Democrats are the last hope against Trump-era chaos and lies: Republican strategist The press is overwhelmed by Trump's chaos and lies, making Democrats the last line of defense. I'm a Republican begging them to step up. Nothing else matters if they don't.

Cheri Jacobus | Opinion contributor

If you weren't paying close attention the week before last, you might have concluded that Jared Kushner had just met with special counsel Robert Mueller, after which he was immediately cleared of wrongdoing, and that the FBI subsequently restored the presidential son-in-law’s security clearance.

In reality, Kushner met with Mueller's team in April, and it was the Trump White House that restored his permanent security clearance. The FBI said it was merely the investigative service provider. But the news media stupidly gave the stage to Kushner's lawyer and other Trump puppets, and they muddied the waters.

Confusion and chaos, constant lies and baseless accusations. America is in a mad scramble as President Trump and his team take a page right out of the Vladimir Putin/KGB playbook for controlling and owning the masses.

The news media are overwhelmed keeping up with the lies, chaos, misdirection and cover-ups. Congressional Democrats are the last defense — but they are spooked. Polls showing voters’ lack of appetite for the “I” word (impeachment) are sending them into retreat.

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Voters don’t know the whys, whens and wheres of the huge Russia/Trump scandal, hence their impeachment reticence.They generically understand bits and pieces of the Mueller investigation, but unless they’re engaged in daily fact-checking, they’ll believe, ingest and defend to the death that first narrative they hear.

If some catch wind of the correction, the response tends to be defensiveness, as they dig in their heels. You can’t un-ring a bell. Few are keen to admit they’ve been duped, choosing instead to side with the liars because the liars seem to be winning — or at least winning the news cycle.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders claims to be bothered by charges that she lies, yet clearly is not disturbed enough to stop or quit. Trump lies with abandon on Twitter to his 52 million followers. And while much of his base is not on Twitter, the lies are amplified when repeated, supported and propagandized by the media they do consume.

Non-Trump media are routinely tripped up and slow to fact-check, opting instead to simply repeat the misinformation, acting as mere stenographers, or providing air time to Trump mouthpieces. The public has to wait hours for the truth and wade through a myriad of outlets to get it.

Democrats (and other anti-Trump voices) need to fight the daily Trump lies and distractions in the same type of venue and forum in real time. A daily fact-checking, anti-corruption briefing that follows the White House briefing or other Trump-related breaking news, akin to the opposition party’s response to a State of the Union address, is in order.

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A lean team of professional press secretaries backed by fact-checkers can provide a quick, real-time check on Trump and defenders like Sanders, Kellyanne Conway and Rep. Devin Nunes. Democrats should put a single pool camera in rented space across the street from the White House where a beat reporter can cross the street to the briefing or be conveniently near a colleague dispatched to the fact-checking briefing. It would be cost-effective — no spin, no propaganda, no frills — strictly “CSPAN-able.” Break down the Mueller investigation and explain how new nuggets fit into the larger mosaic of Trump’s corrupt criminal universe.

The cost is small. The stakes are high.

Run this war room as a daily crisis-management operation. We are in a crisis and it would be a fatal mistake to wait for the history books to surprise us with that footnote in hindsight.

Democrats can ignore the crisis of a corrupt Republican Party abdicating its congressional oversight responsibility and talk only about issues traditionally near and dear to their core ideology, but to do so places them on par with the GOP by failing to investigate Trump and the ethical breaches in his administration.

Nothing else matters if Democrats can’t tackle this.

Cheri Jacobus, a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors, is a Republican consultant and commentator and president of Capitol Strategies PR. Follow her on Twitter: @CheriJacobus.