As for how the American public will react, Trump has already called his voters vicious, nasty and aggressive; and while this may have bemused a few, most appear to have accepted this description as a form of praise.
So if you think fake news is a problem now, wait until the internet explodes with Trump-administration-sourced rhetoric designed to confuse, divide and disenfranchise not just Americans but the world.
The tobacco lobby, which back in 1969 could be said to have invented the technique of the "expert challenge", will seem like schoolboy amateurs.
It's an obfuscatory ruse already well-utilised by climate change deniers, in which a group of industry funded scientists stridently disagrees with prevailing collective wisdom, setting up the shallow claim that "experts disagree".
The then-secret tobacco industry paper that first espoused this technique noted: "Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy."
This led Stanford University science historian Robert Proctor to coin the term "agnotology", which is the study of wilful acts to spread confusion and deceit, usually to sell a product or win favour.
The proliferation of such acts via "fake news" sites has already created numerous tin-hat conspiracies with their growing legions of followers; that these sites are not just supported by disaffected rebels in Third World countries, but established and used as a type of virtual weapon by many so-called "responsible" governments, should ring alarm bells for anyone capable of critical thought.
But an increasing number of citizens, here as anywhere, seem incapable of rationally critiquing the information they access, even at a very basic level, to establish whether it is based on truth or falsehood.
Which sets the stage for something as powerful as the US government to run a deeply divisive and disruptive propaganda campaign for or against anything it chooses.
Such as climate change.
Potentially, one term under Trump and his denialist cabinet could set the world back decades in trying to address this most pressing and complex issue - right at the time when any such delay could mean the difference between being able to take effective action, and being left bereft because the tipping points have all been reached.
With due respect to those trying their best to present information as unsullied by bias as possible, some in the mainstream media have been, and are failing to be, as strident about our likely demise as a race, thanks to human-induced climate change as they once were apologetic about the tobacco industry.
That failure, as much as the rise of fake news sites, provides Trump and co opportunity to revive and legitimise climate denial and thereby condemn us all.
At which point it will no longer matter whose "facts" you choose to believe.
Happy New Year.
