Brian Stelter here with a look at the week ahead. You might remember that I offered an upbeat take about Team Reality a few days ago. Most of us ARE on Team Reality, but we also need to take a much darker look at the voter pool...

"Unlogic," unreality, and America unhinged

President Trump spent the weekend hurling innuendo at Joe Biden. In his imagination, the contested New York Post story about Hunter Biden's emails is "the second biggest political scandal in our history!" The exclamation mark is Trump's, not mine.

Almost every day the sitting president is saying and doing things to try to delegitimize this election. His latest lie is that Biden's entire candidacy is illegitimate -- that the frontrunner in the race shouldn't be allowed to run or take office. Trump is claiming it's "impossible" for "Joe to ever assume the office" and asking aloud, "how is Biden now allowed to run?"

This is unreality and "unlogic" in action. Time magazine national correspondent Charlotte Alter recently used the term "unlogic" to describe what she heard and saw during a road trip through several battleground states. Alter joined me on Sunday's "Reliable Sources" to recount the trip -- and I think it was eye-opening for anyone who has faith in fact-checking and reality-based media.

Logic, she said, is about sound reasoning, and "unlogic" is the opposite -- a "persistent style of untethered reasoning," connecting dots between lies and reaching conclusions that make no sense because they are based on those lies.

On the campaign trail, she said, she met a disturbing number of voters whose entire world view "is rooted in opposition to authority, this opposition to fact-checking, this opposition to verification." She wrote about this in a recent piece for Time, as well.

The info-environment Alter described is a space far beyond fact-checking. "There's no way to puncture" unlogic "because when you present opposing evidence it's too challenging to their world view, so they kind of end up dismissing it," she said...

Unreality at Trump's events

A team of LA Times reporters described the scenes in Newport Beach, CA, where the streets were lined with Trump supporters before and after a GOP fundraiser at Palmer Luckey's mansion on Sunday. Quoting from their story:

One man "in a Trump-themed cowboy hat taunted a female Los Angeles Times reporter for wearing a mask. When the reporter thanked him for the interview and walked away, the man followed her for several minutes, yelling, 'Fake news!' while tailing her closely and inviting others in the crowd to harass her. Shortly after, two counter-demonstrators holding a pride flag and a Biden sign were surrounded and heckled by dozens of Trump supporters who shouted, 'Biden's a pedophile!'"

If Trump loses...

Oliver Darcy writes: "If Trump loses re-election next month, what happens to the conspiratorial version of right-wing media that he has molded over the past four years? Will some breathe a sigh of relief that they no longer have to defend the indefensible and aim to return to a less-extreme model that is somewhat tethered to reality? Or is the cat totally out of the bag? I tend to be pessimistic and think, for the most part, there is no turning back, but it will be fascinating to see what happens..."

Twitter's removals:

Maybe I should just start a new section of this newsletter called "what tweets Twitter removed today." Examples over the weekend included:

-- Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk's account was locked when he posted false information about voter fraud. His supporters claimed he merely made an innocent mistake. The tweet was removed.

-- Trump coronavirus adviser Dr. Scott Atlas posted a message that undermined the importance of masks, violating the site's policy about false or misleading Covid content that could lead to harm. The tweet was removed. To reiterate: He is the president's trusted adviser.

THE BIG PICTURE...

What happens when people replace reason with fiction...

"On Wednesday," The LAT's Carolina A. Miranda wrote, "the German ambassador to the United States, Emily Haber, posted an image of the philosopher and theorist Hannah Arendt to Twitter, noting that one of Arendt's many legacies was recognizing that 'totalitarianism can flourish where people systematically refuse to engage with reality, and are ready to replace reason with ideology and outright fiction.' It read like a massive subtweet of U.S. society, which as of late has slid — or leapt? — straight into a pool of digital disinformation and unreality..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE

-- "I wanted to be the voice of reason against fear:" Stephanie McCrummen's newest must-read is about the "nice guy" in Georgia who lost to the QAnon-promoting candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene... (WaPo)

-- The GOP is "forging a new alliance with QAnon," Politico's Tina Nguyen wrote a few days ago. And Richard Wolffe filed this for The Guardian over the weekend: "Donald Trump is the QAnon president. And he's proud of it." (Guardian)

-- On Sunday's "This Week," when George Stephanopoulos asked GOP chair Ronna McDaniel if she was prepared to condemn QAnon, she said she was prepared for the question, but then she failed to answer. She called Q a "fringe group" and pivoted to the left: "Antifa is burning down cities right now." Not true, BTW... (Twitter)

-- Daniel Dale tweeted: "Going through Trump's rally transcripts from this weekend and even I am mildly impressed at how dishonest he was." (Twitter)

-- "If you switch back and forth between reading conservatives and liberals, you see mirror-image anxieties about authoritarianism and totalitarianism, which each side believes are developing across the partisan divide," Ross Douthat writes... (NYT)

Week ahead calendar

Monday: The WSJ's annual Tech Live conference begins, only online this year...

Tuesday after the bell: Netflix earnings...

Tuesday: "537 Votes," a documentary about the 2000 election mess in Florida, premieres on HBO...

Wednesday: Eric Bolling's recorded town hall with Trump will be broadcast on Sinclair stations across the country...

Thursday before the bell: AT&T and SiriusXM earnings...

Thursday: The second and final prez debate of the season...

Friday: Apple releases the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro...

Friday: Bruce Springsteen releases his new album "Letter To You..."

Debate commission mum about 'structure' changes

Remember when the Commission on Presidential Debates said they'd announce "additional structure" and "additional tools" for the remaining debates? That was the day after Trump railroaded Biden at the first debate -- 18 days ago. The commission has been mum about what they're going to do... I asked and did not hear back on Sunday... and the second and last debate of the season is on Thursday. The campaigns have not heard anything from the commission about this, yet... so what's the commission going to do?

Trump and the NY Post target the moderator

Actually I suppose it was the other way around... First the NY Post published a hit job about Kristen Welker and then Trump criticized her. The story claimed that Welker has "deep Democrat ties" but cited ridiculous examples like Welker's attendance at the Obama White House press party. A spokesperson for Welker reportedly pointed out that she also attended the Trump WH press party in 2017 -- before Trump did away with the tradition -- but The Post did not include that fact.

Members of the WH press corps rallied to Welker's defense when the story hit, but Trumpworld used it to smear her... And on Saturday night, Trump called her "terrible" and "extraordinarily unfair." This calls for a flashback to what Trump told Welker when she became the co-anchor of "Weekend Today" in January: "Congratulations on your show. They made a very wise decision."

NY Post and whataboutism

On Sunday's "Reliable," I analyzed the sketchy origins of the NY Post's Hunter Biden story and pointed out the sad proliferation of whataboutism, which is like a glue that holds the base together. Ask about the Trump family's swampiness, and they say "what about Hunter?" Raise Trump's legal exposure, and they say "what about Obamagate?" Suggest that Trump is compromised, and they say Biden is compromised. (That's exactly what Donald Trump Jr. said on Fox Sunday morning.)

>> "The strategy is to deflect attention, to attack the opponent, and the same propaganda pipeline is there all the time," Yochai Benkler told me...

>> Benkler quipped that the Biden "email" story seems like a rerun from 2016, and noted that "major professional media doesn't seem to be falling for it in the same way...

Inside the New York Post

Oliver Darcy writes: "The New York Post story on Hunter Biden was mostly written by a veteran of the tabloid who refused to put his byline on the article, the NYT's Katie Robertson reported Sunday night. Robertson revealed that the reporter, Bruce Golding, refused to attach his name to the piece over concerns about the story's credibility. Meanwhile, Garbielle Fonrouge, the reporter who had the second byline on the story, only learned that her byline was on the piece after it had already published, per Robertson's story. This raises all sorts of red flags..."

"An island within an island"

Darcy adds: "A Post spokesperson didn't respond to Robertson's Q's about how the story was edited, but she reported that it was discussed within a group in the Post which included Col Allan and digital editor Michelle Gotthelf. One source described it to me like this: 'All this Hunter Biden s**t is being done in its own bubble. It's happening on an island within an island.' And as Robertson reported, staffers have questions about the story's credibility and the curious timing around when Rudy Giuliani handed over the info. My source described the situation at the Post as 'gross,' but said he was happy others were applying scrutiny: 'It’s heartbreaking to me as a journalist but makes me happy as a citizen that most people see the grift...'"

Now what?

Donie O'Sullivan writes: "Twitter implemented a policy last week that saw the NY Post article essentially banned. Then they walked it back. This week we will almost certainly see more information from this purported Biden hard drive, whether laundered through the Post or other GOP media outlets. So how are the platforms going to handle this? Knowing, of course, if they put into action the rules they’ve been writing for years for this moment they'll be blasted by Republicans for what they call censorship..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO

-- In a disgusting display on Fox's "Sunday Morning Futures" program, Maria Bartiromo prodded GOP congressman Ron Johnson about a connection between the Biden hard drive and "child pornography." There is no such connection. (Examiner)

-- Jake Tapper tweeted: "It was always a fait accompli that someone from Fox and someone from the GOP would start Q-Anon-ing the race with disgusting allegations/zero evidence. It was just a question as to who. Now the question is whether their colleagues understand the stink will stick to them if silent." (Twitter)

-- A Fox News spokesperson declined to comment on this awfulness on Sunday...

-- Dave Weigel tweeted: "The president's son joked about Biden being a pedophile, a Fox News host says Biden's son might have child porn, not sure how it goes lower from there without an actual drilling rig..." (Twitter)

-- David Folkenflik noted that Fox used the original NY Post story "to unleash a fusillade against the former VP across its most watched shows -- like the grand finale of a fireworks display..." (NPR)

FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR

-- Michael Osterholm on "Meet the Press" Sunday morning: "The next 6 to 12 weeks are going to be the darkest of the entire pandemic..." (NBC)

-- The takeaway from Dr. Anthony Fauci's interview on "60 Minutes:" As "just two states show Covid-19 cases trending in the right direction, the top US disease expert says he'd only push for a national lockdown under extreme conditions..." (CNN)

-- Meantime, Trump is continuing his dangerous Covid denialism. Biden's response to Trump saying that the US has "turned the corner" on the virus: "As my grandfather would say, 'This guy's gone around the bend if he thinks we've turned the corner.'" (N&O)

-- The White House declined ALL of CNN's requests for a guest on "State of the Union," so a "resigned" Jake Tapper then welcomed Lara Trump from the Trump campaign... (Beast)

-- In this new column, Charlie Warzel makes the case that "a lot of our anger toward Facebook and Twitter is actually about government power and accountability (and the lack of it)..." (NYT)

FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE

-- Detailed data from the NYT: Trump is being "vastly outspent" by Biden in TV ads. "Both campaigns are spending by far the most money and airing the most ads in Florida..." (NYT)

-- Something to keep in mind as Trump's rallies roll on this week: They're entirely about ego and they "make no political sense," John Harwood writes... (CNN)

-- Speaking of the rallies, Fox News has resumed carrying his events live... I'll have more on this later in the week...

-- Trump's campaign mocked The Atlantic's Edward-Issac Dovere as a Biden staffer because Dovere was a Biden pool reporter on Sunday. He replied, "Here’s the Trump campaign making a show of attacking the press, when aides often follow up and ask to speak off the record after this kind of thing to say it's all tactics and a show..." (Twitter)

-- NBC's Garrett Haake after Trump's Saturday evening rally: "I’ve covered a half a dozen or so Trump rallies this cycle and this has been his most anti-media. Went after three of my colleagues by name, CNN twice, getting a good laugh at a 'CNN Sucks' chant. It rubs off on the crowd, who offered us more middle fingers and jeers than usual..." (Twitter)

-- And this was a very 2020 pool report filed Saturday night from Las Vegas: "Several people yelled ‘f**k you’ but it was unclear if it was directed at President Trump or the press since it occurred as marked press vans passed..."

Peak streaming

Brian Lowry writes: "We've seen a few weeks like this as the streaming services ramp up, but the aggressive acquisition of movie titles – and the shift of some theatrical releases to streaming – is creating a genuine logjam of content, and the jockeying for attention around it. This week, that includes HBO Max premiering its adaptation of Roald Dahl's 'The Witches' on Thursday, followed by a full-on flurry Friday: 'Bruce Springsteen's Letter to You' and the Bill Murray movie 'On the Rocks' (Apple TV+); the 'Borat' sequel (Amazon); the horror satire 'Bad Hair' (Hulu); and the animated 'Over the Moon' and limited series 'The Queen's Gambit' (Netflix)..."

>> Lowry adds: "The sheer volume of streaming content is another factor – along with a completely screwed-up calendar – in the poor ratings for sports, which, as Peter Baker noted on Twitter, is being "weaponized" to score political points. It’s worth noting, too, that Trump misrepresented ratings data long before he became president, back in the days when he was still claiming 'The Apprentice' was No. 1 when it clearly wasn't..."

>> Baker linked to this WaPo story by Ben Strauss titled "So many sports, so few viewers: Why TV ratings are way down during the pandemic." It's excellent...

"SNL" has a problem

"Saturday Night Live has a Jim Carrey problem," Karen Valby wrote for VF on Sunday. "He gives a bad Joe Biden when the country has never needed a good Joe Biden more."

Valby said Carrey is "a monkey tasked with playing a tortoise." And she's not the only one down on the "SNL" casting choice. On CNN's "New Day" Sunday morning, Victor Blackwell said to me, how long is Carrey on the hook for this impersonation? He wants Jason Sudeikis back in the role. I noted that NBC announced Carrey was on board for the "season..."

Lowry's take

Brian Lowry writes: "Under normal circumstances Carrey as Biden would be fine. But a lot of people see the election as too important for anything that even remotely undermines Biden, and 'SNL' hasn't really found its stride in terms of how to handle that. The larger and more fundamental problem is that these first few episodes have been pretty bad -- weak, poorly written cold opens; flabby sketches; and a marginal amount of memorable stuff from 'Weekend Update.' Nevertheless, the show still gets tons of attention because A) it reliably trends every week (the ratings have been high), so everyone feels obligated to recap it for traffic purposes; and B) the logistics of mounting the show amid Covid protocols has even further heightened the tendency to grade 'SNL' on a curve..."