“There’s a sucker born every minute.”

Whether P.T. Barnum actually said this is unclear, but the point is no less powerful: Some folks will believe just about anything, especially if they want it to be true. Such was the case with Barnum’s “Fiji Mermaid,” and so it is with our mainstream media, which desperately wants to believe that there are racists around every corner and across our fruited plain.

As we mentioned this morning at the tail end of our story on Jimmy Kimmel, you were right to be skeptical of the incendiary claim that biracial NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace was the victim of a “hate crime” over the weekend at Alabama’s Talladega Superspeedway. We never saw so much as a picture of the “noose” in question, nor did we get any solid reporting about the chain of events that led the FBI to dispatch 15 — FIFTEEN — federal agents to Talladega to investigate this mysterious piece of knotted rope.

What we did get, though, was a heaping helping of Bubba’s self-promoting social-justice warfare. “Today’s despicable act of racism and hatred leaves me incredibly saddened and serves as a painful reminder of how much further we have to go as a society and how persistent we must be in the fight against racism,” he wrote. “Nothing is more important and we will not be deterred by the reprehensible actions of those who seek to spread hate. As my mother told me today, ‘they are just trying to scare you.’ This will not break me, I will not give in nor will I back down. I will continue to proudly stand for what I believe in.”

In short, Bubba “will not be deterred by the reprehensible actions of” … himself.

Wallace has plenty of support, both within the NASCAR community, where his fellow drivers all but washed his feet, and across the world of sports, where no less a money-grubbing ChiCom apologist than LeBron James has his six: “Sickening! @BubbaWallace my brother! Know you don’t stand alone! I’m right here with you as well as every other athlete. I just want to continue to say how proud I am of you for continuing to take a stand for change here in America and sports!”

Of course, this show of support came before the FBI made clear that there was no hate crime here and that the “noose” in question was actually nothing more than a garage-door pull rope — a rope that had been there since last year. Still, the mainstream media (and Bubba himself) keeps calling it a noose, which is either a desperate attempt to sloooowly walk back another phony story or a desperate attempt to imply that while the news was fake, its essence was legit. “Fake but accurate,” as The New York Times infamously put it many years ago.

To be sure, Bubba Wallace is no Jussie Smollett (pronounced Juicy Smool-YAY — language warning). After all, he didn’t stage a fake hate crime, and he didn’t file a false police report against those he perceived to be his enemies. But he did, without a doubt, repeatedly promote a baseless allegation of hatred and thereby fan the flames of racial unrest. And he did so because he wants us all to believe that he’s fighting the good and noble fight. And because he’s a narcissist.

Yes, Bubba Wallace is a narcissist. He made that clear when he tweeted back in 2017, “There is only 1 driver from an African American background at the top level of our sport. I am the 1. You’re not gonna stop hearing about ‘the black driver’ for years. Embrace it, accept it and enjoy the journey.”

“I am the 1.” To this day, it’s the pinned tweet on his Twitter page.

More recently, there’s this one: “Integrity..something nobody will ever be able to take away from me. ” If he does say so himself!

And this one, which peddles a die-cast version of his official “Black Lives Matter” car.

You get the picture. And you know the routine. “If you didn’t predict this outcome in the first ten second[s] of hearing the story,” asserted Dilbert creator Scott Adams, “you haven’t been paying attention for the past four years.”

There’s a journalist born every minute.