Last November, a friend told me about his extended family of Filipino-Americans in the Fresno area. In a matter of days they went from feeling conflicted about Trump’s candidacy to voting for him en masse. They are Catholics, and once they heard the Pope had endorsed Trump their minds were made up. Of course, this papal endorsement did not really happen. This is an example of fake news wave that went viral and misled millions.
Here is that same story in a Facebook post, shared by the group North Carolina For Donald Trump. They have 65,000 followers, and you can see how shares by dozens of influential groups could spread this to millions.