 minutes of serious airtime.

No individual in America has been more effective at using this cynical method of manufacturing an alternate reality than Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Perhaps DeSantis talent at cynically manipulating the right-wing media ecosystem should be given begrudging admiration – after all no Democrat of comparable standing seems to get how to do anything remotely similar in 2021.

If Democrats were better at spinning, Joe Biden wouldn’t be so underwater approval ratings wise, and sitting Democratic Governors wouldn’t be far less popular than their GOP colleagues (nine of the ten most popular Governors in the country currently are Republicans, some sitting in deep blue states at the Presidential level). But we digress…

Anyway, here is a great breakdown from The Bulwark of how this spin cycle worked in the case of the false “Pelosi Mansion.”