Trump’s meta-lies have the character of libels—they do not simply spread falsehoods; they falsely and maliciously malign their institutional targets. He routinely claims that CNN, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, to take his favorite targets, willfully fabricate news in order to advance a partisan agenda. It is for this reason that ordinary fact-checking provides a wholly inadequate response to Trump’s lying. Such fact-checking presupposes confidence in the fact-checker, trust that Trump systematically undermines. For why would I accept your fact-checking if I do not trust your testing procedures? Needed, then, would be a meta-fact-checker, an institution that examines whether the fact-checking institutions can be trusted!

Lawrence Douglas, Will he go?: Trump and the looming election meltdown in 2020, New York, 2020, p. 48