Donald Trump's confusion over misinformation is not alone. Millions upon millions of people in USA believe fiction memes + messages on their smartphone are factually true. Non-fiction vs. fiction is confusing when presented in competing styles on smartphones. Russia since March 2013 has exploited this human problem, targeting multiple NATO nations, including the USA. There are millions of people convinced that Putin is himself not confused by sincere and honest information.

Systemic problem

Russia internally, domestic Russia, has engaged a society-wide "race to the bottom" on facts, evidence, sincerity. Competition in prizing mistakes, errors, "gotcha", fiction that people will believe to be non-fiction has become a mob mentality of the society. And this has now spread to multiple nations.

The computer information age of the 1980's and 1990's has turned into the 2020's where people find it much easier to find false misleading information than factually correct information.

#FictionEverywhere society has drowned factually correct information and people's ability to distinguish fake from factual information. Some of this has financial incentive due to copyright, intellectual property, and trade secrets. It can be too difficult or expensive for accurate information to be licensed or paid for, so people turn to low-cost ways to get content for publication. And much of this is being fed into machine learning, artificial intelligence, creating a humanity feedback loop.