'Dangerous in the extreme': Conservative writer slams Fox News for creating alternate reality of Mueller probe

Conservative writer Matthew K. Lewis has found himself appalled at Fox News and other Trump-friendly media organizations who are creating what amounts to an alternate reality around special counsel Robert Mueller's probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Writing in the Daily Beast, Lewis says that Fox's promotion of what he describes as an "alternate universe" -- along with President Donald Trump's promotion of the conspiracy theories surrounding it -- is "dangerous in the extreme" for American democracy.

"In the other America -- and make no mistake, there are tens of millions living in this alternative universe -- the Obama administration sought to wiretap and spy on the Trump campaign for completely nefarious reasons," he writes. "They were out to get him from day one."

What makes this particularly scary, he writes, is that Trump is using this parallel reality to justify calling for investigations into his political opponents.

"Make no mistake, what Trump said on Sunday was a big deal," he writes. "Imagine, for a second, that this was a Democratic president ordering a Democratic attorney general to investigate the last Republican administration. Imagine any president making this instruction to any AG. It's a step beyond where we've been, but it is consistent with Trump’s M.O., which is to accuse others of the thing he has been accused of doing."

He says it's high time for Republican congressional leaders to put their feet down and tell Trump that enough is enough -- but he doesn't hold out much hope for them doing so.

"The (apocryphal) line often attributed to Edmund Burke -- 'All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing' -- is especially true today," he writes.