Once a delusion sets into a person’s mind, it can be really tough to dislodge. If you’re convinced that Hillary Clinton is running a child sex slavery ring out of a pizza joint in D.C., or that Obama was born in Kenya,* or that the murdered children at Sandy Hook were “crisis actors,” every piece of evidence you find is going to convince you of that. So will every piece of evidence against it, or a complete lack of evidence altogether. When you just know you’re right, you’ll figure out some rationalization to convince yourself that it’s true, and that everybody telling you otherwise is part of the cover-up.

Unless, of course, you’re a reporter journalist. Once you get your first byline in a mainstream publication, or your first cable news hit, or whatever personal and professional validation you need, it magically renders you immune to confirmation bias. You’re now a devoted custodian of the narrative, and that narrative must be preserved at all costs. It’s up to you to explain how the world really works to the faceless masses out there in flyover country.

For example, journalists all know that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a bunch of jackbooted thugs, and anybody who wants to enforce our borders is a racist. So of course, every piece of evidence is going to point to that utterly logical conclusion. Like this:

ICE detained a man while he was driving his pregnant wife to the hospital. He was taken when they stopped for gas. “My husband needs to be here,” Maria del Carmen Venegas said. “He had to wait for his son for so long, and someone just took him away.”https://t.co/rpD8WKwaJZ — Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) August 18, 2018

This is awful. Can you believe it? Are these monsters ICE or ISIS? Don’t they know that people aren’t illegal? Don’t they know that this is America?

But there was just one minor detail that complicated this narrative a bit. Brittny Mejia, LA Times:

An immigrant in the U.S. illegally who was detained by federal officers in San Bernardino last week while heading to the hospital with his pregnant wife is one of three men listed in an arrest warrant for a 2006 murder in Mexico.

Joel Arrona-Lara is wanted in connection with the killing of Miguel Ángel Morales Rodríguez, alias “El Garcia,” according to the arrest warrant…

Oh.

Well, um… that guy he allegedly murdered has been dead for 12 years now. Those ICE fascists couldn’t leave him alone for 12 more hours? Et cetera, et cetera.

Arrona-Lara’s wife has since given birth, and she and the baby are doing fine. Miguel Ángel Morales is doing not so fine.

Nonetheless, the liberal media narrative must be preserved. Illegal aliens are actually “undocumented immigrants,” and they’re the designated victims in any scenario. Just a few days later, our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters in the press got another opportunity to prove it:

Lawyer for Cristhian Bahena Rivera, who is accused of murdering an Iowa college student, wants to gag the government from referring to him as an illegal immigrant, saying he has legal status. https://t.co/w7MOv0ijww — Byron Tau (@ByronTau) August 22, 2018

Fox News and Donald Trump seem to have jumped the gun on Mr. Rivera’s immigration status. https://t.co/k6oIAHsXoa — Crooks and Liars (@crooksandliars) August 22, 2018

Oh. Well, why would the murder suspect’s lawyer say such a thing if it weren’t true?

NOTE: It’s not true. “Mr. Rivera” is indeed an illegal alien.

Just within the last 24 hours, we’ve seen yet another example of a liberal media narrative getting complicated with meddlesome facts. Yesterday they were all panicking over this:

“THE DNC WAS HACKED!!! OMG!!! THIS PROVES THE RUSSIANS HACKED THE ELECTION!!! HILLARY GETS TO BE PRESIDENT NOW, RIGHT??? OMG OMG OMG!!!!!”

Guess what happened next? Donie O’Sullivan and Gregory Krieg, CNN:

The Democratic National Committee said late Wednesday night that what it had earlier feared was the beginning of a sophisticated attempt to hack into its voter database, was, in fact, an unauthorized “simulated phishing test” and not an actual attempt to hack into its systems by an adversary.

The Democratic Party of Michigan confirmed to CNN on Thursday morning that it had made a “misstep” and was responsible for the scare.

Whoops! Well, they’ll still prove that Putin helped Trump steal the election. Just you wait and see.

One explanation for this phenomenon is that these reporters journalists hate Trump’s guts because he’s always so mean to them. They’re so desperate to throw anything they can against him, they can’t even give themselves a minute to stop and think. But that doesn’t explain why they always do this sort of crap, no matter which Republican is elected president. It happens every time. And then, the millisecond another Democrat gets sworn in, they all switch back into Fawning Mode.

They’d get whiplash, if they actually had spines.

*When Obama claimed to have been born in Kenya, he was lying.