Today the breaking news is that the first criminal indictments have been made and the accused have been told to report to law enforcement.

Other breaking noise is that Trump continues an apparently nervous tweet storm about how the investigation is a witch hunt and it is Hillary, not Trump, who should be investigated.

Our national embarrassment

Now because you are reading this, I assume that you are at least somewhat objective and open minded (or you are completely objective, tuned in, and know that Trump is unqualified to be president, a liar, pathologically self absorbed, and likely a crook).

For those others, who remain steadfast Trump supporters, who believe his desperate and distracting (and usually untrue) tweets, let's give them time. Up until when Nixon was finally confronted with the unequivocal evidence of his crimes (which led to him resigning rather than face impeachment and conviction of high crimes and misdemeanors), as much as 1/3 of the American electorate still supported him at that time. But in that last week prior to his resignation, many of his staunch supporters finally came around to the reality of who he really was and that he had to go for the good of the country.

Unfortunately, these days it's easier for the emotional reactionaries who still support Trump to hang onto their beliefs. This is because they live in an echo chamber of their own prejudices, their love for Trump, and his destruction of many of our social and governmental norms. The echo chamber of fact-free support is on-line social networking. Many Trump supporters and Hillary haters were influenced by false stories (that is, fake news) circulated on Facebook. Some of that was purchased by Russian fronts. Some was forwarded from propaganda sources like Breitbart news.

Those who still put credence in Trump's pathetic tweets obviously remain relatively fact free, and as a result lack the information necessary to separate truth from distracting falsehoods.

Real news organizations are usually correct in their reporting of current events -- not always, but usually -- and if a given report is wrong, the truth usually comes out rather quickly, and often not only by other organizations, but also by the same organization that initially got it wrong.

This is because real news organizations are professional; that is, they have long-accepted journalistic processes in place to help ensure that they get the reporting right. Now, because they are often at the forefront of breaking stories, they must rely on confidential sources, who may not have the whole story. Yet most real news outlets require at least two independent sources of a story or of supporting facts before they publish.

Even someone who relies simply on USA today will be more factually informed on current events than those who rely on social networks for their news. The best factual sources for news and current events (though they vary in depth of coverage and general focus) include the following (both hard copy and on-line versions):

• The New York Times
• The Washington Post
• The Wall Street Journal
• USA Today
• Major local newspapers (for example, in Detroit we have the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News)
• Time Magazine
• The New Yorker Magazine
• The Economist Magazine
• BBC News
• NPR News
• PBS News
• and others (are you getting the idea?)

[AN IMPORTANT SAME-DAY AFTERTHOUGHT....

I didn't mean to omit several trustworthy broadcast news sources including the following:

• ABC News
• CBS News
• NBC News
• CNN]

Get informed (with FACTS, not propaganda). Vote wisely for those who are objective but flexible enough to compromise reasonably. 

Make America great again -- dump Trump.