It would be more compelling if you provided links supporting your claims here. Also, a number of the stories you’re labeling as ‘fake’ are either true, or true with some room for debate based on the choice of words you use to depict them.
The original meaning of “Fake News” was to describe the deliberately false, completely fabricated stories created on sites that looked semi-legitimate, knowing the people would be so excited by headlines like,
“3 Count Indictment issued for Hillary Clinton. DNC in Panic 7 weeks out from Election Day”
that they would click and forward endlessly. For American Fake News creators there was up to $50K/week in clicks at the peak of the campaign, and for the Russia, who had thousands of social media trolls and Fake News content creators working via Government Agencies, the was an opening to drive create fake narratives about Hillary, expand real negative storylines about her, and pump Trump up artificially. There was some fake news floated at the left but it didn’t have anywhere near the impact.
The role of Russian hacking, Russian phishing of Podesta, Russian Social media trolling and Russian ‘Fake News’ combining to give Trump a big push during the final 4 months of the campaign was widely reported and debated after the declassified version of the combined Intelligence agency report confirmed that they were part of an 18 month attempt by Putin to disrupt, then swing the election. Shortly after the impact of American and Russian ‘Fake News’ started gaining major airtime on cable news, Trump began trying to muddy the meaning of the word, by yelling or tweeting the phrase in response to any report from a major cable news outlet or major newspaper.
Give Trump credit — He’s actually been able to rip attention away from the thousands of completely fabricated stories created by Putin’s legions to get him into the White House, and turned the energy toward his renewed attempt to neutralize the free press, especially the investigative reporters who continue to report on his historic level of malfeasance, achieved in just four weeks in office.
A quick, admittedly subjective, but very fact-checkable review of your list:
FALSE: Trump ending campaign: Could you point to the story that claimed Trump was ending his campaign? I’m a pretty steady news junkie and I feel like I would have recalled that one.
FALSE: Trump way down in polls: Are you trying to say the polls were “fake” or that the reporting of their findings was “fake.” Because Trump was, in fact, way down in the polls at many junctures:
FALSE: Women suing Trump for rape: Again, it looks like you are conflating the validity of her claim, not the fact that she did actually sue Trump for rape before withdrawing the suit. She claims it was under threat from Trump supporters, but obviously only she and Trump know what actually happened.
FALSE: Trump molested 13 year old: See above
FALSE: Trump is anti-LGBT: Wide open to interpretation. There are definitely statements and some history that would point to Trump being supportive of LGBT issues. However, as a candidate then a president who needs to maintain the support of the largely anti-gay rights and protections Evangelicals, he has supported preliminary moves to roll back both.
FALSE: Trump supporters burned a church and spray painted swastikas: Some of the swastika related hate crimes involved Trump supporters who were caught and prosecuted. Some were probably un-related to Trump. The church burning was a hoax. The fact that it was a hoax also got very wide coverage in what you seem to believe is the “fake” news.
FALSE: Trump staff in disarray: The Washington Post ,Time NY Times, The Atlantic, Politico, Axios (new political news service founded by former Politico publisher,) UK Guardian and a few others have all separately run lengthy stories with wide sourcing, including anywhere from 5 to 9 senior White House staff quoted for each story. All describe a White House that is struggling to figure out who is in charge under Trump (Bannon? Preibus?;) how to focus Trump, who is universally described as having a short attention span to go along with the impulsive behavior issues; and fairly chaotic in terms of communications, with different people saying different things to the press. Even their executive orders are widely reported to have been drafted by Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon and a support staff of borrowed congressional legislative aides. The fact that they were never vetted by the White House legal team, nor the executive agencies that each EO impacted, which is fundamental to executing every executive order, is indicative of a White House that isn’t functioning well at all.
FALSE: Trump Inauguration Small: The reports reported that the Trump Inauguration was smallER than Obama’s. Which it was, by a substantial margin. Estimates for Obama’s first inauguration ran 1.4–1.8 million people there in person. Official estimates of Trump’s ran 300,000–700,00 in person. Incidentally, the ones who really drove this story were Spicer, Conway and Trump himself. He injected his perception that there were more than a million into virtually every comment for the first two weeks of the administration.
FALSE: Trump Website leaves off LGBT: By noon on Inauguration day, the portions of the White House web site referencing LGBT rights, climate change, civil rights and Obamacare had all been taken down. There is some debate as to whether they will be updated and reposted, or if they are gone for good. But there’s no debate that they went away.
FALSE: State Department heads resign: Actually, not much wiggle room on this one. The entire top tier of career administrators, who have been in place through Republican and Democratic Administrations, resigned on the same day.
FALSE: Draft memos with gag order for key departments: You goet some traction this one. There is debate as to the accuracy of reports that the gag order. There was a directive sent out to all executive agencies dealing with science and research, requiring them to pause in any publishing, tweeting, responding to public requests for comment or information. But whether it was a wide reaching ‘gag’ is in dispute.
FALSE: Anti-LGBT executive order to be signed: I didn’t see it narrowly predicted to be an EO by definition. However it was widely expected that the administration would roll back federal protections for LGBT. They did.
FALSE: EO is an Immigration Ban: Actually, I’m guessing you meant to say that it was falsely reported that the Travel Ban and Travel Ban take 2 are Muslim bans. This is another one thats in dispute. There are many Muslim majority countries that are not covered by the Travel Ban. However, every country on the list is a Muslim Majority country, and, as has been reported, no refugees from the banned countries (nor refugees from anywhere in the middle east period) have been involved in a fatal terror incident since 2001. The Islamic related terror has overwhelmingly been done by American born Muslims who were radicalized. Secondarily, those overstaying student and work visas have been involved in a few instances as well.
FALSE: Trump threatened Mexican President: Another one in dispute. Some say he seriously threatened to send troops into Mexico to round up “some bad hombres.” Others say it was meant as a joke. If only the transcript is available, and there are no witnesses on record, you can’t say he said it seriously, so you gotta give him the benefit of the doubt.
FALSE: Trump threatened Australian President: No one reported any threats. It was reported that Trump got hostile with the Australian Prime Minister over a refugee commitment the US made to Australia and either abruptly ended the call early, or actually hung up on him.
FALSE: Trump won’t follow the rule of law: Broad in the extreme. Can you show an article that makes an umbrella claim like this?
FALSE: Trump’s bombing of Yemen killed a lot of innocents: We didn’t bomb Yemen. We did conduct a raid on AQAP, a Yemeni arm of Al Qaeda. According to the military’s own reporting, 1 SEAL was lost, 14 militants killed and 30 “innocents” including 10 women and children were killed.
“You’re entitled to your own opinions. You’re not entitled to your own facts.” — Daniel Patrick Moynihan
