If you think “The Memo” was a dud and a failure by the Republicans, you need to read, or re-read, the diary published by Mark Sumner on Jan 22 when the story was just beginning to take over the news cycle.
Starting with absolutely nothing, the Republicans, right wing media, and Russian bots were able to create a fake news story that completely took over the entire media spectrum for weeks. It wiped out coverage of any other news stories. It provided cover and distraction from everything else the Trump administration and the Republicans were doing, and that isn’t over yet. We will now move on to weeks of #release the other memo.
Without any factual basis it got the whole nation talking about whether the FBI can be trusted and whether the Mueller investigation is biased. You may think that the ultimate publication of the memo was a nothing burger, but a month of media devoted to whether the Republicans can prove bias in the investigation leaves much of the nation thinking that the evidence of corruption and bias at the FBI isn’t yet conclusive. That’s a big change from thinking that evidence of Trump’s collusion with the Russia is not yet conclusive. This is how the big lie works. You don’t have to prove your case. You just have to create a credible debate about whether it’s true, and get everyone talking about it.
Best of all, since they pulled the whole thing out of thin air, they can do it again on any topic they want at any time they want. This was a test, and it succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. There will be more.