People do understand the difference between the National Enquirer and Weekly World News, right?
The National Enquirer is a celebrity gossip tabloid primarily dealing with stories (usually from paid and unverified sources) about actual people. (At least that's been its focus for the past few decades.)
The Weekly World News is a sensational tabloid always dealing with absurd stories of the supernatural (aliens, bigfoot, Batboy, etc.) and really serves as entertainment purposes only (unless you are extremely, extremely gullible).
People saying "It's crazy that anyone would believe anything in the tabloids" are essentially writing off what Donald Trump did with the National Enquirer in 2016 as no big deal by failing to make that distinction.
If you're standing in line at the supermarket and see the WWN and a story about Batboy, you'd almost certainly think, "Ha-ha, that's stupid."
But if you're standing in line at the supermarket and see the NE and a story about Hillary Clinton secretly being sick, you might think, "Well, that's just the Enquirer of course, but...maybe?"
After all, while almost all Enquirer stories are just basic unverifiable gossip, there have been instances of a few blind-squirrel-catches-nut moments over the years where they actually did manage to break a real story.
And if you're someone who doesn't follow the mainstream news closely, and you're not very ideological on the left-right spectrum, but you vote every four years out of a general sense of civic duty, and you stand in the line at the supermarket every week, and every week there's a story about Hillary Clinton being sick, or Hillary Clinton in legal trouble, or Donald Trump being the victim of a false set-up...maybe it has an effect.
Even if you've never bought a copy of the National Enquirer in your life, or opened it up to read the actual story...it could have an effect. After all, unlike legitimate newspapers, the headlines are catchy, to the point, and in big letters. And accompanied by a big picture that always seems to underline the point of the story. (E.g. a picture of a sickly looking or angry Hillary Clinton.)
And if you live in a swing state where there's enough of these passive, impressionable voters to make a difference in the outcome of the election, it's a very serious thing that just went on.
So, yes, the Batboy and UFO jokes all seem like they're in good fun, but really, there's nothing funny at all about what happened in 2016.
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