Rumor has it Walz was the thirteenth pick, and the first twelve guys said no.
That's why they're astroturfing so hard for the guy best known for forcing every elementary school in the state to put condoms in the boy's bathrooms.
"The media" didn't really exist at the time, it was a spoken radio drama that simply didn't say it was fictional.
The newspapers of the era had already been badly damaged by the revelation that they'd been covering up for Roosevelt being a legless cripple(because they all knew and had a deal with him to keep it quiet), so if anything people were less inclined to believe it than they would have been otherwise of you ask me.
Orson Welles, who once convinced a large portion of the country that we were being invaded by aliens, would be flabbergasted at just how many people fell for a completely made up disease with a blatantly poisonous fake cure.
Well yeah. The first statement was unwise, but he's like twenty, is he not? And after being catapulted into public notoriety for having to defend himself against terrorists, he's likely got quite a few of the wrong kind of people whispering in his ear.
Leftists will always claim fringe cases while demanding that normalization of monstrous evils. Infanticide should be legalized because once in a great while it might save the life of the mother, they say. Child mutilation should be legalized they say, because once in a great while someone is born mutated because their mother smoked crack or their parents were related. Tax slavery should be enacted they say, because some people are too stupid to make sound decisions. Normal people should be forcibly disarmed and forbidden to defend themselves they say, because lunatics snap kill people sometimes, nevermind that it's the liberals who allow the madmen to roam free.
Every time you see a liberal claiming something is a fringe case, the truth behind it is that they are arguing for the normalization of evil.
No that was Downey.