I saw some clips of Norah O’Donnell interviewing Donald Trump on 60 Minutes, and they perfectly illustrated the two keys to Trump’s success.

First, he is utterly shameless. What he wants to be true is true. He will state it with iron certainty as fact no matter how transparently nonsensical it is — and repeat it over and over and over in a torrent of words that can overwhelm critical faculties.

Second, American journalists are so much more pathetic than their counterparts elsewhere (the British, notably.) They don’t come armed with facts. They don’t interrupt the Gish gallop. They aren’t able to think on their feet and ask a short, sharp question that penetrates fog and noise and gets to the heart of the matter.

Norah O’Donnell looked like the editor of a high school newspaper interviewing a world-class conman.

When Trump spouted his bullshit about saving Washington DC from savage crime — a complete and total fraud — she sputtered about wanting to go onto the next question. When he persisted, pushing her to agree that things are so much better, she got flustered and said something stupid about working too much to go out.

She didn’t push back with personal experience or, better, the crime statistics that so blatantly show it’s all a lie. She did nothing. And any American who isn’t already hostile to Trump would have concluded — not unreasonably! — that Trump must be telling the truth. He really did save DC.

This is how democracy dies.