It’s almost astonishing: Even with a slim Republican majority, the House of Representatives actually voted to expel New York GOP Congressman George Santos, after a searing Ethics Committee report last month laid out the damning case against him.

Santos allegedly stole money from donors for gambling junkets, high-end spa treatments and online porn subscriptions. Money laundering. Identity theft from family members. Wire fraud. Obstruction. His campaign treasurer pleaded guilty to charges related to Santos’ misdeeds. The whole sordid mess is almost too much to tally.

Yet, can we note that Donald J. Trump is still besting his Republican competitors in the polls for their party’s presidential nomination next year — and by a mile?

Because the problem is what Fox, Rush Limbaugh, Joe Rogan, Bill Maher and above all social media have done to our politics. We’re entering a third decade of the all-you-can-consume buffet of online information, and the pot-stirrers are all too happy that the average citizen doesn’t know what’s true or false anymore. The Soviet propagandists could scarcely have dreamed of a day when they could push Pravda’s lies to a global audience — and that a culture that believes you can never trust the mainstream media would thrive on both right and left.

We don’t deny that ratings play a part in what even some supposedly fair-minded media sources tell their audiences. Former CNN International chief Tony Maddox really did say Trump was “good for business.” And even while the network has largely been responsible about knocking down the showman’s endless stream of dishonesty, it still continues to give his lies a platform by airing them in the first place. This is what normalizing looks like.

Way too many journalists still haven’t internalized the lesson scholars have long warned about: Airing would-be autocrats’ lies, even to dispel them, is dangerous.

Donald Trump’s feral genius is that he knows instinctively how to stoke the anger of the millions who don’t think those institutions serve them anymore. In less than eight years, he’s transformed the public face of his party from genteel patrician Mitt Romney and Clint Eastwood-esque John McCain into the jeering, ungovernable House now led by a speaker who was a primary architect of the Jan. 6, 2021, attempted government overthrow. Trump’s closest presidential challengers talk of “slitting throats” of federal employees and making widespread, indiscriminate purges in their ranks.

So, good luck, Republican leaders. You’ve gotten rid of your highest-profile embarrassment in Congress for now. But until you — and much more important, your deep-pocket donors — figure out a way to deal with the dishonest rot that’s propelling a 91-time-indicted former reality TV star to the top of your ticket again next year, you’ve got issues far more serious than George Santos.

The Kansas City Star