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aha note how some fever swamp BS sets of AG jihad eg 10 yo rape victim

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Right-wing media have long pinned wildfires on Democratic leadership and “bad forest management” to avoid acknowledging climate change and other complex factors

01/10/25

Written by Ilana Berger

Published 01/10/25

But at a time when wildfire season now appears to be year-round, right-wing media are ignoring the larger implications of the fires and the aggressive steps that cities in the West will realistically need to take to live with these blazes while protecting residents. While techniques such as thinning out small trees, shrubs, and other dry fuel, as well as prescribed burning, can help reduce the risk of large fires, unpredictable cycles of extreme flooding, heat, and drought are creating roadblocks. Improving emergency and resource management and climate-proofing homes and infrastructure must be part of the solution as well.

* Southern California saw record-breaking heat over the summer, followed by below-average rain, helping create a “disaster recipe” for fire conditions. Anthony Edwards, a meteorologist at the San Francisco Chronicle, wrote on social media, “Locally record hot summer followed by a near-record dry fall followed by the strongest wind event in 14 years. Energized powerlines strung across a landscape that is home to tens of millions of people. Disaster recipe.” The National Weather Service had warned the windstorm was likely to be the “most destructive” in over a decade and issued a warning for a “critical fire weather area” for Friday. Bluesky, [1/8/24; CBS, 1/8/24; NOAA, 1/10/25]

Forest management techniques like thinning are not foolproof, and some experts disagree on their efficacy.A 2021 Oregon State University study found that forest thinning in tandem with prescribed burning can “moderate fire behavior,” but some ecologists and studies suggest that mechanical forest thinning, or getting rid of smaller trees and shrubs to reduce fire fuel, is not always effective.}: For example, during an appearance onCNN Newsroom Live, Chad Hanson, a forest and fire ecologist and the president of the John Muir Project, noted that wildfires have also affected areas near forests that have been logged and thinned out already, saying it’s necessary to focus on “helping communities become fire-safe.” He also told the Los Angeles Times, “The fact is that forest management is not stopping weather- and climate-driven fires.” Los Angeles Times, [8/21/21; CNN, CNN Newsroom Live, 1/8/25; Oregon State University, [9/26/21]](https://news.oregonstate.edu/news/osu-study-thinning-moderates-forest-fire-behavior-even-without-prescribed-burns-%e2%80%93-while)

*Forest management is getting more difficult in a hotter, drier climate.}:In 2023, wildfire researchers found that climate change is making it more difficult for firefighters to carry out prescribed burns, a technique for mitigating wildfire that involves starting small controlled fires to prevent larger ones in the future. As reported by KQED, the research found that the number of “safe burn days,” when the wind, temperature, and humidity are appropriate for prescribed burns, “is expected to drop by 17% by the year 2060” across the West. Communications Earth & Environment, [10/3/23; KQED, 10/10/23]}:}:|

Even while prescribed burning is being held up by unpredictable weather, safety concerns, and long approval processes, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) has nevertheless been increasing the number of acres burned. }:According to The New York Times, Cal Fire “burned about 36,000 acres during the 2022-23 fiscal year” and its goal is to burn 50,000 annually going forward. In total, in 2023, 700,000 acres were treated to help protect against wildfires, with thinning, tree cutting, grazing, or some combination of these and other forestry tactics. But the amount of land that experts say would benefit from prescribed burns is massive, in part because the state was focused on fire suppression instead of fire prevention for many years. Firefighters have been stretched thin, and some say the state’s “byzantine environmental approval process, required under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA),” is slowing down controlled burns. The New York Times, [9/7/24, Cap Radio, 4/12/22; San Francisco Chronicle, 10/10/24]}:}:|

Right-wing media blamed the wildfires on environmentalists and failure to clear brush, flattening the issue

Newsmax host Rob Finnerty spoke with right-wing Hoover Institute fellow Victor Davis Hanson}:, who falsely claimed that there has been “no forest management” and the California leaders “don’t believe in cleaning the forest or they don’t believe in calculated and measured timber industry to clean it up.” Newsmax, *Finnerty*, [1/9/25]}:}:

{Frequent Fox News contributor and Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway }:praised Trump for “talking about this fire management issue that leads to fires in California — or it leads to out-of-control fires — since at least 2017.”She added, “He’s made this a big emphasis in his first administration and now he’s doing it again,” and complained that Californians are “not getting a lot for their tax dollars. They’re not getting the brush cleared.” Fox News, *America Reports*, [1/9/25]

{Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones }:claimed that the brush has “not been trimmed in decades.”He added: “It just looks like a wood pile. I mean, it's just brush piles of wood everywhere. Decades of dead grass. Just — it's a frickin' tender box. Then they don't trim the trees and brush back from the power lines. And I saw footage.” Infowars, *The Alex Jones Show*, [1/8/25]}:}:|

Fox host Sean Hannity and Leo Terell, whom Trump recently tapped for senior counsel for the Justice Department}:, claimed that California has completely neglected fire prevention. “It seems like there has been zero forest management by the government at all. Zero. None whatsoever,” said Hannity. Terell later said, “It’s not a priority to the far left. … They focus on denying their responsibility by yelling out climate change. … It’s a lie! It's poor management on the part of the Democrats. They do not look at fire prevention.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [1/8/25; Politico, 1/9/25]}:}:|

{ Disgraced former Republican lawmaker and OAN host Matt Gaetz blamed the fire on “liberals” for supposedly working “against sensible management of California's forests that would reduce the severity of routine regular wildfires.”Gaetz insisted that fires have gotten worse because “liberals have essentially thrown a match into a room with gasoline and then wondered why everything is on fire.”}: One America News, *The Matt Gaetz Show*, [1/8/25]

* Fox host Laura Ingraham highlighted Trump’s misleading comments about the cause of the fire, blaming it on “bad forest management” and “incompetence.” “Well, of course, we know where California liberals choose to spend billions, and we do know that their environmental fanaticism has shoved common sense thinking out the door. Now, while the winds are horrific, experts insist that bad forest management can make a bad situation worse. And Trump called this out six years ago. … He’s right. Incompetence kills.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [1/8/25]

MALL SAVED BY PVT FIRE DEPT?!

Rick Caruso, a developer who ran for mayor of Los Angeles against current Mayor Karen Bass}:, said on Fox News’America Reportsthat “the brush maintenance was a massive failure, has been for years.” “I would have made sure we would have had the brush removed in these neighborhoods that have been overgrown for decades,” he later said. Fox News, *America Reports*, [1/8/25]}:}:
Conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich wrote, “California does almost no wild brush clearing and let druggies camp out and start fires.” He continued: “Then when a big fire like in Pacific Palisades (shitlib central) happens, the narrative is climate change. It’s time to vote Republican!”}:Twitter/X, [1/7/25]}:}:

Right-wing YouTuber Benny Johnson blamed the fires on “environmentalists” that “don’t clear brush.”Johnson said, “Not to say that these people deserve it necessarily, but I am trying to say that they don’t clear brush because these environmentalists are such morons. They don’t like actually clear out the dead trees and limbs and sticks and stuff. … Oftentimes, the environmentalist policies are terrible for the environment.” He also called California a “single-party state controlled by environmentalist sociopaths.” YouTube,[1/7/25]VID]

Bonchie, a writer for right-wing site Red State, posted, “Democrats would rather watch California burn so they can blame ‘climate change’ for political reasons than just clean up brush and create more reservoirs. That's pretty gross when you think about it.”Twitter/X, [1/8/25]}:}:

{ Fox again parroted these claims, with Fox contributor Jason Chaffetz}: calling Trump “absolutely right” and blaming the wildfires primarily on a lack of clearing brush, saying, “Democrats have been the biggest impediment in doing so.”Fox News, *Outnumbered Overtime*, [9/14/20]

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mma

January 9, 2025, edition of Fox Business' Mornings with Maria

MARIA BARTIROMO (ANCHOR): Have we ruled out all outside agitators?

MARK TEPPER (GUEST): No. In fact, I think there were videos of some arsonists creating new fires. So no, I don't think that's been ruled out at all and given the terror attacks that we saw on January 1, I mean, it's certainly not outside the realm of possibility that that's happening. But you know, what's happening right now — at least for me — a lack of mitigation standpoint prior to this has to do with the fact that California is effectively a one-party system. And when you're operating under a one-party system, there's no accountability from the other party to help you make sure that you're doing what you should be doing.

BARTIROMO: That's a great point.

TEPPER: Gross incompetence. Having priorities backwards. All that stuff contributed to what's happening, not saying it caused it, but it certainly contributed.

BARTIROMO: But I'd like to know what kind of investigation is underway in terms of outside agitators. I mean, all of these people who have come into America and wanting to disrupt our lives. I would like to see an investigation to ensure that we know that there were no outside agitators starting these fires.

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mma

Right-wing media figures baselessly claim LA wildfires are burning out of control because the fire chief is an LGBTQ woman who supports DEI

As the fires burned, commentators claimed that DEI “is quite literally getting people killed”

Written by Payton Armstrong

Published 01/09/25 mma

Right-wing media figures are exploiting the devastating Los Angeles County wildfires to further their crusade against diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, suggesting the fires are burning out of control because LAFD's chief is an LGBTQ woman who supports DEI initiatives, declaring “DEI = DIE,” and claiming that “it literally leads to death.”

Uncontained wildfires in Los Angeles County have forced thousands to evacuate

ABC7/KABC, [6/5/24; Los Angeles Times, 1/8/25, 1/8/25]

Right-wing media repeatedly used disasters in 2024 to baselessly attack diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.After a series of equipment malfunctions with Boeing passenger jets, right-wing media rushed to blame the failures on DEI policies. Several commentators also linked the Baltimore bridge collapse to DEI programs, declaring that “DEI equals die,” and Fox News' Jeanine Pirro recently responded to the New Orleans terror attack by calling the police chief “a DEI hire.”}: Media Matters, [1/12/24, 1/25/24, 3/8/24, 7/15/24, 3/26/24, 3/30/24, 1/3/25]|

Effectiveness is. And when you sacrifice effectiveness for diversity, especially within a fire department, police force or military unit, people will die. I’m tired of innocent people’s lives being placed on the altar of equity. Enough.” Twitter/X, [1/8/25]

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AN 12 24

Throughout the 2024 election cycle, reproductive rights were an electoral vulnerability for Donald Trump. Though popular with the Republican base, his appointment of antiabortion judges gave serious pause to many key voting blocs, including undecided young men.

In pursuit of these voters, Trump’s strategy wasn’t demagoguery but comedy.

Trump’s October appearance on comedian Andrew Schulz’s podcast, “Flagrant,” demonstrated his approach to the touchy issue.

Schulz playfully invoked Trump’s youngest son, who’s a student at New York University – “Barron is 18. He’s unleashed in New York City. Are you sure you want to reverse Roe vs. Wade now?” After a beat, Trump laughed, Schulz laughed, and then, presumably, thousands of young male listeners joined in.

Trump continued with boilerplate answers about states rights, but this substance – as is so often the case – was divorced from the strategy. Schulz had helped Trump turn an unpopular position into a frat boy punchline, something to be discarded along with last night’s empties. Trump won that media cycle and, ultimately, a majority of the votes of young men on his way to a second White House win.IFrame Content Podcaster Andrew Schulz pokes fun at the touchy issue of abortion in an interview with Donald Trump on Oct. 9, 2024.

Vice President Kamala Harris, by contrast, appeared on mainstream comedy shows with aging, liberal audiences like “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” Pundits criticized her failure to engage young voters in online comedy platforms. They also urged liberals to develop a new crop of political comedians to match the influence of Schulz and podcaster Joe Rogan.

However, these criticisms of Harris’ strategy miss the failure of liberal comedians to evolve with media and political trends.

While Jimmy Kimmel cries and Jon Stewart rants, the right wing in the U.S. has successfully depicted itself as the new home for free speech and cutting edge comedy. We explored this development in our book, “That’s Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for Them.”

The right has become a home for comedians not by making political arguments through jokes, but by positing that there are funnier things to do than to argue.

A formula goes stale

Liberal comedy and political satire have stuck to the same formula of Stewart’s “The Daily Show” for much of the 21st century.

It goes something like this: A sarcastic, eloquent host uses meticulously researched data to describe a pressing social issue, and then delivers a punchline directed at right-wing hypocrisy. The resultant pairing of righteous laughter and anger has been repeated by “The Colbert Report,” “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee” and “Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj,” among other comedy programs.

These satirical shows filled the void left by an increasingly profit-driven news media. However, they have come to prioritize political preaching at the expense of laughs.

Perhaps Stewart’s most successful successor – and the best example of liberal satire’s patronizing tone – is HBO’s “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.” Because the show appears on prestige cable, Oliver has a bigger budget to tackle controversial topics in depth.

Indeed, journalists and academics alike have celebrated the “John Oliver effect,” in which viewers mobilize behind a cause shortly after the host devotes an episode to it, whether it’s vaccines or internet regulation.

Oliver’s long-form lectures can be compelling. However, his appeal is not to young undecided voters who can’t afford HBO, but to college-educated liberals predisposed to support progressive reforms.

Twice in a recentelection postmortem episode, he reminded viewers of topics his show has covered in depth, like a professor chiding students for not remembering recent lessons. In one segment about Trump’s disingenuous economic message, Oliver pleaded that his show had already “explained inflation for 24 human minutes.”

While Oliver’s exasperation can be amusing, he’s clearly more upset at – even disdainful of – the American electorate, chastising them for failing the final exam of election night.

For liberals to reconnect with young voters – especially young men – we think they have to reinvent political comedy. Doing so will mean moving beyond the haranguing that has long been its primary delivery style. This will be a challenge, however, as the right fortifies the relationship between its own comedians and political power.

Comedians like John Oliver and Jon Stewart tend to appeal to college-educated liberals predisposed to support progressive reforms. Brad Barket/Getty Images for Comedy Central

Rise of the right-wing comedy complex

Trump’s success with comedy is a result of the new relationship between digital media and the business of joking. For decades, liberals were thought to hold a monopoly on comedy. Moreover, there was little money to be made in comedy acts devoted to right-wing politics.

Since 2016, however, a new crop of right-wing comedians has taken to digital platforms and algorithmically driven audience targeting in order to change this reality.

Libertarian podcasters like Rogan have long danced around the political spectrum, finding diverse positions that intrigue his primary target of young male listeners. He routinely platforms right-leaning cultural and comedic voices, features them as guests, and promotes their shows and products. In doing so, he has helped create a de facto right-wing comedy network.

Although each comedian or show in this network doesn’t have the audience and impact of, say, “The Daily Show” in its prime, their aggregate strength is precisely targeted at coveted young consumers and potential voters.

It is no coincidence that the most heralded stops on Trump’s October podcast tour were shows hosted by three regulars on “The Joe Rogan Experience”: Schulz, comedian Theo Von and libertarian scientist Lex Fridman. Trump also appeared on Rogan’s show for a three-hour episode.

Changing styles and platforms

Importantly, the type of political comedy featured on these programs is distinct from that of liberal satire of the past two decades.

“The Daily Show,” “Last Week” and their ilk dazzle viewers in 30-minute episodes using intricate arguments and sardonic punchlines.

Rogan and his affiliates hang out for hours, and audiences can listen as they go about their daily routines. In the process, podcast hosts shape their audience’s taste in culture, technology and recreation in what’s known as parasocial bonding.

Trump’s appearance on Von’s podcast “This Past Weekend,” for example, featured little in the way of biting jokes and rollicking laughter. Instead, Von and Trump held a meandering conversation full offunny, personal anecdotes about drug use interspersed with gestures to political topics.

Comedy styles are cyclical. In the 1950s, stand-up comedian Mort Sahl would read a newspaper on stage, peppering in sarcastic observations about the day’s headlines. The Smothers Brothers played with yo-yos before they introduced protest songs. The apolitical observational humor of Jerry Seinfeld reigned supreme in the 1980s and ’90s.

The 2000s liberal satire of Stewart and Oliver was driven by cable television industry mandates to court young men. The tastes and media habits of this audience have moved on, but liberal comedy has failed to follow them.

Nick Marx, Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies, Colorado State University and Matt Sienkiewicz, Associate Professor of Communication and International Studies, Boston College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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mma 12 24

Right-wing media use reported drone sightings to push conspiracy theories

With bizarre speculation about aliens, missing nuclear weapons, and government plots to fake an alien invasion or hinder a forthcoming Trump presidency, right-wing media figures have stoked panic over recent reports of drone sightings

Written by Jack Winstanley & Gideon Taaffe

Research contributions from Jack Wheatley

Published 12/20/24 mma

Even though officials have stated that recent reports of unidentified drone sightings were mostly innocuous “commercial drones” or “even stars that were mistakenly reported as drones,” right-wing media figures have peddled conspiracy theories alleging the sightings indicated some sort of nefarious activity. While some have pushed wild claims about a supposed “dirty bomb” missing in New Jersey and alien UFOs coming to Earth, others have baselessly alleged various government conspiracy theories, including a “psyop” to hinder Trump's forthcoming presidency, a fake alien invasion, or a power grab.

Some contend the drones are part of a government plot to fake an alien invasion. This idea mirrors the “Project Blue Beam” conspiracy theory alleging global elites will create an alien invasion to justify authoritarian control.

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mma

Right-wing media resume misleading attacks on hurricane recovery efforts after Biden announces humanitarian assistance for Africa

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Ilana Berger

Published 12/13/24 9

Right-wing media ramped up attacks on the Biden administration’s hurricane recovery efforts in southern Appalachia after President Joe Biden announced $1 billion in humanitarian aid for Africa.

On December 3, Biden became the first president to visit the African country of Angola, where he announced new aid “to address food insecurity and other urgent needs of refugees, internally displaced persons, and affected communities in 31 African countries,” according to the United States Agency of International Development.

According to Oxfam, a federation of international nongovernmental organizations addressing global poverty, “more than 24 million people in southern Africa face hunger, malnutrition and water scarcity due to drought and floods.” Oxfam also described southern Africa as a “climate disaster hotspot.”

Earlier this year, FEMA was the subject of right-wing attacks falsely accusing the agency of squandering disaster relief money on immigrants, preventingvictims of Hurricane Helene from accessing aid, and even seizing the land of people whose homes had been destroyed. Conspiracy theories about government weather manipulation also circulated online.

Right-wing media falsely accused the Biden administration of favoring Africa over hurricane-stricken communities in the U.S., reviving harmful FEMA misinformation

Fox News, *Fox & Friends First*, [12/4/24]

related

  1. ### Right-wing media lies about the federal response to Hurricane Helene

:{10/04/24

  1. ### How a lie about immigrants and FEMA disaster aid spread across Fox News

:{10/11/24

  1. ### As social media posts calling for violence against FEMA gained traction, fear about armed groups forced the agency to proceed with caution

10/18/24

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aha note how some fever swamp BS sets of AG jihad eg 10 yo rape victim

Right-wing media launched a migrant witch hunt in rural Indiana

Hate groups, a local politician, and the Heritage Foundation tried to take advantage of the misinformation-fueled panic

Written by Olivia Little

Published 12/05/24 MMA

Months after the Trump campaign’s flagrant lies about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, went viral, right-wing media continue to fuel fear of Haitian migration. In Indiana, a small city was the focus of a misinformation-fueled migrant witch hunt led by right-wing media that emboldened hate groups and is now being used as a case study to justify anti-immigrant policies.

Logansport is a rural city with a population of about 18,000 residents. In mid-September, Kayla Blakeslee, a right-wing talk radio host based out of Fort Wayne, Indiana, posted on Facebook screenshots of emails that claimed “20,000 plus Haitian immigrants” were “dropped off” in Logansport over the last six months. Blakeslee wrote, “Is Logansport, IN the new Springfield, OH???”

Blakeslee’s factually inaccuratepost — the mayor said the numbers originated from a social media satire page — was the first snowball in an avalanche of misinformation and hate that spread about Haitian migrants in Logansport.

Logansport's mayor acknowledged that there is an increased immigrant population, but noted that the community has been diverse for “a very long time.” According to census data, Logansport has about a 30 percent Latino population.

Story spreads through the right-wing ecosystem

Central Indiana’s Fox affiliate picked up the story on October 10, with the headline “Logansport officials say immigrant population growth is unsustainable.”

The report pointed to “strain on schools,” first quoting a county health department administrator who said she didn’t “think our school system can sustain what they are doing right now.” The district’s superintendent, the actual authority on the district’s capacity to handle new immigrant students, was optimistic, saying, “We can handle it.”

The report also pointed to strain on a local hospital because of increased births and emergency room visits, but the hospital responded by issuing a statement pointing in part to shuttered obstetrics departments at other area hospitals as a cause of increased births at Logansport Memorial Hospital.

Right-wing X account Libs of TikTok quickly shared the accompanying video segment.

A slew of other right-wing X accounts then amplified the story, including RNC Research and Jack Posobiec.

The day after the Fox affiliate’s report came out, Indiana’s now-newly elected lieutenant governor, Micah Beckwith, posted false claims about Logansport’s migrant population, including a conspiracy theory that a “money trail” was responsible for “DUMPING double a town’s population in unassimilated migrants.” Beckwith also cited Blakeslee’s coverage of the story.

On October 14, Breitbart published a story about Haitians in Logansport, claiming that the town has been “targeted by the Biden regime” and that “Biden has dumped thousands of Haitians there.”

On October 16, Fox News’ Fox & Friends hosted a segment about Logansport’s “migrant influx” and The New York Post spotlighted the segment in a separate report.

The following day, Blakeslee interviewed Beckwith, who described the increased Haitian population as “an invasion” and argued that Logansport officials should deport legal Haitian immigrants.

Newsmax aired a segment about Logansport’s “immigrant influx” on October 19.

Education quickly became the focal point of the manufactured migrant crisis, even though the district’s superintendent stated that the system can handle the additional students.

The New York Post published two pieces attacking migrant students in Logansport, claiming in an editorial that migrants are “robbing Logansport kids of an education” and in a news report that “kids are being pushed out of schools.”

On the same day, the Daily Mail published a piece about the “tiny Midwestern town where ‘explosion’ of Haitian migrants is overwhelming schools,” writing that “locals … say students are being muscled out of public schools by an influx of thousands of foreign newcomers.” The Daily Mail quoted a retired teacher, who said that “the native born are now a minority in the local school system.”

The next day, Fox News’ America Reports hosted a segment about Logansport, which Libs of TikTok later posted on X.

Hate groups take advantage

On October 23, Logansport’s local newspaper, the Pharos-Tribune, reported that stickers recruiting for white nationalist hate group Patriot Front were found in the city.

Around the same time, at least one Logansport resident received a flyer from the “Trinity White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan” reading “3RD WORLD IMMIGRANTS BRING 3RD WORLD CONSEQUENCES.”

Springfield residents faced a similar situation when hate groups swarmed the city after false claims about Haitian immigrants there went viral.

Indiana’s AG calls for investigation, and the Heritage Foundation uses Logansport to support anti-immigrant policies

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita responded by launching an investigation into the local health department, school system, and a Tysons Food plant (Logansport’s largest employer), seeking information about supposed human trafficking and other issues.

Rokita said the investigation is “focused on the coordinated efforts among international and local nonprofit ‘refugee resettlement’ organizations and employers, like Tyson Foods, to bring large numbers of migrants to Indiana.”

On November 19, the Heritage Foundation published commentary about Logansport, using the city to claim rural American towns are struggling due to an influx of immigrants.

Heritage proposed that Indiana and other states should “pass legislation prohibiting business licenses for organizations involved in facilitating illegal migration” and “prohibit the use of any state and local taxes from funding immigration [lawyers] and NGOs providing legal representation for aliens.”

President-elect Donald Trump has been emboldened by anti-migrant misinformation, threatening mass deportation and promising to end Temporary Protective Status, a program that allows people from select countries, including Haiti, to live and work in the United States. Ending TPS would likely force family separations and negatively impact communities, like Logansport, where TPS holders have lived and been employed for years.

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aha // bolster neg attack ads dark $

no lnx

alternet-

Until there’s a liberal media apparatus, the Democrats will live in Trump’s America

Donald Trump gestures next to Patty Morin, whose daughter Rachel was killed in Maryland last year, during a campaign rally at Santander Arena in Reading, Pennsylvania, U.S., November 4, 2024. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

John Stoehr November 21, 2024

It takes time for things to stick properly, so please bear with me while I say again that Kamala Harris did not lose the election because of things she said. She lost because of things Donald Trump said she said.

So Democratic Party critics are basing their criticism not on what Harris said but on what Trump said she said, as they are accepting as true the allegations of the president-elect against the vice president.

By focusing on things that Trump said she said, rather than on things she said, these critics are missing the real lesson from the 2024 election – that her policies were not the determining factor in her defeat. It was the ear-splitting volume of the accusations against her and the absence of equal and opposite accusations against him.

In the final weeks of the election, the Trump campaign spent more than $29 million on television ads attacking Harris on trans rights. It was “by far, the biggest focal point when it comes to Trump’s ad spending — one of the best barometers of messaging priority there is,” wroteThe Bulwark’s Marc Caputo on October 24. “By contrast, the campaign has spent $5 million over that same time period on TV ads on the economy, making that topic their fifth-most emphasized.”

According to a new study by a Democratic pollster, Trump’s attack ads largely explain the outcome of the election. The report calculated the percentage of swing voters who voted for Trump in the belief that Harris supported federal funding of transgender surgeries on undocumented immigrants. It was a whopping 83 percent.

Conclusion:

“These voters — who remained open to persuasion until the very end — delivered not just a rejection of Harris but what they believed the Democratic Party stands for, absorbing rightwing narratives.”

Harris didn’t lose because of things she said.

She lost because of things Trump said she said.

Critics of the Democratic Party will point out that, ackshually, Harris did say she supported access to gender-transition care for undocumented immigrants. But that was once, in 2019, during her first run, and it wasn’t a campaign pledge. She wasn’t running on it. She gave an affirmative answer to an ACLU questionnaire. This year, her campaign explicitly rejected the questionnaire as having any bearing on her platform as the 2024 nominee. Indeed, she did what critics say she should do. She backed away from lefty woke things like trans rights.

And it didn’t matter.

It didn’t matter because what she said, the substance of her message wasn’t as important to the outcome of the election as the volume of it, which is to say, the substance of what she said could not be heard through the din of the rightwing media apparatus. As media expert Matthew Sheffield said today, nothing was going to get through that, not even the shared reality of the economy. “Through seven TV channels, more than 1,500 talk-radio stations, and millions of social media posts. Republicans sold a fictional narrative about the economy to unsuspecting Americans. Trump inherited a strong economy from Obama and then destroyed it. Democrats never told the story.”

They couldn’t. No one was listening, because no one could hear it. Trump’s attack ads worked in tandem with thousands of media sites, including the one formerly known as Twitter, that have been operating around the clock since 2020, often in parallel with the Washington press corps. They were able to take one small thing Harris said years ago and turn it into a caricature so ridiculous that a convicted felon like Donald Trump could look like a viable candidate by comparison.

It was so loud some voters didn’t know what the Democrats stand for.

And that includes some Democratic voters.

Harris won more votes than Trump did in 2020 (she now has 74.3 million to his 74.2), but she did not win as many as Joe Biden in 2020. (He won 81.3 million votes, the most ever, while Trump won 76.8 million this year, the second-most ever.) Where did they go?

You could say voter suppression laws, but I think a bigger source of “voter suppression” was lies and propaganda, directly or indirectly from rightwing media outlets or from anti-trans attack ads, or in the form of “false-flag efforts” funded by billionaires, including Twitter’s Elon Musk, to make Democratic voters feel like there’s no point in voting for Harris. “The entire goal of the campaign was to push her numbers down,” a top Trump adviser told the Post. Clearly, it worked.

The volume of the rightwing media apparatus, especially when it’s in sync with the Washington press corps, is so loud that it can feel like the ultimate arbiter of our political reality. As one CNN anchor put it this morning, this is Donald Trump’s America. We’re just living in it. Until there’s a liberal media apparatus, one that can meet bad info with good info, the Democrats will continue living in Trump’s America, too.

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fox staff agy

November 15, 2024, edition of WNYC's On the Media

MATT GERTZ (SENIOR FELLOW, MEDIA MATTERS): Donald Trump is using Fox News as a staffing agency.

BROOKE GLADSTONE (HOST): Matt Gertz is the senior fellow at the left-leaning Media Matters for America. He says it's worth revisiting all that we learned in the first term about Trump's relationship with his cable news channel of choice.

GERTZ: Fox & Friendshas, for a long time, been his favorite show. Pete Hegseth, the potentially incoming defense secretary, has been working as a co-host of Fox & Friends'weekend edition for the last several years.

GLADSTONE: What should we know about him and his career trajectory from Fox News contributor to secretary of defense nominee?

GERTZ: What Hegseth was able to do, after catching Trump's eye, was get Donald Trump to sign on to his own aims, which during Trump's first administration was securing executive clemency for several service members who had been accused or convicted of war crimes.

GLADSTONE: Yeah, the killing of civilians.

GERTZ: He put family members of various accused or convicted war criminals on the show to talk up how they had been persecuted.

...

GERTZ: This is how Trump gets his news. This is how his worldview is changed. It's one segment at a time.

GLADSTONE: He has a certain set of skills, certainly as a Fox News host, right? But secretary of defense needs a different set of skills.

GERTZ: Right. The set of skills that you need for being a Fox News host is understanding how to push the buttons of the MAGA faithful. And the way that Fox hosts traditionally do that is by making those viewers afraid, making those viewers angry.

GLADSTONE: Providing enemies?

GERTZ: Providing enemies. Obviously that is not the job of defense secretary. We're talking about a sprawling bureaucracy that employs nearly 3 million service members and civilian employees that has a budget of hundreds of billions of dollars. It's a serious job for serious people.

GLADSTONE: You've also noticed that this revolving door also works the other way. Several Trump staffers signed on with Fox News after Trump left office.

GERTZ: During or after his term, yes. Tom Homan was previously the head of ICE. After he retired from ICE in summer of 2018, he got a job at Fox News. He would denounce Democrats for standing against Trump's border policies. He would call for evermore draconian measures. He would say the things that Donald Trump wanted to hear.

...

GERTZ: Now he's gone through the revolving door; now he's coming back into the administration.

GLADSTONE: You have observed that the more often you go on Fox News, the more likely you are to clinch one of these top jobs in the Trump administration. One Fox frequent flyer was Congressman Matt Gaetz, just nominated attorney general.

GERTZ: We have counted at least 347 weekday Fox appearances that Gaetz did from August 2017 through Election Day of 2024. He's actually not the most frequent Fox guest to be taking a jump to the administration though. His Florida colleague, Rep. Michael Walz, who is Trump's pick for national security adviser, actually made at least 569 weekday Fox appearances, 176 since January 2023, which is the most of any member of Congress in that period.

GLADSTONE: Wow. The last nominee -- Tulsi Gabbard -- is a former Democrat-turned-MAGA Fox News contributor and more. Is that how she caught Trump's eye?

GERTZ: In Gabbard's case, she became a favorite of Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News star host. And as she underwent a sort of political transformation that brought her further and further onto the right, Fox was an opportunity for her to rebrand herself. Tulsi Gabbard is the pick for director of national intelligence. It's a position that oversees the 18 U.S. intelligence agencies. It's also responsible for the presidential daily brief, though that is somewhat less important in a Donald Trump administration, as Donald Trump rather famously ignores his daily briefing. He would take advice from Fox News hosts, either through their programs or he'd reach out to them directly. Those are the experts he wanted to hear from, not people with actual subject matter expertise.

mma

A comprehensive review of the revolving door between Fox and the Trump administration

07/22/19 1:43 PM EDT

  1. ### With “Border Czar” Tom Homan, Trump restarts the revolving door between Fox and his administration

11/12/24 11:03 AM EST

  1. ### The MAGA propaganda machine helped carry Trump back to the White House — and it’s not done poisoning America

11/07/2

mma 11 24

Angelo Carusone and Molly Jong-Fast discuss how American discourse is “pickled in misinformation and right-wing rage”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Angelo Carusone Fast Politics excerpt, 11/7/24

November 7, 2024

CitationFrom the November 7, 2024, edition of IHeart's Fast Politics with Molly Jong-Fast

MOLLY JONG-FAST (HOST) Let's talk about growing power from the fringes. So does that look like McCarthyism?

ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS): Yeah. But you know what's so different about — and that's one of the reasons why you mentioned McCarthyism as opposed to, say, the John Birch Society. Right? Because McCarthy actually was able to get some power. Right?

And whereas the John Birch Society, they hey. Yeah. They were influential, but they didn't —. Here's the difference, and it gets it, and there's a modern analog to it. The difference is that America has always had fringes, just like any society. We've had a little bit more fringes. In part, that's what makes us a little spicy. Our fringes are kind of a feature in a way, but what we haven't had is the fringes being connected. Right? And so you can't build power unless you connect otherwise disconnected audiences.

That's where McCarthyism comes in. Obviously, McCarthy was a demagogue, so the tool was demagoguery. But what it did was it connected otherwise disconnected audiences, and he used a platform that he had to do that. And what we have now, the modern analog, and, like, to your point about McCarthyism, in a way, it's McCarthyism on steroids because McCarthy still needed to rely on traditional means. And one of the things that we have now is that you have extremely powerful algorithms that connect otherwise disconnected audiences.

:{If you like one piece of QAnon content or two pieces QAnon content, even if you don't intentionally know it's QAnon or not, the algorithms will feed you more and more and more of that and move you down a rabbit hole and move you and intensify or capture you. They will convert you and they will connect you to new people. :{And so that is partly what we're dealing with now is that we are dealing with a McCarthyism that does not need to dilute itself to speak to mass audiences.}:

And believe it, the McCarthy thing strangely enough was diluted. It needed to be diluted in order to reach broader and broader audiences. What happens when you don't need to dilute to have the same reach and saturation because the tools that we're using, the tech platforms, are automatically distributing that content to those individuals. And I just wanna make one point on that because I think it helps tie into the outcomes here.}:

The major platforms had put in place many safeguards since the last election about about about what was recommended, about who they were recommending content to, about not accelerating extremism. And in the last year, most of those safeguards have all been systematically eliminated or reduced as a result of pressure from right-wing influencers. They worked the refs at these platforms. So they knew what they were doing because they knew that in order to scale and execute organizing power on the fringes, you needed the runway and the tools that these tech platforms provided. So I would say it looks like McCarthyism, but strangely enough, a more raw and nondiluted version of McCarthyism.

And I don't think we should joke about the demon thing. When I said that before, it's a joke, but think about it. There's the increase of Christian nationalists, the rise of this evangelical strain, of this intense religious strain, this idea that there are demons among us doing bad things — that is going to be something that they start to name. They're going to start identifying — I'm not even joking. When I talk about Qanon and, like, you know, back in 2018, people, donors, supporters, they really thought I was losing my mind.

And I talk about demons now, not because like, it's a focus point of mine, but I look where they get their information. And it's like they're gonna start screaming that person's a demon. That person's being motivated by demons. And that is a tactic of the same thing that McCarthy is. They will have — they will they will build up new boogeymen, new labels that they can then apply to individuals in order to harass them, persecute them, and all of that is designed to sort of make examples out of people fast so that more and more people duck and cover.

JONG-FAST: Yeah. Let's just keep going with this for a minute. What do we think that we do next? I was on a show this morning. It was on the late-night MSNBC, and we're talking about, like, what went wrong.

CARUSONE: Yeah.

JONG-FAST: Which is what we're gonna be talking about for the next five hundred — until the midterms. And one of the things that, you know, there was a lot of, like, this and that, and this went wrong, this went wrong. But, like, one of the things that I think is that it seems to me like there is a real information problem. Right? Like, we — there are parts of this country that don't have news. The news they're getting is red sludge. Remember how, you know, the thing that Elon shared after Paul Pelosi has been you know what I mean? So what — what's the solve there?

CARUSONE: I would say there are three sort of immediate things, and they — and part of it's you know, a lot of this all starts too with the with the recognition early on that I was describing about how they're organizing and building power. And because that — sort of then is you're working toward countering that.

I think there's sort of three things that are important in terms of the next step here. One is everyone I think a lot of people talk about messaging and say, oh, we need better messaging. I look at it a slightly different way. You know, there's three ways that you can talk to somebody. You can talk to their head, their heart, or their gut. That's it. It doesn't matter what the message is. It's either to their head, their heart, or their gut.

And if you look at the bulk of Republican and conservative and right-wing message you know, messaging, what they're saying, it's almost all to people's gut. Sometimes it'll be to their to their heart, never to their head. If you look at Democratic messaging, it's almost always to people's heads, sometimes their heart, never to their gut. And why that matters is that we live in — we have this information asymmetry, but obviously people say, well, not that many people watch the news or read papers. Sure. But they still live in an information world because they — you get it through word-of-mouth.

You get — you don't get the individual facts or the threads, but you get the narrative. We all live in a narrative or narratives. And when that narrative when the right wing has narrative dominance, and as you noted, that narrative dominance is really just a reflection of right-wing sludge, you're just pickled in misinformation and right-wing rage all the time. Even if you don't consume a drop of it, you're still pickled in it because your friends are, because indirectly you're getting it, it's on the television, you see the chyron when you're picking up your bagel in the morning. You form a narrative. That's what happens. And so I think we need to, 1, think about how it is that we communicate, and communicators need to recognize that we need to rethink about that.

The second, there were two more structural pieces. One is that there's no shortage of creators on our side, but the one thing that the right-wing does, and they've done this for decades and they do it better, is they invest in people.

There's no reason why our content creators should not be getting — have to have other jobs. You know? Some of our best people are you know, it's not their primary position. They're not full-time, you know, you know, video creators or podcasters. It's something they do on the side incidentally, and we've never really made robust investments in them, whereas they have, and they have a pipeline for that.

JONG-FAST: Which they have. Yeah.

CARUSONE: You know, there are people on Instagram that got grants from Charlie Kirk years ago that will make their way to or have already made their way to Daily Wire podcasts after a few years. Right? And that's how it works. And so you get the benefits immediately of you balance out the scales because you have your own people out there pushing information, and it's it's authentic. You're not trying to come in and control it, but then you're also building revolving capital in businesses that are designed to build and shape narratives. So unless that challenge is confronted, you know, and liberals are so burned by what they — by Air America. It's like, well, we tried to combat right-wing radio in the ninety you know, in the late nineties and early two thousands and it failed. So let's give up forever. You know? And that's a mistake.

And then the last thing I'll say is — so one is we need to do grapple with that, and that's not no. We'll spend one point five billion dollars on ads that we know don't work, but we won't spend a hundred million dollars to incubate and seed a new generation of creators and talkers and storytellers. That's ridiculous. That's stupid.

And that's a mistake. And then the third thing I'd say is that the tech platforms are going to kill us. They are. And we need to deal with that. And the Democrats you know, Republicans worked the refs in newsrooms, and then they took the same strategy.

JONG-FAST: And it worked.

CARUSONE: And it worked. And it worked. And they did it again here. You know, every time you know, YouTube or another major platform rolled back another election policy as a result of right-wing pressure, there was no Democratic counter-response.

There was no talk of them cheating or yelling and screaming. I wasn't surprised by what happened with Jeff Bezos or what we saw in Silicon Valley as the spring rolled by because those seeds were sown months ago. They were scared from Republican pressure that they were getting. And that needs to be something that Democrats really grapple with. And it's not only because that will help, again, balance out the scales, but it's also that they'll maybe get some insights into that the political landscape is realigning. They need to be more responsive to what is happening, and that political landscape is actually a reflection of what the larger information landscape is.

You know? Obviously, I'm at Media Matters, whenever I talk to them about the media, people say, well, not that many people watch CNN or read The New York Times. Like, sure. But they get a podcast secondarily. They sit online. They get push alerts on their phones. All these things add up.

JONG-FAST: Right, it's downstream.

CARUSONE: Yes. And that's it. And Republicans understand, and Trump in particular, you know, I think we need to internalize the lesson. He's a media creature, and he was able to do a lot because he is a media creature.

And, you know, part of what allowed people to say, oh, he doesn't really mean it is a thing called kayfabe, which exists in WWE. It's a wrestling thing. It's a character. And people sort of— all the stuff that people that really has turned him off to people, they say, oh, but he's just a character. No one thinks the Undertaker really murders their villain in the, you know, their opponent in the ring and brings them underground. It's a joke. And I think a lot of times, what Trump was able to do was not only manipulate the media to have narrative dominance and to coordinate, you know, take advantage of this massive right-wing megaphone that they've had, but also rely on the benefit of the doubt and the sort of the way that consumers engage with those characters and in particular him. And we need to recognize that that is a thing that we're gonna have to grapple with as well because he won't be the last. That's the scary thing.

Tucker will be a rising political force, and we need to accept that as a thing that is true. We will have to accept that, look out the trail, and look who performed in terms of engagement. Very few people cut across right the right-wing landscape in the way that Trump does, and Tucker is one of those few figures. Obviously, Musk as well. That's it.

That's the next step. And it doesn't solve everything, but I don't think circular firing squad or trying to figure out some of the micro things that would have been different are gonna be helpful because what took place here is macro, and we need to think about it at a bigger level.

---

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mma

Right-wing media amplify baseless claims that touch screen voting machines in Kentucky are flipping votes

Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams dispelled the claim: “There is no ‘vote-switching.’ The voter confirmed that her ballot was correctly printed as marked for the candidate of her choice. Get your voting information from legitimate sources.”

Written by Jack Winstanley

Research contributions from Alex Kaplan & Shelby Jamerson

Published 11/01/24 mma

Right-wing and far-right media have amplified a baseless claim that touch screen voting machines in Kentucky are flipping votes from former President Donald Trump to Vice President Kamala Harris, with similar claims emerging from Texas. Local election officials in each state have rebutted the claims, with one Kentucky official saying, “There is no scenario in which a voter would be forced to cast a ballot that they believe did not reflect their intentions.”

Election officials in several states have rebutted social media posts claiming that voting machines are flipping votes

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YouTube let right-wing figures undermine the 2024 election results even before any votes were cast

Media Matters found at least 22 right-wing channels on YouTube that pushed election misinformation from May through August, such as baselessly claiming the 2024 contest would be “rigged” against Trump

Written by Payton Armstrong, Jack Winstanley, Noah Dowe, Ben Van Bloem & Kayla Gogarty

Published 10/31/24 mma

After rolling back its election misinformation policy last year, YouTube allowed right-wing media figures to undermine confidence in the 2024 election results even before any votes were cast, with streamers asserting that “the only way this election can be won from the left is if it's stolen,” suggesting that “illegal ballots” might be “slipped in” in Pennsylvania, and claiming that Democrats are trying “to rig and steal the election” including with an “illegal alien push.”

In December 2020, after states certified their election results, YouTube began removing content with false claims that widespread fraud had changed the outcome of the election, but the platform reversed that policy in June 2023, saying that it would “stop removing content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches occurred in the 2020 and other past US Presidential elections.” (The decision was cheered by right-wing media.)

Over the last year, right-wing creators have exploited YouTube’s policy rollback, especially in the months leading up to the 2024 presidential election. In July, for instance, Media Matters reported that after becoming co-chair of the Republican National Committee in March, Lara Trump repeatedly engaged in election denial on her show that streams on YouTube.

Right-wing podcaster Steven Crowder even acknowledged the policy change during an August stream on the platform, saying, “Here’s another way that they try to steal this election from you. And we’re allowed to say that on YouTube now, which is great.”

New Media Matters study finds hundreds of videos on YouTube with election misinformation

According to our study, former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani was the most prolific election misinformer, accounting for 77 of the 286 videos, and right-wing streamer Benny Johnson had the most videos that we observed with preroll ads.

We found that in the two months after WABC canceled Giuliani’s radio shows (May 10 through July 12), he relentlessly claimed on YouTube that the 2020 election was “stolen” and Democrats were “going to cheat” in the 2024 election. More details on these findings can be found here.

We also found Johnson pushed election misinformation in dozens of monetized YouTube videos from May through August. These videos — which each included preroll ads, paid promotions, and/or Super Chats — have earned millions of views. More details on these findings can be found here.

These claims included that the election process is “rigged” against Trump, that the legal cases against him constitute “election interference,” that Democrats want and are enabling noncitizens to vote in order to win the election, and that Kamala Harris was “illegally installed” as the Democratic nominee in a “coup” against Joe Biden.

Some examples Media Matters identified include:

Share

CitationFrom the June 20, 2024, video streamed on YouTube by Benny Johnson

* Donald Trump Jr.: “Democrats to me today could show up on the evening of November 5 with five billion ballots … and with a straight face, tell us it was a landslide in the freest and fairest election in the history of the world.” In an interview conducted at the Republican National Convention, Trump Jr. argued “there’s nothing they won’t do.” YouTube, [7/18/24]

CitationFrom a July 23, 2024, video uploaded to YouTube by Just the News

CitationFrom a July 18, 2024, video streamed on YouTube by StevenCrowder

Trump has faced four criminal cases. In May, a jury found Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records after the presentation of extensive dockets of evidence detailing many of his violations of New York law. In the federal election subversion case, special counsel Jack Smith recently released documents revealing some of the evidence against Trump. In the other cases, the evidence related to the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago has been well documented, and the Georgia indictment against Trump relied at least partially on public accounts of Trump asking Gov. Brian Kemp to “find 11,780 votes.”

Some examples Media Matters identified include:

CitationFrom a May 22, 2024, video uploaded to YouTube by The Article III Project

CitationFrom a June 14, 2024, video uploaded to YouTube by The Article III Project

Some examples Media Matters identified include:

CitationFrom an August 19, 2024, video streamed on YouTube by Benny Johnson

John Solomon, editor-in-chief for Just the News,}: claimed that “the strategy and motive of the Democrats and liberals” was to “stack the decks in blue cities and blue states and, too, of course to open the door to noncitizen voting.” YouTube, [5/15/24; Media Matters, 10/17/19]|

CitationFrom a July 11, 2024, video streamed on YouTube by Just the News

Video

CitationFrom a June 5, 2024, video uploaded to YouTube by The Right View with Lara Trump

CitationFrom a July 25, 2024, video uploaded to YouTube by Tucker Carlson

Some examples Media Matters identified include:

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MMA 10 24

During former President Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City, podcaster Tony Hinchcliffe attacked Puerto Rico, claiming it’s “literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean.”

Although the remarks sparked outrage, numerous right-wing media figures have defended him. Some attacked critics for allegedly not having a sense of humor; others agreed that Puerto Rico is trash or dismissed Puerto Rico’s electoral relevance.

Here are numerous examples from the hours after Hinchcliffe made those racist remarks.

Donald Trump Jr.responded by reposting Hinchliffe’s defense that “these people have no sense of humor.”

Fox & Friends is Fox News’ morning show that promotes Trump and his agenda. During the program, co-host Lawrence Jones said: “Number two, maybe it’s just me, Ainsley, I have a dark sense of humor, you know, And so I, like … maybe this was not the appropriate format for the comedian to be there? But it’s comedy.”

Laura Loomer is abigoted podcaster who is heavily connected to Trump. She responded by wondering, “Did the managers at @unitedtalent UTA leak Tony Hinchcliffe’s jokes? And if they did, did they do so because he’s Pro Trump?”

Matt Walsh is a bigoted podcaster. He wrote: “I hope everyone appreciates the masterful strategy here. Trump is goading the Dems into spending their final week crying about jokes. They are absolutely taking the bait. They can't help themselves.”

The Hodgetwinsare pro-Trump podcasters who have met Trump. They wrote: “Democrats must be retarded if they think a famous comedian telling a joke about Puerto Ricans is gonna get them to flip their vote to Kamala.”

Will Chamberlain is a Republican commentator and strategist. He wrote: “Man, Trump is going to really struggle now to win Puerto Rico’s 0 electoral votes.”

Milo Yiannopoulos is the far-right and bigoted commentator who worked with Steve Bannon to help elect Trump in 2016. He responded by attacking Puerto Ricans, writing: “Two things a Puerto Rican just won’t do 1. Describe themselves as American, no matter how many generations of American citizens precede them 2. Set foot in Puerto Rico.” He also wrote, “I agree with the Democrats, Puerto Ricans are emotionally incontinent children who can’t take a joke”; and “If you’re wondering how bad Puerto Rico is Venezuelans won’t go there.”

Andrew Torba is the antisemitic leader of the racist social media platform Gab. He wrote: “What are all of those people doing in Pennsylvania instead of Puerto Rico? Is it some kind of island of garbage or something?”

Carpe Donktum, real name Logan Cook, is a pro-Trump account meme maker. He responded by writing: “I can't believe that Trump might lose Puerto Rico's electoral votes because of a joke. Thanks @TonyHinchcliffe, way to go.”

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mma

John Kelly warned that Trump is a fascist. Right-wing media absurdly claim by citing him that Kamala Harris is inspiring “assassins.”

PJ Media: “If you keep calling someone Hitler, eventually, someone will feel morally obligated to take action”

Written by Charis Hoard

Published 10/25/24 mma

This week, retired Gen. John Kelly -- former chief of staff to former President Donald Trump -- asserted in interviews with The New York Times that he believed Trump “falls into the general definition of fascist” and that he has previously praised Adolf Hitler.

Vice President Kamala Harris echoed the sentiments during her town hall on Wednesday night when asked about Kelly’s comments, sending right-wing media into an uproar.

In a desperate attempt to spin the serious remarks about Trump into a negative story about Harris, right-wing media figures attacked the Democratic nominee, calling her hypocritical, claiming that she was repeating unsubstantiated claims, and suggesting she’s inciting violence against Trump by agreeing with Kelly’s comments.

PJ Media posted a piece titled “Kamala Harris Is Trying to Get Trump Shot at Again.” }:The piece noted, “If you keep calling someone Hitler, eventually, someone will feel morally obligated to take action. This isn’t just innocent hyperbole: it’s a calculated narrative meant to provoke. For years, Democrats and media figures have portrayed Trump not as a political adversary but as an existential threat. That’s how we’ve ended up with two assassination attempts within just nine weeks.” PJ Media, [10/24/24]|

The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway}: posted that Harris’ closing argument is: “We need Trump's cholesterol numbers and he has secretly told John Kelly evil things he's never told anyone else.” Hemingway: “Trump closing argument: ‘I'll fight for you and do for you what I did before on the economy, foreign policy, border, etc.’ Harris: ‘We need Trump's cholesterol numbers and he has secretly told John Kelly evil things he's never told anyone else.’” Twitter/X, [10/23/24]|

Fox host Sean Hannity linked Harris’ comment to past assassination attempts against Trump, seemingly suggesting that Harris is encouraging violence against Trump by echoing Kelly’s comments. }:Hannity: “Kamala Harris said ‘Donald Trump wants generals like Hitler’ tonight and apparently said earlier, you know, that he’s a fascist. The man now — we had two would-be assassins. … This rhetoric is getting so over the top, and it seems like that’s all they’re doubling down and tripling down on. And I would expect we’re probably gonna have an October surprise, maybe five a day, every day, for the next 13 days.” Fox News, *Hannity*, [10/23/24]|

Former GOP presidential candidate and Fox Nation host Vivek Ramaswamy called on Harris to “step up and apologize” for “stoking this culture of political violence that was shameful.”Fox News, *Hannity*:(style="background-color:#ffff00"):}:, [10/23/24]|

* America Reports' John Roberts claimed that Harris’ closing argument for her campaign is improperly focused on Trump. Roberts: “We are seeing Kamala Harris' closing argument for the last 13 days is ‘Trump is a fascist, he embraces Hitler and wants to have his generals.’ She's not saying to young Black men across the country: ‘Here's what I'm going to do for you economically.’” Media Matters, [10/23/24]

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mma

It takes a bubble

Hurricane Helene shows the catastrophic consequences of the right-wing echo chamber's support for Donald Trump's lies

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 10/08/24

Former President Donald Trump’s deadly lies about the federal response to Hurricane Helene — and soon, inevitably, Hurricane Milton — depend on the impermeability of the right-wing information bubble.

President Joe Biden has directed an ongoing federal and state response to the swath of death and destruction Hurricane Helene left on the southeastern United States, an effort which includes tens of thousands of personnel helping victims across several states.

Trump’s Helene response has been characterized by conspiracy theories and grievance-mongering for political gain.

The Biden administration won plaudits from GOP elected officials across the region, but Trump falsely claimed the federal government abandoned the public. Americans affected by the storm can access a robust program of federal assistance, but he falsely claims they could only get $750 in aid. The White House stressed there’s plenty of FEMA funds to respond to both Helene and Milton — and Republicans are reportedly the ones blocking additional funding — but Trump falsely claims Vice President Kamala Harris blew “all her FEMA money” housing immigrants.

The former president, through these deranged fabrications, is trying to win votes in the coming election. He is summoning an alternate reality in which Biden and Harris are blithely unconcerned with the fates of millions of victims because many of those victims are Republicans and they instead prioritize immigrants. And he is doing so despite his own record as president of allegedly withholding disaster aid for political reasons.

The only reason this strategy is remotely plausible is that the right-wing media ecosystem is willing to play along with it. The news sources Republicans rely on, from MAGA influencers to Fox stars, have bolstered Trump’s lies at every turn. The result is that right-wing audiences are bombarded with falsehoods from within an echo chamber.

The MAGA media ecosystem responds in this same fashion to every news event because its function isn’t to report on what is happening. Instead, right-wing pundits offer a scapegoat — immigrants, Jews, journalists, teachers, trans people, Democrats, anti-Trump Republicans — in order to hold their audience’s attention, make money, and support the GOP’s core agenda of tax cuts for rich people and abortion bans.

This incentive structure is universally toxic. But when it collides with issues like disaster relief, the consequences can turn deadly. Before, during, and after a hurricane, people on the ground need credible information about what to do, what help is available, and how to get it. Right now, the sources many victims depend on for news are lying to them.

Hurricane misinformation is plaguing the response to Helene. Local media outlets, federal and state officials, and emergency responders all are desperately trying to swat down rumors and falsehoods — some promoted by the former president. Republican officials in affected areas are begging the people pushing “conspiracy theory junk” to stop lying and pitch in instead.

“The scale of the misinformation — and simply the number of posts and the eyeballs that each of those are being given online, particularly on [X] — that is what is different and truly scary,” a North Carolina state official told Politico. “This has felt like you're in the Thunderdome, and people are just piping this noise in. They create this great confusion. It creates chaos and a crisis moment where you need people to be able to work together and come together.”

The calamity hearkens back to the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, when Trump and his media allies first downplayed the potential impact of the deadly virus, then promoted unproven and ultimately ineffective medications as a “miracle cure.”

And it bodes ill for the coming election if Trump loses, when all the same figures will have the same incentives to help him deny and subvert the results.

Related

  1. ### Right-wing media lies about the federal response to Hurricane Helene

:{10/04/24

  1. ### Right-wing media falsely and dishonestly claim that Hurricane Helene survivors are only entitled to $750 in aid

:{10/04/24

  1. ### Ignoring praise for federal aid from GOP governors and officials on the ground, right-wing media falsely claim that Hurricane Helene is “Kamala’s Katrina”

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Climate denial fuels right-wing attacks on vice presidential debate moderators

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Evlondo Cooper

Research contributions from Ilana Berger

Published 10/04/24 mma

CBS' October 1 vice presidential debate put climate change front and center, breaking from recent debates that sidelined the issue. In the wake of Hurricane Helene's devastating path across the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic, moderators Norah O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan pressed candidates on specific climate plans and reinforced the scientific consensus on climate change's role in intensifying hurricanes.

This approach promptly drew criticism from right-wing media figures and online influencers who argued that CBS had overemphasized climate at the expense of covering issues like the economy and immigration. These critics, many of whom have previously questioned climate science, disregarded both the context of Helene's destruction and increasing public concern over climate impacts. Their responses often employed familiar narratives of climate skepticism and attempted to challenge the scientific information presented by the moderators, illustrating right wing media's ongoing resistance to substantive climate discussions.

* Hurricane Helene made landfall as the strongest storm ever to hit Florida's Big Bend region, with top sustained winds of 140 mph. This continues a trend of increasingly powerful storms, with Helene being the eighth Category 4 or 5 hurricane to hit the U.S. in the past eight years. The storm underwent rapid intensification fueled by “exceptionally warm” Gulf waters, 1-2°C above average.

Researchers estimate that this warming, largely attributed to climate change, increased Helene's destructive power by 40-50%. Helene set new storm surge records along Florida's west coast, breaking records set just last year. An attribution study found that similar cyclones are up to 20% wetter and 7% windier in the present climate compared to the past. Yale Climate Connections, [9/27/24; Grist, 9/26/24; The Washington Post, 9/28/24; World Weather Attribution, 9/30/24]

:{
  • According to CBS News polling, 70% of Americans — including over 60% of Republicans under 45 — favor taking steps to reduce climate change impacts. This aligns with a recent Pew Research Center survey showing 74% of Americans support U.S. participation in international climate efforts. The Pew survey also found that 71% of Americans expect to make at least minor sacrifices in their lives due to climate change.}: CBS News, [4/21/24; Pew Research Center, 10/25/23]
:{
  • Right-wing host Benny Johnson criticized the debate format and fact-checking: “Moderators start debate with 3 straight questions about ‘climate change’ and a smarmy fact check. Republicans need to simply say ‘no’ to rigged debates.}:” Twitter/X, [10/1/24]

* Sinclair host Sharyl Attkisson accused moderators of bias: “Once again, moderators taking the biased position regarding climate change as if there is no debate.” Twitter/X, [10/1/24]

* Power the Future founder Daniel Turner denied the existence of the climate crisis: “JD Vance flips the script on CBS and their attempt at a climate change gotcha question. There is no climate crisis. #VPDebate.” Twitter/X, [10/1/24]

===

mma

right-wing media falsely and dishonestly claim that Hurricane Helene survivors are only entitled to $750 in aid

According to FEMA, survivors can also qualify for “tens of thousands more dollars” in disaster-related financial assistance

Written by Alicia Sadowski & Isabella Corrao

Published 10/04/24

In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, right-wing media falsely claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris and the Biden administration are ignoring millions of Americans impacted by intense flooding. Media personalities and MAGA influencers have falsely and dishonestly claimed that victims are only entitled to $750 in aid, when in reality that is just the start of federal benefits.

FEMA can provide assistance for victims of Hurricane Helene, but chronic underfunding and climate change, not undocumented migrants, threaten future aid availability

To wit, on Thursday, Laura Ingraham and Jesse Watters aired a clip of Vice President Kamala Harris speaking in hurricane-ravaged Georgia the previous day. As Harris spoke on Ingraham’s show, the Fox News chyron read, “Kamala: Here’s $750 that’ll do the trick.”

…

As X/Twitter super-poster Acyn Torbai noted in the video below, Fox News actually carried Harris’s speech live the previous day. The vice president explained that the $750 is just the beginning of the assistance available to impacted residents. Mediaite, [10/3/24]

* Anti-Muslim activist Brigitte Gabriel claimed that victims of Hurricane Helene would get “$750” but that a “criminal thug from South America” would get “a 4-star hotel with credit cards.” She posted, “If you lost your entire house during Hurricane Helene, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will give you $750. If you are a criminal thug from South America and cross the border illegally through Mexico, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will put you up in a 4-star hotel with credit cards.” Twitter/X, [10/3/24]

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enhanced misogyny? racism? escalate? combo?

mma

Trump’s “mentally impaired” attack didn’t happen in a vacuum: Fox and right-wing media repeatedly hurled ableist slur at Harris

Written by Eric Hananoki

Published 10/03/24 mma

*Content warning: This article repeatedly quotes right-wing figures using an ableist slur.

Former President Donald Trump recently and falsely claimed that opponent Vice President Kamala Harris was born “mentally impaired” and is “mentally disabled.” The remarks followed numerous Trump media allies, including Fox’s Greg Gutfeld and podcaster Laura Loomer, attacking Harris with an ableist slur.

Trump has repeatedly claimed during campaign rallies that Harris has a mental disability, including saying of her and the Biden administration’s immigration policy: “If you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country.”

The American Association of People with Disabilities criticized Trump’s remarks. Pro-Trump media figures cheered them.

Pro-Trump podcasters Benny Johnson and Laura Loomer, who has close ties to Trump, responded with laughing emojis. Podcaster Shawn Farash wrote: “Is there anyone funnier than Donald Trump?” Conservative social media personality Gunther Eagleman wrote: “Trump doing what Trump does best, calling it as he sees it. … We are so back!” And podcaster Alec Lace wrote: “Never Forget: The same people who told you for years that Joe Biden was sharp as a tack are now telling you Kamala Harris is smart!”

Trump’s remarks didn’t occur in a vacuum. Since Harris became the Democratic nominee, right-wing media have repeatedly attempted to portray her as mentally disabled, including by referring to her with an ableist slur. Below are numerous examples from the past few months.

Fox News host Greg Gutfeld, who recently hosted Trump, has called Harris a “r--ed version of Mister Rogers.” He also said that Harris “speaks like a r-ed Hallmark card.” (Fox has claimed it is “committed to providing a workplace that treats all employees with dignity and respect and is free from all forms of harassment, discrimination, and retaliation,” including regarding “mental disability.”)

Loomer said on her program of Harris: “Maybe we have a DEI r-- sitting in the White House with Joe Biden as his brain continues to rot away, and that's what happens when you put people in office because they're DEI rxxxxs. Yeah. She can't talk, just like Joe Biden. She doesn't have dementia. She's just rxxxxed.” Loomer also wrote after Harris posted about being briefed on Hurricane Helene: “Kamala Harris is literally R--ed.”

Online troll Brenden Dilley, who has connections with the Trump campaign and other Republicans, has repeatedly used ableist language to attack Harris, including writing: “Kamala Harris is fucking retarded] d,” and, “Tomorrow night, Donald Trump is going to mop the floor with one of the worst DEI hires in American history, Kamala Harris. Everything she has ever ‘earned’ is going to be invalidated after regular America finds out how fucking r--ed she truly is.”

Online streamer David Freiheit (“VivaFrei”), who has hosted Trump running mate and Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), wrote: “Kamala Harris is fucking r--ed. And if you vote for her, so are you.”

Social media misinformer Ian Miles Cheong wrote of Harris: “This woman is r--ed and has a very low IQ. It is a miracle she’s managed to fail upwards as much as anyone could ever fail upwards in the history of failing upwards. No, it’s not misogynistic to say that.”

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mma

Right-wing media figures are exploiting state clerical errors and voter roll purges to fearmonger about mass voting by noncitizens

Right-wing media figures are accusing Democrats of “cheating,” though audits and studies have repeatedly shown that noncitizen voting rarely happens at all

Written by Jack Winstanley

Published 10/03/24

Conservative outlets and media figures are amplifying reports of clerical errors, state voter roll audits, and Republican lawsuits to push a narrative that noncitizens are being widely allowed to vote in elections, despite evidence that very few votes are actually cast — and this right-wing framing is being used to argue that Democrats will “cheat” in November’s election. Meanwhile, multiple GOP-led states are pushing for voter roll purges that disenfranchise thousands of legal voters.

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mma 10 24

How manipulated video of Kamala Harris is fueling bizarre attacks on social media

Right-wing media figures have pushed unfounded claims that Harris is intoxicated at public events

Written by Jack Winstanley

Published 10/02/24

As they struggle to find attacks that will stick, right-wing media figures have revived unfounded claims that Vice President Kamala Harris has a drinking problem and has been intoxicated during public appearances.

Some social media users have even circulated a slowed-down video to make it seem like Harris was slurring her words and a cobbled-together montage of rally excerpts that they used to ask if she was drunk, earning over 2 million views.

  1. ### Benny Johnson claims January 6 was a military coup: “Donald Trump is actually the number one person who attempted to prevent January 6th”

10/03/24 mma

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mma

Right-wing media falsely insist there is no federal response to Hurricane Helene, while praising Trump for visiting victims in Georgia

The MAGA crowd is claiming that the administration is purposely ignoring Southern Appalachia, despite extensive aid efforts

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Ilana Berger

Research contributions from Allison Fisher

Published 10/01/24

After Helene made landfall in Florida on September 26 as a Category 4 storm, the Biden administration approved federal assistance to supplement state and local efforts in Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Virginia, and Georgia.

Dismissing these efforts, right-wing media have argued that the administration is more interested in giving aid to Ukraine than Appalachia, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is too concerned with equity to handle the aftermath, and that the Biden administration isn’t doing more for hurricane victims because they are primarily white, Republican voters.

The storm has caused mass destruction and killed at least 133 people across six states, while as many as 600 haven’t been accounted for. In Western North Carolina, many residents do not have power, cellular service, or drinking water.

Vice President Kamala Harris is planning to visit Georgia on October 2, while Biden said he is planning to visit North Carolina on the same day.

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mma 9 24

“An unprecedented threat to democracy”: Hoaxes that right-wing media have been spreading during the 2024 election (so far)

Written by Charis Hoard

Research contributions from Chloe Simon

Published 09/23/24

Former President Donald Trump’s baseless claim during the last presidential debate that immigrants in a small Ohio town are abducting and eating pets provided a sample of the bizarre hoaxes and conspiracy theories that right-wing media have been promoting ahead of the 2024 election. Conservative media are clearly relying on amplifying a slew of falsehoods to muddy the political landscape, and political experts have warned that such misinformation “poses an unprecedented threat to democracy in the United States.”

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huge visibility pathos on oprah

mma 9 24

MAGA media are attacking ProPublica’s comprehensive account of the role Georgia’s six-week abortion ban played in a woman's death

Special ProgramsAbortion Rights & Reproductive Health

Written by Chloe Simon

Published 09/19/24

Right-wing media are attacking a ProPublica piece scrutinizing the death of Amber Nicole Thurman, who died after she could not get an abortion in her state and then got delayed abortion care in a local hospital.

The piece elaborates on Thurman’s “preventable” death and Georgia’s strict abortion ban and vague language on “life of the mother” exceptions. Thurman had to travel to North Carolina for a dilation and curettage because she was past the six-week limit in Georgia, but traffic made her miss her appointment, so she received medication abortion instead. She suffered a rare complication, and doctors at a Georgia hospital failed to perform the needed D&C until it was too late.

Right-wing and anti-abortion media have denounced ProPublica’s report as “lies” and claimed that Georgia’s abortion law is not the reason for Thurman’s death.

Breitbart published a piece titled “Left-Wing ProPublica Ties Georgia Abortion Law to Woman’s Death Without Clear Evidence.”T}:he article goes on to claim that “Thurman’s story, in addition to other tragic stories, is already being used by Democrats to promote their agenda of undoing all abortion restrictions by passing a federal law that allows abortion-on-demand.” Breitbart, [9/18/24]|

* Washington Examiner’s David Harsanyi wrote that the “ProPublica piece on Amber Thurman's death is a masterclass in hackery and conjecture.” He went on to say that there’s “literally nothing in the piece backing the claim that Thurman died because of GA's abortion law.” Twitter/X, [9/17/24]

Related

  1. ### Broadcast news, Fox News failed to cover deaths stemming from Georgia's six-week abortion ban

09/19/24

  1. ### Project 2025 partner president makes misleading claims about IVF and hospital treatment of women dealing with miscarriages

09/13/24

  1. ### Anti-abortion groups have launched aggressive lobbying campaigns against ballot abortion access amendments across the country

09/05/24

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Right-wing media are gleefully promoting a false, racist rumor that Haitian migrants are eating pets

Right-wing figures have called Haitian people “locusts,” zombies,” and “weird Third World aliens”

Written by Chloe Simon & Reed McMaster

Research contributions from Gideon Taaffe

Published 09/10/24 mma

On September 9, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance claimed that Haitian migrants had “abducted and eaten” pets in Springfield, Ohio, seemingly referencing debunked social media rumors.

Though local officials explained that there was no truth to the claim, right-wing media immediately jumped on the bandwagon, amplifying Vance’s allegations and pushing racist narratives about Haitian immigrants.

Some right-wing figures accused Haitian migrants of consuming “cats and ducks” and comparing them to “zombies” and “locusts.”

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mma

Trump campaign echoes right-wing media’s lies about an EV mandate

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Ilana Berger

Published 09/10/24

Related

On Facebook, content trashing electric vehicles reliably draws engagement

07/03/24

  1. ### Right-wing media use Tesla strandings in Chicago to bash electric vehicles

01/19/24

  1. ### As a climate-fueled heat wave stresses California's electric grid, right-wing media are disingenuously attacking electric vehicles

09/02/22

mma

Right-wing media claimed a downward jobs revision indicated recession. A new GDP revision shows the economy actually grew more than expected.

08/30/24

Right-wing media claimed a downward jobs revision indicated recession. A new GDP revision shows the economy actually grew more than expected.

Right-wing media have been quick to catastrophize every hiccup in the economy this election cycle, ignoring many of the facts

Written by Zachary Pleat

Published 08/30/24

After the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report on August 21 showing that 818,000 fewer jobs than initially estimated were created between March 2023-March 2024, right-wing media falsely claimed this report showed that the U.S. is in recession. Fox Business was particularly loud in proclaiming the downward jobs revision was a recession indicator.

However, an August 29 release from the Bureau of Economic Analysis showed that the real gross domestic product (GDP) of the U.S. increased at a 3% rate in the second quarter of this year, an upward revision from an initial estimate of 2.8% and more than double the first quarter GDP growth of 1.4%.

Although it’s not the official definition, recession is generally understood to begin after two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. Economists take a more holistic approach to determining when the economy is in recession. Given the positive GDP growth over the last two quarters, even this oversimplified yardstick did not indicate the U.S. economy was in recession, and these revised BEA numbers are further proof of the current strength of the economy.

Discussing his analysis of the new BEA release, Bobby Kogan, the Center for American Progress senior director of federal budget policy, gave context on just how strong this data shows the U.S. economy is:

IFrame Content

In a separate post, Kogan noted that the “US GDP growth has outpaced all other G7 nations” and “wages at the bottom rose so much, income inequality is down, undoing 1/3 of its growth since Reagan.” Ernie Tedeschi, economic director of Yale’s Budget Lab, also noted that “3% is a very good number.”

These facts did not deter right-wing media however — misleading economic doomsaying about the BLS report from Fox News and others is the latest in a series of false attacks on the economy this year.

Right-wing media falsely claimed the downward jobs revision meant the U.S. is in recession

* Daily Caller cited a Heritage Foundation economist to claim the BLS report shows a “recession may have already begun.” E.J. Antoni told the Daily Caller, “Wall Street is increasingly waking up to the fact that the economy post-covid has never been as good as the government bean counters claimed, and a recession may have already begun. These revisions are a violent shove in the direction of reality.” The Heritage Foundation is the leading organization behind Project 2025. Daily Caller, [8/21/24; Media Matters, accessed 8/30/24]

*:{ Fox Business host Larry Kudlow cited Hassett to say “we could be on the front end of a recession” because of the BLS revision. Fox Business, *Kudlow*:(style="background-color:#ffbb16"):}:, [8/22/24]

Fox News host Jesse Watters and Fox Business host Stuart Varney used the BLS report to claim the economy is in bad shape. Watters said, “The economy’s check engine light has been blinking for three years and Biden and Harris have been ignoring it. They say the economy is great. Just look at the job numbers. Well we did, and they disappeared.” Varney chimed in: “It’s going to be interesting to see how Kamala pivots on this. How do you reverse the idea — oh, we have got a great booming economy, but you don't. … How is she going to pivot with these lousy jobs numbers?” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [8/21/24]

This follows many other false right-wing media attacks on the Biden-Harris economy

* Fox News attacked a blockbuster inflation report that showed the first decline in prices since May 2020. Media Matters, [7/11/24; Market Watch, 7/11/24]

MMA 8 24

MAGA media respond to annual jobs report revisions with conspiracy theories

Pro-Trump media claim that the routine BLS revisions are “cooking the books” and “election interference”

Written by Zachary Pleat

Published 08/21/24

Earlier this week, economists with Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo predicted that upcoming benchmark revisions scheduled to be published on August 21 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics would show a negative revision of up to 1 million net jobs created over the past year. (The actual preliminary estimate published this morning was -818,000 jobs.) In response to these negative expectations, right-wing commentators, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, and advisers to his campaign swung into action.

Fox News and other pro-Trump media trafficked in conspiracy theories, even falsely suggesting that the United States is in recession, in response to the BLS’ annual benchmark revisions of employment data between March 2023-24. They ludicrously claimed that jobs numbers had been fabricated to benefit the Biden administration and that the BLS was “cooking the books” in service of the Democrats’ presidential campaign.

The right-wing histrionics neglected to mention how the same BLS published negative revisions during the Trump administration, including -501,000 in 2019, nor that the same benchmarking process in 2022 actually revealed that the government had significantly undercounted job growth. Additionally, as Bloomberg reported, this revision is routine and occurs every year as “a more accurate but less timely data source” that “covers nearly all US jobs” becomes available.

*

* Trump senior adviser Jason Miller: “This isn’t a ‘revision’ … this is a LIE! And it’s Election Interference!” Miller added: “The Harris Administration has been cooking the books the entire time and now it’s caught up to them!” Twitter/X, [8/20/24]

* Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo: “You are talking up to a million jobs that were basically fake.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [8/20/24]

Fox host Laura Ingraham calle}:d for “an investigation into how this could happen.” She added: “This is not just a rounding error. So, this is a real scandal. … [to] regular people, this just looks like putting the finger on the scale to make Joe Biden look better and Kamala Harris look better going into an election cycle.” Ingraham later said that the jobs numbers are “fraudulent. It was wrong. And I think it was fraudulent.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [8/20/24]
:{
  • Con}:servative Substack author “amuse” came up with a “payback” conspiracy theory that “the administration has been forced to negatively revise economic data for 12 of the last 14 months - presumably to help the president get re-elected. Now that Biden has been forced out is he sabotaging Kamala Harris for stabbing him in the back?” After the BLS was late in releasing the revisions, amuse posted: “COVERUP? The Bureau of Labor Statistics missed the scheduled 10 a.m. Eastern release of its annual payroll revisions, and there's still no update.” Twitter/X, [8/20/24, 8/21/24]

* Citing ZeroHedge, right-wing commentator and conspiracy theorist Bill Mitchell wrote: “You gotta love these HUGE downward revisions to jobs numbers when no one is paying attention. How do you miss by a million?” Twitter/X, [8/20/24]

* Wall Street Journal economic correspondent Nick Timiraos: “While some people might point to such revisions as an example of ‘cooking the books,’ this is not true. It's actually evidence that there's a high fidelity to making sure the numbers are as accurate as they can be.” In a lengthy post, Timiraos outlined a series of frequently asked questions about the BLS benchmark revision process, noting that this August figure is only preliminary and will not be finalized for another six months, and specifically debunking accusations that a negative revision is proof that BLS was “cooking the books” over the prior year. In a subsequent post, Timiraos explained that the expected negative revisions were not unprecedented — for example, the data in 2009 were revised down by a similar amount. TwitterX, [8/20/24, 8/20/24]

relATED

Economists blame the Fed for jobs report missing expectations. Trump sycophants instead blamed Kamala Harris.

08/02/24

  1. ### Trump and his MAGA media boosters try to blame VP Kamala Harris for a drop in the stock market

08/05/24

  1. ### New inflation report showed “amazing” improvement. Fox News trashed it anyway.

07/11/24

===

mma

right-wing media are launching the weirdest attacks on Harris and Walz

“Joy,” laughs, and hugs from the candidates have all been subjects of right-wing ire

Written by Chloe Simon

:{Published 08/16/24

Since vice president and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to be her running mate, right-wing media have erupted with a series of nonsense attacks against them, criticizing them for making “joy” a part of their campaign and laughing. Conservative media figures have also launched homophobic comments against Walz, have attacked him for the way he hugged his wife on stage, and have complained that Harris repeats lines in her stump speech.

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RESEARCH/STUDY

Biden suspended his campaign and right-wing media responded with conspiracy theories

Conservatives demanded proof the president was still alive, claimed Biden was a “hostage” in a “soft coup,” and even suggested his decision was part of an “inside job” to assassinate Trump

WRITTEN BY JACK WINSTANLEY

PUBLISHED 07/26/24

Following President Joe Biden’s announcement that he was suspending his 2024 reelection campaign, right-wing media figures pushed wild conspiracy theories alleging that the president did not make the decision himself or that it was a backup plan to defeat Donald Trump after the failed assassination attempt against the former president. Conservative media figures repeatedly asked for “proof of life,” claimed Biden was being held “hostage,” and even suggested that Biden's withdrawal letter was forged.

* Sean Davis, CEO and co-founder of conservative outlet The Federalist, commented that Biden has “made no public appearance” since he dropped out of the race, adding, “Also: do we have any evidence Biden is even alive right now?” His post then claimed, “This is banana republic insanity.” Twitter/X, [7/21/24]

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MMA

  1. ### Dozens of right-wing media personalities suggested Kamala Harris’ political success is due to DEI

07/31/24

Since Vice President Kamala Harris became the likely Democratic presidential nominee, many right-wing media figures have tried to make her the face of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. At least 40 right-wing personalities have claimed that she is a “DEI candidate” or insinuated she owes her success to her race, ethnicity, and/or gender.

Right-wing media have a long record of attacking race-conscious policies and studies such as critical race theory and DEI efforts, including suggesting DEI stands for “Didn’t Earn It.”

Now, rather than focusing on Harris’ years of experience and advocacy on a number of key Democratic issues, many in right-wing media have chalked up her likely nomination to “racial idolatry issues,” claimed that she took a “DEI-based path” to the vice presidency, suggested that she will “be the first DEI president” if elected, and said she “literally ‘Didn’t Earn It.’”

    1. Fox News host Laura Ingraham dismissed concerns about calling Harris a “DEI candidate.”Ingraham: “People have called Kamala the DEI candidate, but Democrats, they don't like that.” After playing one criticism of the attack she asked, “That's it?” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [7/23/24]
    1. Fox News host Jesse Watters claimed “the only reason” Harris is vice president is because of “the DEI deal Biden cut with [Sen.] Bernie [Sanders] to seal the nomination.” He also said “many people believe Kamala Harris is being promoted because of what she looks like and nothing else.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [7/23/24]
    1. OutKick’s Clay Travis called Harris “DEI personified.”Travis: “Kamala Harris, not that bright, not that accomplished, doesn't have a family of her own, never had kids, got her scarred start in politics as the side chick of a Democrat San Francisco mayor. She is DEI personified.” OutKick, *OutKick the Show*, [7/21/24]
    1. Fox News contributor Leo Terrell posted on X (formerly Twitter) that “Kamala is the choice of the DEI Party.” He also described the Democrats as the “Race Card Party,” “Affirmative Action Party,” and the “Critical Race Party.” Twitter/X, [7/21/24]
    1. Fox News contributor Ben Domenich said Harris took the “DEI-based path” to the vice presidency.Fox News, *Life, Liberty, & Levin*, [7/21/24]
    1. Newsmax host Sebastian Gorka called Harris “literally a DEI hire” and said she will be the nominee because her “skin color is the correct DEI color.” Gorka later added, “So this choice, this trap they [Democrats] have created for themselves of Kamala, the DEI hire, it's not going to be very popular with the average American. So keep up, keep it up, keep on going, Kamala.” Newsmax, Newsmax broadcast, [7/21/24]
    1. Later in that segment, Newsmax anchor Bob Brooks agreed with Gorka, saying, “She very well might be the first DEI president.” Newsmax, Newsmax broadcast, [7/21/24]
    1. In a social media rant, Newsmax host Chris Plante said Harris is “a woman of color” and “that’s why she was chosen in the first place.” Twitter/X, [7/23/24]
    1. On Jesse Watters Primetime, podcast host Jason Calacanis discussed Harris as the nominee, telling Watters, “I think what they are going to learn is that the DEI candidate concept is just not going to work.”Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [7/21/24]
    1. Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk repeatedly mispronounced Harris' name while calling her “deeply scary” and “a DEI candidate.” Kirk told his audience, “He chose her based on the same criteria of DEI that got Trump shot, that has been destroying this country. The very same DEI ideology that has been sweeping the nation is now the standard bearer of the Democrat Party, and I think that is perfect.” Real America’s Voice, *The Charlie Kirk Show*, [7/22/24]
    1. Daily Wire host Matt Walsh called Harris “the DEI vice president.”He added, “It's quite fitting that the first Black — well, sort of Black — female presidential nominee was handed the job and didn't earn it.” The Daily Wire, *The Matt Walsh Show*, [7/22/24]
    1. Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro claimed “the only reason” Harris is vice president is “because of her sex and her race.” “If she were a white man,” Shapiro continued, “she never would have even been a senator from California let alone vice president of the United States. Everyone including Democrats knows this.” The Daily Wire, *The Ben Shapiro Show*, [7/23/24]
    1. Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly said “there’s no doubt” that “Harris is a DEI hire” on Sean Hannity’s radio show.O’Reilly was responding to Hannity’s comment that “I don’t like the DEI argument. … I think that is ridiculous.” O’Reilly claimed, “I don’t think it’s a ridiculous argument, but I don’t think it advances the cause of the election. Kamala Harris is a DEI hire; there’s no doubt about it. Now, if you want to state this as a fact, I don’t have a problem, because it is a fact. But that’s not going to get voters mobilized.” Premiere Radio Networks,*The Sean Hannity Show*, [7/24/24]

27. BlazeTV’s Glenn Beck claimed that Democrats “took [Harris] on for DEI purposes.” Beck: “You [Democrats] took her on -- you know you took her on because of DEI. You took her on for DEI purposes and now you're not going to let her go because you say she's not qualified?” BlazeTV,*The Glenn Beck Program*, [7/23/24]

    1. The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles said Biden picked Harris as his running mate “because she's a Black woman.” Knowles said, “She was picked for VP, it would seem, based on the way that she ran in 2020. Now, of course that’s not true. As Joe Biden told us, she was picked for VP because she's a Black woman. … The way it was all pitched, after the fact, was that Kamala was picked based on her campaign, based on her ability to be president should anything happen to Joe Biden.” The Daily Wire, *The Michael Knowles Show*, [7/24/24]
    1. Right-wing host Steve Deace claimed that Democrats are coalescing behind Harris because of “racial idolatry issues.”BlazeTV, *The Steve Deace Show*, [7/22/24]
    1. TimCast IRL’s Ian Crossland said Harris was made vice president because of her skin color. Crossland: “I don't see leadership material in the woman, but they put her in as the vice president because she was Black. She's not even Black — I hate that term — but like because of her dark skin.” *TimCast IRL*, [7/24/24]
    1. Right-wing host Jesse Kelly said, “She's a DEI hire. She's a disgrace. Every part of her career has been an embarrassment.” The First, *I’m Right w/Jesse Kelly*, [7/24/24]
    1. Dinesh D’Souza called Harris a “walking ad for like DEI” on his podcast. His guest, Turning Point USA’s Caitlin Sinclair, called Harris “100% a DEI hire.” Salem Podcast Network, *The Dinesh D’Souza Podcast*, [7/22/24]
    1. Rudy Giuliani called Harris the “first DEI pick for president” on his podcast.He claimed Harris was unqualified and her rise is based on “gender and race.” YouTube, *America’s Mayor Live*, [7/23/24]
    1. On her podcast, Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump said that the Democrats are stuck with Harris as a “DEI hire.” Trump added, “That’s exactly who she’s always been.” *The Right View with Lara Trump*, [7/24/24]
    1. Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said on his latest show: “They have to go with Kamala because she’s sorta Black, sorta Indian, and a woman – for DEI reasons.”He added, “She’s a moron, in a job she doesn’t deserve. That’s the whole point of DEI is to elevate people who don’t deserve their jobs to positions of power.” Tucker Carlson Network, *The Tucker Carlson Show*, [7/22/24]
    1. On Carlson’s show, far-right personality Jack Posobiec agreed with Carlson’s attribution of Harris’ success to DEI, saying “it’s tough” for Democrats to “pass her over” because of DEI.Tucker Carlson Network,*The Tucker Carlson Show*, [7/22/24]
    1. Right-wing podcaster Dave Rubin called Harris a “diversity hire who nobody likes.” Twitter/X, [7/21/24]
    1. Right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson said that if Harris picked Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg as her running mate it would be the “full DEI presidential ticket.”He continued, “There you go. You have … the full victimhood, class presidential ticket.” *The Benny Show*, [7/21/24]
    1. Daily Wire host Jordan Peterson called Harris “DEI Barbie'' on social media.He posted, “My new grandson and me giving the thumbs up to the news that @thedemocrats most qualified candidate is DEI Barbie.” Twitter/X, [7/22/24]
    1. On Fox News, Project 2025 contributor Monica Crowley said former first lady Michelle Obama will run for president because she “squares the Kamala Harris circle: being a minority and a DEI hire.”Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [7/21/24]
    1. The Manhattan Institute’s Chris Rufo posted a screenshot of a CNN article about Biden considering selecting a Black woman for his running mate in 2020, calling it the “definition of DEI.”He wrote on X: “Selecting on ancestry and anatomy, rather than talent and virtue, is the definition of DEI.” Twitter/X, [7/24/24]
    1. Townhall columnist Kurt Schlichter called Harris a “cackling DEI hire.” He called her “incompetent” and added, “She is the personification of every idiot promoted over more worthy people that you have ever encountered in you daily life.” Twitter/X, [7/24/24]
    1. Conservative podcaster Bill Mitchell claimed Biden had better options to pick for his running mate in 2020, adding, “Does anyone doubt he chose Kamala because she's a black woman?”Twitter/X, [7/24/24]
    1. Right-wing personality Rob Smith, who has been a Turning Point USA contributor, called Harris the “DEI soon-to-be nominee for President.”Twitter/X, [7/22/24; Fox News, accessed 7/22/24]
    1. Newsweek senior editor-at-large Josh Hammer cited DEI as the reason Kamala Harris “gets leapfrogged from a dud of a candidacy in 2020 to now being the nominee.”Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [7/25/24]
    1. Washington Examiner’s Zachary Faria wrote an editorial titled “Democratic challenges to Harris are DEI’d on arrival.”Washington Examiner, [7/22/24]
    1. Senior editor at the Federalist David Harsanyi wrote on X, “Kamala Harris was definitely a DEI hire.” Twitter/X, [7/25/24]
    1. Daily Caller contributor Carly Atchinson Bird claimed Harris was picked as Biden’s VP “because of her identity as a black and South Asian American woman.”Her op-ed o misleadingly stated, “The Democrat machine successfully circumvented millions of primary voters in what has become, essentially, a coronation of Harris just over 100 days before November.” The Daily Caller, [7/23/24; PBS, 7/24/24]
    1. Right-wing figure James Lindsay responded “Definitely DEI all along” toformer Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL)pointing out Harris’ credentials on social media.Twitter/X, [7/25/24]
    1. Manhattan Institute’s Ilya Shapiro: “She really is running a DEI campaign.”He posted in response to a fundraiser called “White dudes for Harris.” Twitter/X, [7/26/24]
    1. Right-wing comedian Terrence K. Williams wrote, “Kamala Harris is DEI!” adding that “She literally ‘Didn’t Earn It.’”Twitter/X, [7/26/24]
    1. Right-wing social media account Amuse wrote, “Sadly Kamala is a DEI hire plain and simple.” Twitter/X, [7/28/24]

===

---

mma Project 2025 partners join right-wing media and climate deniers to celebrate SCOTUS decision :{overturning Chevron deference}:

06/28/24

On June 28, the Supreme Court upended 40 years of precedent by overturning Chevron deference, a decision that will restrict federal agencies' regulatory abilities that will also make it easier for corporations to challenge environmental protections, climate action, and rules that protect workers and regulate drugs and financial practices, among other issues.

Undoing Chevron deference has been a central goal of the conservative legal movement and corporate lobbyists for decades, with right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation arguing that “the modern administrative state creates a pervasive system of consolidated power that weakens the checks and balances carefully constructed by the United States Constitution.”

Now, Heritage has joined with over 100 other conservative organizations to organize Project 2025, a comprehensive transition plan to guide the next GOP presidential administration with policy proposals and staffing recommendations. In response to the Supreme Court ruling finally overturning Chevron deference, multiple Project 2025 partners joined right-wing media figures and climate deniers in celebrating the decision.

What is Chevron deference and why overturning it matters

Project 2025 partners celebrate court’s decision to overturn Chevron and the demise of the “administrative state”

===

===

flailing mma

President Joe Biden’s decision to end his reelection campaign and support Vice President Kamala Harris has sent the right-wing propaganda machine spiraling out of control, with its anti-Biden message honed over the past few years replaced by total chaos.

The right spent years arguing that Biden was an addled old man who is raising the prices Americans pay for gas and groceries while deliberately importing migrants to harm their families. While this litany was typically based in deception and misinformation, it overlapped with the primary concerns of swing voters and helped generate an environment where polls saw the president losing to former President Donald Trump in November.

But Biden upended the race on Sunday, announcing that he would “stand down” his campaign and endorsing Harris for the Democratic presidential nomination. His decision was a blow to the Trump campaign, which had geared its strategy around Biden running for reelection and reportedly believed Biden’s nomination gave Trump the best chance to prevail.

The subsequent hours have revealed that the right is totally unprepared for how to respond to a Harris candidacy. She has been vice president for three years and a prominent senator before that — but it seems as if they’ve never put together a playbook with compelling arguments against her. The resulting morass points to major vulnerabilities in the right-wing propaganda ecosystem.

Fox News scrambled for its opposition research but seemed unable to put together consistent arguments that might resonate.

Soon after Biden’s announcement, anchor Harris Faulkner offered the ludicrous argument that his decision not to seek reelection constituted a “threat” to “democracy.”

That evening, Fox’s Jesse Watters hosted Trump, his vice presidential nominee Sen. J.D. Vance, and independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to complain about Biden dropping out, while prime-time host Sean Hannity took shots at Harris’ laugh and, quite literally, grasped at straws.

On successive hours, Fox contributors brought on to discuss Harris attacked her as too tough on crime and too soft on crime.

Monday morning featured a montage of old clips of Biden saying he was running, as if to complain about how unfair the president had been to his opponent by ending his campaign.

All the while, MAGA influencers were plastering X with unhinged conspiracy theories about Biden’s decision to step down from his race and absurdly characterizing Harris’ candidacy as a “coup.”

Harris would be the first woman president and is the biracial daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, and the right is infested with weird little freaks whose incentives favor being the worst possible versions of themselves, so the resulting discourse has featured a hefty helping of racism and sexism. They’ve branded her as a “DEI hire” who is “a little bit uppity”; pushed the racist conspiracy theory that she is not eligible for the presidency due to her parentage; focused attention on her decades-old dating history; and suggested it is disqualifying that she has “No children.” (“And no, becoming a step-parent to older teenagers doesn’t count.”)

Meanwhile, the GOP organ that generates decontextualized fodder for right-wing media is reupping video of Harris describing her outfit while introducing herself at an event whose attendees included blind people, while Republicans are claiming in rapid succession that they’ll sue to keep Biden on the ballot and that he should immediately step down from the presidency.

The chaos demonstrates what Kat Abughazaleh described in a Mother Jones video earlier this month as Fox’s “Kamala problem”: The right-wing propaganda network has struggled “to villainize her properly” over the past several years as it previously did to Hillary Clinton before her 2016 run, leaving its hosts flat-footed.

It also points to a critical weakness in the composition of the right-wing ecosystem: With radio giant Rush Limbaugh and Fox founder Roger Ailes dead, and former Fox star Tucker Carlson banished from its airwaves, the propaganda apparatus is an orchestra without a conductor who can lead its disparate parts to the same consistent message.

Instead, the closest thing the right has to a conductor is Trump. But his lack of discipline and unhinged nature makes him unsuited for the role: He’s spent the last day melting down on Truth Social, arguing that Biden is faking COVID-19, that he may back out of a presidential debate against Harris, that Republicans should somehow be “reimbursed for fraud” for any money spent against Biden, that Biden may “wake up and forget that he dropped out of the race,” and that his decision to drop out makes Democrats “the real THREAT TO DEMOCRACY.”

Right-wing propagandists are part of a mammoth and well-funded industry, and I expect them to figure out something more coherent eventually. But there’s not that much time before the election, and they seem short on ideas thus far.

mma

  1. ### Kamala Harris running for president has reignited the right's disgusting birther crusade

07/22/24 12:26 PM EDT

  1. ### Flailing right-wing media are not ready for Kamala Harris

07/22/24 12:08 PM EDT

mma 7 24

Right-wing media have spent years attacking Vice President Kamala Harris as fundamentally unqualified for the office she holds

Right-wing media have claimed she is a “DEI hire” and launched sexist attacks

WRITTEN BY JACK WINSTANLEY & PAYTON ARMSTRONG

PUBLISHED 07/11/24

Right-wing media figures have spent years attacking Vice President Kamala Harris with unfounded claims that she is a “DEI hire,” assertions that she is uneducated or sounds intoxicated, and other racist and sexist attacks.

As 2024 campaign coverage zeros in on a hypothetical Harris run, right-wing media are continuing their drumbeat of attacks against the VP

related

  1. ### Tomi Lahren previously pushed the same sexist smear about Kamala Harris on Fox Nation

08/01/19

  1. ### Fox News ramps up attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris

07/03/24 1:23 PM EDT

  1. ### Tucker Carlson defends racist smear of Kamala Harris

07/02/19

---

mma

The story of Trump insulting service members was confirmed by Trump's own chief of staff. Right-wing media are still denying it.

WRITTEN BY JANE LEE & HELENA HIND

PUBLISHED 07/01/24

After The Atlantic reported in 2020 that former President Donald Trump had disparaged fallen soldiers as “suckers” and “losers” during a trip to Paris in 2018, right-wing media erupted to protect the former president ahead of the 2020 election. Fox News and other pro-Trump media outlets denied the reporting and attacked The Atlantic's sources, despite a former Trump administration official and other news outlets (including Fox News) confirming Trump's comments. Right-wing media continue to call the report “fake news” in 2024.

In 2018, former President Donald Trump canceled a visit to honor American war dead at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris, blaming the rain for the cancellation. However, The Atlantic reported:

Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.

---

grab

  1. ### Neal Katyal on Trump immunity ruling: “The law, the courts are not going to protect us against a president who wants to violate the law”

07/01/24 12:47 PM EDT

  1. ### Newsmax guest: Supreme Court immunity decision reflects that the president “sort of is the king”

07/01/24 12:40 PM EDT

  1. ### MAGA figures celebrate Supreme Court’s immunity decision: Trump’s lawyers “saved President Trump’s legal behind here”

07/01/24 12:33 PM EDT

  1. ### The story of Trump insulting service members was confirmed by Trump's own chief of staff. Right-wing media are still denying it.

07/01/24 12:18 PM EDT

  1. ### Newsmax guest says the Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity is “an absolute victory” for Donald Trump

07/01/24 12:16 PM EDT

  1. ### Project 2025 partners join right-wing media and climate deniers to celebrate SCOTUS decision overturning Chevron deference

06/28/24 6:18 PM EDT

  1. ### MSNBC legal expert explains the significance of SCOTUS overturning the “Chevron deference” doctrine

06/28/24 4:48 PM EDT

  1. ### Trump recycles Fox-inspired lie that undocumented immigrants are destroying Social Security and Medicare

06/28/24 4:01 PM EDT

  1. ### MSNBC host: You have to be “deep marinated in the MAGA universe” to not see the truth of Trump's insults of service members

06/28/24 12:49 PM EDT

  1. ### Beers for breeders: Right-wing media thirst over Idaho bar celebrating “Heterosexual Awesomeness Month”

06/28/24

mma 7 24

in a new analysis of electric vehicle-related content on Facebook, Media Matters found that negative stories made up the vast majority of content, particularly on right-leaning and politically nonaligned U.S. news and political pages, a trend which does not align with the optimistic outlook of EV adoption and technological advancements.

Since 2021, the Biden administration has allocated billions of dollars toward meeting the ambitious goal of making half of all new cars sold electric or hybrid over the next few years. Provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the CHIPS Act have provided tax credits and other incentives to jump start electric vehicle sales and infrastructure such as charging stations, domestic battery manufacturing, critical mineral acquisition, in addition to preparing the automotive industry workforce for the transition.

In March, an Environmental Protection Agency rule setting strict limits on pollution from new gas-powered cars primed automakers for success in meeting these goals.

Biden’s EV push will continue to play an important role in the upcoming presidential election. Former president and current GOP candidate Donald Trump has insisted that Biden’s policies benefit China, which makes up the largest share of the global EV market. In March, while talking about the current state of the auto industry, Trump declared, “If I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.” Economists disagree.

The comment tracks with years of outrage and opposition from Republican politicians, right-wing media, and fossil fuel industry surrogates, who have often disparaged the new technology and related policy and misleadingly framed the EV push as a threat to American jobs and national security.

Constant attacks on EVs from the right have helped fuel a politically divided market, where people who identify as Democrats are now much more likely to buy them or consider buying them, while nearly 70% of Republican respondents to a recent poll said they “would not buy” an EV. So far in 2024, headline after headline announced EV sales slumps and proclaimed that “EV euphoria is dead,'' despite reports of “robust” growth. In February, CNN changed a headline about EV sales on its website from a success story to a failure. Despite the positive long term outlook for EVs based on indicators like sales and government investments, the discourse around electric vehicles is often pessimistic.

Nowhere is this phenomenon more visible than on social media.

Media Matters compiled and analyzed Facebook posts related to EVs from U.S. news and political pages between January 1 and June 1 of this year and found that the majority of posts framed EVs in a negative light. The analysis also found that negative posts earned more than triple the interactions that content with a positive or neutral framing earned.

Media Matters also isolated Facebook posts from right-leaning U.S. news and political pages. In both this data set and the data set that included pages of all political leanings, the subject we saw the most was automakers or car rental companies rolling back their commitments to selling EVs.

However, on Facebook Media Matters found that this “day-to-day messiness” appears to be getting much more attention than the big picture. Negative stories related to EVs represented 81 out of 100 posts and generated 1.3 million interactions. That’s far more than more positive stories (15% of interactions) or neutral stories which presented both pros and cons (7%).

Even though EV owners are largely satisfied with their purchases overall, the emerging industry is still responding to challenges. These issues, particularly frustration with charging networks, which increase concerns about driving range, are a speed bump on the road to electrifying transportation.

Facebook users were drawn to news stories about Teslas breaking down in the cold, or people waiting in lines for hours to charge their EVs.

Some of the positive stories, which were apparently largely overlooked, included news of expanding charging networks in states like Florida, Michigan, and California. In another post, President Joe Biden declared that “the future of electric vehicles will be made in America by union workers.”

The top post on right-leaning pages during the study period, which was posted by Breitbart and earned 58,283 interactions, highlighted that Ford lost $1.3 billion on EVs in the first quarter of 2024. Anothertop post, from a local Fox affiliate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, featured a story with the headline “Hertz selling 20,000 EVs from rental fleet; will invest in gas-powered vehicles.” This post earned 76,224 interactions.

Stories about automakers and EV sales garnered 675,188 interactions (38%) compared to content about charging infrastructure (164,150 interactions, or 9%) or even EV trouble in cold weather (295,794 interactions, or 17%).

When looking at the top 100 posts from right-leaning political pages only, Media Matters found a similar pattern. Posts related to automakers or EV sales garnered 477,233 interactions (45%). Posts about charging infrastructure earned just 7% and posts about performance issues, particularly in cold weather, earned 10% of interactions. The remaining posts covered an even wider range of different topics.

Importantly, EV sales are still growing, despite setbacks. In May, Ford reported a 65% increase in hybrid and EV sales. Also in May, Bloomberg reported that “EV sales are still booming for most automakers — even if Tesla is in a nut.” The article pointed out that, “Six of the 10 biggest EV makers in the US saw sales grow at a scorching pace compared to a year ago.”

On the predicament at Hertz, CNN reportedthat the problem,“wasn’t necessarily that the cars were electric, and customers simply do not want to drive electric cars. The problem was how Hertz handled the fleet in general.” For example, Hertz did not have charging stations at its rental locations, and the company has been mired by other issues as well. This important context was largely omitted from the post text, headlines, or first paragraphs of the top posts Media Matters analyzed. On Facebook, the optimistic long-term outlook on EV growth was largely ignored.

* Right-wing media have been driving anti-EV sentiment (with help from fossil fuel industry allies) since the start of Biden’s term. This trend was clearly reflected in Media Matters’ analysis. Out of the top 100 posts related to EVs on right-leaning pages, 95% were negative, earning over a million interactions in 2024 so far.

But on Facebook, politically nonaligned pages fed into this trend as well. Nearly three quarters (74%) of EV related top posts on nonaligned pages had a negative framing. These posts generated 83% of all interactions on EV-related top posts from nonaligned pages.

Some of the same headlines that received attention on right-leaning pages also got attention on nonaligned pages. Several local news outlets highlighted Ford and Hertz’s losses, along with other problems related to EVs struggling to charge in cold weather.

Our analysis indicates that media on Facebook are not contextualizing conversations about the so-called EV sales slump, and other problems that most nascent technologies inevitably face. The nation is undertaking a massive and necessary transition to electrify the transportation sector, reduce car dependency, and expand access to public transit. Transforming the transportation sector in this way will not only cut planet-warming carbon pollution, but will also improve health outcomes for many Americans.

===

AN 6 24

The biggest conservative news outlets are seeing a precipitous decline in traffic to their websites, and it's showing no sign of abating despite 2024 being a high-profile election season.

On Wednesday, Daily Beast media reporter Justin Baragona tweeted traffic data compiled by media analyst Howard Polskin's website TheRighting.com, which specializes in tracking conservative media. Polskin assembled a table showing the number of unique visitors (individual internet users who visit a website) a site received in May of 2020 compared to May of 2024, along with a percentage difference in the subsequent column.

Polskin found that high-profile far-right websites like Breitbart, Daily Wire, The Blaze, National Review, Daily Caller and the Federalist all saw sharp drops in unique visitors between the 2020 election cycle and the 2024 cycle. Breitbart — which was led by Steve Bannon before he joined former President Donald Trump's campaign and administration — saw its unique visitors drop from more than five million in 2020 to just over 500,000 last month – a 90% drop. The Federalist, which was co-founded by Meghan McCain's husband, Ben Domenech, saw its unique user count plummet from 3.3 million to 166,000, which is a 95% decline.

READ MORE:**Pro-Trump media landscape 'utterly collapsing' compared to last election cycle: report**

While traffic to other, larger mainstream outlets is also down, the rapid cratering of unique user numbers is mostly concentrated among right-wing media.

Baragona pointing out that

"Even compared to last year, most of the top right-wing media outlets have seen a traffic tailspin. Year over year, the Washington Examiner is down 72%, Outkick has dropped 46% and The Federalist has lost 79% of its audience," Baragona tweeted. "Meanwhile, compared to May 2023, the NYT is up 10%."

One culprit of this traffic decline could be due to Facebook adjusting its algorithm – which is the code that dictates what users see in their respective news feeds — in recent years. In April, Polskin noted that traffic for pro-Trump sites was down by roughly 40% over the past four years, which lines up with Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's announcement of changes to the algorithm. In 2018, Zuckerberg announced the feed would begin prioritizing content from users' friends and family over more overtly political content from pages.

Following the changes to the Facebook algorithm, publishers like Dan Bongino, Franklin Graham and Daily Wire, which used to frequently top the social media platform's engagement lists, saw significant drops in likes, comments and shares on their content.

READ MORE:**'Impeachment fatigue' as conservative media distances itself from GOP push: 'Don't have any facts'**

"The flow of traffic to Donald Trump’s most loyal digital-media boosters isn’t just slowing, as in the rest of the industry; it’s utterly collapsing," Atlantic contributor Paul Farhi wrote at the time.

However, this problem may not be confined to news outlets. Baragona observed that Trump's Truth Social platform also saw a significant decline in unique users. In May of 2024, Truth Social had just 2.7 million unique users, which is a 14% drop compared to May of 2023. This marked the platform's second-worst performing month since its launch.

Click here to read Baragona's thread on X (formerly Twitter).

READ MORE: Analysis reveals the real reason conservative media turned on Noem

-----

Right-wing media misleadingly used a video from a fundraiser to renew their attacks on Biden's age

06/18/24 mma

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===

an 6 24

alternet-NO LNX

Republicans are playing a dangerous game by weaponizing ignorance

Sabrina Haake, Raw StoryJune 15, 2024

Donald Trump’s felony convictions are fueling another disinformation campaign, this one equal in destructive force to his Big Lie. Orchestrating a unified response reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s, House Speaker Mike Johnson and his Trump acolytes are weaving Trump’s criminality into a false indictment of the American legal system.

Republicans are falsely blaming Joe Biden for outcomes over which a sitting U.S. president has no control: convictions of Trump on 34 felony counts, pursued by an independently elected DA, pursuant to a state criminal code, as determined by 12 independent jurors, selected with the help of Trump’s own trial team.

The GOP’s target? Low-information voters.

Their weapon? Blatant disinformation.

Their allies? Fox News and the right-wing propaganda machine.

Their illiberal objective tracks the geopolitical strategies of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, and strongman dictators adversarial to democratic systems in general: Weakening institutions through chaos that exhausts voters, allowing oligarch-backed extremists to seize power, peacefully or otherwise, amid the mayhem.

Feigned outrage to entertain the masses

The performative outrage in this week’s program includes eight Republican senators vowing retaliation for Trump’s convictions by opposing any legislation authored by Democrats; they also promise to withhold Senate confirmations.

Meanwhile, Johnson revealed his “three-pronged approach” to retaliation, including withholding congressional appropriations for the Department of Justice. Declaring that Republicans would “do everything we can” to exact revenge for Trump, Johnson and his Republican colleagues are currently pursuing legislation that would allow Trump to pardon himself of state crimes if he retakes the presidency.

Johnson has also suggested the "Trump-ed up" Supreme Court would “step in” to overturn Trump’s state convictions, the irony of simultaneously claiming that Biden controls the judiciary apparently over his head.

Advocating illegal acts is itself illegal.

Trump strategists Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon — the latter headed to prison soon himself — are openly urging Republican officeholders to use their offices to attack Democrats. They clearly need reminding — almost as much as they need fast, effective counsel — that using public resources for partisan purposes violates federal law.

Demanding that Republican district attorneys open investigations into Democrats, they urge attorneys general in Republican-controlled states to target Democrats for unspecified crimes.

Jeff Clark, the former Trump Justice Department official indicted in the Georgia election case, has broadened the call, urging “brave” district attorneys in conservative areas to file lawsuits in federal court against anyone involved in criminal cases against Trump.

Openly advocating illegal acts, and doing so in writing no less, suggests these fools have themselves for clients.

Republicans’ gaslighting campaign is reckless

Trump, for his part, is priming Fox News viewers for violence in the event he is sentenced to serve time in prison, saying, "I'm not sure the public would stand for (my potential prison sentence) ... You know, at a certain point, there's a breaking point."

The right’s gaslighting-of-the-uninformed campaign is working, as evidenced by online demands for bloody revenge. In trying to dox the jurors in Trump’s Manhattan hush money case, one of Trump’s supporters posted, “Hang everyone. 1,000,000 men (armed) need to go to Washington and hang everyone. That's the only solution.”

A Proud Boys writer chimed in, “Now you understand. To save your nation, you must fight. The time to respond is now. Franco Friday has begun.”

Without considering what comes next when the rule of law is hobbled — paramilitary hillbillies rounding up foreigners come to mind, as do drug cartels dropping roadside bombs from drones — Republicans are defending Trump by viciously attacking the judge, jurors, prosecutor, evidentiary rulings, jury instructions, the attorney general, the Department of Justice and mainstream media; they have also threatened to end the career of any GOP candidate who dares to voice respect for the American legal system.

So much for “law and order.”

Like a man blaming his wife as he kicks her down the stairs, Trump tells anyone who will listen — which apparently includes most media outlets — that Democrats have “forced” him to “take revenge” against government adversaries. Salivating over the possibility that he will finally get to imprison his political foes, brandishing his prison shiv, Trump told Newsmax, “It’s a terrible, terrible path that they’re leading us to, and it’s very possible that it’s going to have to happen to them…”

One is almost tempted to have compassion for Melania.

From whence does the GOP’s amnesia come?

Republican outrage is overplayed, as if everyone has forgotten about Trump’s well-documented criminality, played out over decades.

In 1998, the Treasury Department imposed the then-largest fine of $477,000 on Trump Taj Mahal casino for money laundering; Trump admitted that he pocketed millions of dollars raised from charity; he was ordered to pay $2 million for diverting donations from a televised fundraiser for veterans; in 2023, a civil jury adjudicated him a rapist; he was previously found to have engaged in business fraud to the tune of $354 million dollars.

When his niece Mary Trump sued him for allegedly defrauding her out of tens of millions of dollars — she said Trump extorted her by threatening to withhold medical coverage from a severely disabled nephew — she declared “Fraud was not just the family business — it was a way of life.”

Despite his consistent criminality and organized crime connections, Trump’s felony convictions hit differently, triggering the GOP’s kamikaze declaration of war as three more criminal trials and 54 combined felony counts loom.

Democrats must punch back harder

Republicans are using disinformation as a weapon against uninformed voters to keep them aligned with Trump. Their ploy seems to be working, as Trump informally reported a $52.8 million haul in online donations in the first 24 hours after the verdict was announced.

Instead of confessing to the obvious that Trump’s criminality is driving his legal woes — not Biden, not the “Deep State,” not rigged justice — MAGA Republicans would prefer to round up Trump’s adversaries as political prisoners.

After Trump’s deadly mob wanted to hang Vice President Mike Pence to block Trump’s 2020 loss, they are lusting for another fight; historically, coups are regularly attempted more than once.

It is clear that the United States is under siege by illiberal forces, aided by a relentless propaganda machine committed to fomenting violence. My money is on the justice system — and on voters being smart enough to detect the ruse.

The politically moderate sports announcer Colin Cowherd recently summed it up: “If everybody in your circle is a felon, maybe it’s not rigged. Maybe the world isn’t against you… Trump’s campaign chairman was a felon. So is his deputy campaign manager, his personal lawyer, his chief strategist, his national security adviser, his trade adviser, his foreign policy adviser, his campaign fixer, and his company CFO. They’re all felons… It’s a cabal of convicts.”

Here's to slapping back.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

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A guide to the MAGA media universe | Media Matters for America

NO LNX PIX

ARCHIVES

Trump's advisors

Molly Butler / Media Matters

RESEARCH/STUDY

A guide to the MAGA media universe

Trump's inner circle of advisers has shifted even more toward the fringes

WRITTEN BY MEDIA MATTERS STAFF

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM SOPHIE LAWTON, JACINA HOLLINS-BORGES, JACK WHEATLEY, JOHN KNEFEL & MADELINE PELTZ

PUBLISHED 02/26/24 11:35 AM EST

A close-knit circle of operatives supporting former President Donald Trump’s reelection and being floated for a variety of Cabinet-level positions in a potential second Trump administration also regularly appear as hosts and guests across the right-wing media. Occupying a number of roles in the right-wing movement — from think tank presidents to far-right internet trolls — they share a fierce loyalty to Trump, and many have shown a willingness to subvert the rule of law and the democratic process.

These pro-Trump media figures have also developed a new infrastructure for the MAGA movement — most notably Project 2025, a wide-ranging policy and staffing initiative led by right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation and supported by dozens of other conservative institutions. Project 2025 aims to prepare for a potential Trump presidential transition to hit the ground running in a second term.

A central component of this plan is the reimplementation of Schedule F, an executive order issued in the final days of the Trump administration only to be rescinded immediately by President Joe Biden. Schedule F would remove protections for tens of thousands of civil servants, making it easier for the administration to fire them and replace them with Trump loyalists. The most important media platform for Project 2025 is Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, a firehose of pro-Trump sycophancy where he frequently hosts guests working on this project.

In addition to pushing Project 2025, some right-wing media figures tied to Trump have advocated for his potential administration to govern as Christian nationalists and spread the white supremacist “great replacement” conspiracy theory to gin up support for a draconian immigration agenda.

Media Matters is publishing this guide of Trump's inner circle of advisers pushing extremism, authoritarianism, bigotry, and misinformation in their media appearances. This resource will be updated on a regular basis.

Select a Trump Adviser

Steve Bannon

Steve Bannon is a former top Trump adviser and current host of the War Room podcast, a central hub of the MAGA media universe and main platform of Project 2025. Reporting from ABC’s Jonathan Karl indicates that Bannon has “once again emerged as one of Trump’s most important advisers." He has been reportedly floated as a potential chief of staff in a second Trump administration, backed by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and others.

Bannon’s influence is also felt in D.C., especially among House Republicans. He marshaled a successful campaign to remove Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as speaker of the House in 2023, and he has suggested that McCarthy’s successor, Mike Johnson, should meet the same fate. Trump has promised to use a second presidency to enact retribution against his political enemies, and Bannon has endorsed it, promising, “This is just not rhetoric. We're absolutely dead serious,” and saying there will be “no middle ground” or “compromise” in a second Trump term.

Bannon was a key driver of the January 6 insurrection and has since been an unrepentant mouthpiece for its historical revision on the right. During the 2020 presidential election period and its aftermath, he used revolutionary rhetoric that often implicated or explicitly endorsed the use of violence, at one point calling for FBI Director Christopher Wray and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci to be beheaded. Bannon has referred to migrants as “locusts” and called for “shutting down the border” and “mass deportations.” Additionally, several organizations he has ties with were recently named in a federal indictment of his longtime associate Miles Guo.

In recent months, Bannon has advanced claims that a second Trump administration will seek retribution against the “administrative state,” promoted his picks for who will serve in another Trump Cabinet, amplified far-right narratives about the southern border and immigration, and criticized GOP leadership. Here's a list of these and other such commentary:

In a GETTR post, Bannon claimed there is a “coming Civil War.” [GETTR, 1/26/24]

In an interview on ITV News, Bannon claimed: “President Trump will look to deconstruct the administrative state — the Supreme Court’s already into this right now, reviewing cases about downsizing this bureaucracy.” [ITV News, 1/25/24]

On GETTR Bannon claimed Texas is part of a “Border War.” [GETTR, 1/25/24]

Sharing a report that Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices were poised to overturn a longstanding legal precedent enabling government agencies to regulate public safety and consumer protections, Bannon celebrated: “Deconstruction of the Administrative State has begun. ….Trump’s Justices Lead the Way.” [GETTR, 1/18/24]

Bannon pledged to lead an effort to remove Speaker Mike Johnson from leadership if he doesn't give into far-right funding demands. [Media Matters, 1/17/24]

Linking to a CNN article discussing the Israeli far right’s effort to displace Palestinians in Gaza, Bannon wrote, “The War Against the Sharia Supremacists About to Get Real for the Nation of Israel.” [GETTR, 1/17/24]

On Leading Britain’s Conversation, Bannon said that his policies are “much farther right than President Trump.” [YouTube, 1/16/24]

In the same appearance, Bannon said, “We’re training up, right now, 3,000 people that can step into the government [on] day one” of a potential second Trump presidency to take over the federal bureaucracy for “the populist, MAGA, America First agenda.” [YouTube, 1/16/24]

Bannon: “If President Trump ever asked me to come back to the campaign or to the White House, I would always do what President Trump asked me to do.” [YouTube, 1/16/24]

Bannon shared an image of Trump at his 2017 inauguration, writing, “Back with a Vengeance.” [GETTR, 1/16/24]

Bannon wrote “Come Retribution” in response to Trump’s win in the Iowa caucuses. Noting Bannon’s previous use of the phrase to hype Trump’s 2024 campaign launch, reporter Jonathan Karl wrote that “according to some Civil War historians, [Come Retribution] served as the code words for the Confederate Secret Service’s plot to take hostage—and eventually assassinate—President Abraham Lincoln.” [GETTR, 1/16/24; The Bulwark, 11/3/23]

Bannon shared a tweet depicting CNN entrance poll results in the Iowa Republican caucuses, writing, “65% of Caucus Goers Think Biden is an ILLEGITIMATE President. Go MAGA!!” [GETTR, 1/15/24]

Bannon shared a CBS News poll, writing that “72% of Republican Voters Agree That Illegal Alien Invaders are ‘Poisoning the Blood’ of America; 48% of ALL VOTERS.” [GETTR, 1/15/24]

Bannon called Speaker Mike Johnson “a hot mess” and “a wimp.” [Real America's Voice, War Room, 1/12/24]

Bannon responded to a conspiratorial rant from his guest, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), by asking if she would be willing to serve as Trump's vice president or in his Cabinet. [Real America's Voice, War Room, 1/11/24]

Bannon regularly uses right-wing religious rhetoric about “spiritual warfare” against “demonic” Democrats. [Media Matters, 1/11/24]

Bannon touted longtime right-wing media figure Monica Crowley as a possible national security adviser in a second Trump term. [Real America's Voice, War Room, 1/9/24]

On GETTR, Bannon wrote that “MAGA Must First Purge, Then Rejuvenate and Restore” American institutions. [GETTR, 1/7/24]

Bannon wrote that “DEI Programs Must be Eradicated ‘Root and Branch’ in Academia, Government and Especially Corporate America,” celebrating “MAGA ON a Roll” after the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania resigned. [GETTR, 1/7/24]

Bannon claimed that “the Invasion of Our Country has been Thoroughly Planned and Well Executed by the Enemies—Foreign and Domestic—of America.” [GETTR, 1/3/24]

On War Room, Bannon said, “We should get kids off of social media and start teaching them the proper use of guns.” [Real America's Voice, War Room, 12/19/23]

Discussing a potential Trump second term, Bannon said, “There's no middle ground” or “compromise.” He added, “Just because you got a R next to your name doesn't mean anything to us. You’re either with us or you're against us.” [Real America's Voice, War Room, 12/7/23]

Bannon linked to reporting on his and Kash Patel’s statements that they plan to go after journalists if Trump is reelected, writing, “Second Term Accountability Project—Prosecute ‘The Embeds.’” [GETTR, 12/5/23]

Bannon claimed the Insurrection Act will serve as “Legal Basis for President Trump to Restore Order in 2nd Term.” [GETTR, 12/4/23]

Bannon referred to the Project 2025 staffing plan to “Deconstruct the Administrative State,” as led by “MAGA and Team Trump.” [GETTR, 12/1/23]

Tucker Carlson

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Tucker Carlson is a former Fox News prime-time host. He was the network’s biggest ratings driver until he was fired from Fox in April 2023 amid numerous concurrent crises at the company, including fallout from the historic $787.5 million settlement in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation case against the network. He has since launched a digital media property called the Tucker Carlson Network in an apparent attempt to keep his voice in the public discourse.

Carlson has been floated as a possible vice presidential pick for Trump, and the two appeared together at a November 2023 UFC event. Carlson reportedly regularly advises Trump on the phone, and Jon Karl notes they speak specifically about matters related to Ukraine policy. In 2023, Trump skipped a Republican presidential debate in favor of a softball interview with Carlson.

Embarrassing private communications from Carlson were revealed as a part of the Dominion lawsuit in which he privately blasted the former president for his handling of the 2020 election and its violent aftermath. In one text message referring to Trump, he said, “I hate him passionately.” In another text message that reportedly angered executives leading up to Carlson’s Fox News ouster, he described cheering on “a group of Trump guys” attacking an “Antifa kid” in a video he watched but also noted that “jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It’s not how white men fight.”

As a host on Fox News, Carlson was chiefly responsible for introducing and mainstreaming the white supremacist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which purports that nonwhite immigrants are coming to overtake and disenfranchise white Americans, often at the behest of Democrats. A 2022 New York Times investigation found that Carlson “amplified the idea that Democratic politicians and others want to force demographic change through immigration” in more than 400 episodes. His hardcore racist commentary made him a hero to neo-Nazis and other extremists, and he repeatedly hosted guests with fringe ties. Media Matters has extensively documented this commentary, going back to 2004. Carlson also has a history of pushing (and allegedly practicing) extreme misogyny.

Carlson has recently pushed violent anti-immigrant and antisemitic narratives alongside anti-LGBT and misogynistic content. Here's a list of these and other such commentary:

During an interview with The Daily Wire's Candace Owens on his X (formerly Twitter) show, Carlson stated that rich Jews were funding “white genocide.” He added, “And then I found myself really hating those people, actually. ‘You’re OK with that? On what grounds were you OK with that?’” [Media Matters, 11/21/23]

Interviewing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, Carlson suggested that “every able-bodied man with a black rifle assemble at the border, and we're just gonna stop this and save the country.” [Twitter/X, Tucker on X, 12/7/23]

>Attempting to exploit the anti-immigrant riots in Ireland to demonize migrants and Muslims, Carlson told Steve Bannon, “The Irish government is trying to replace the population of Ireland with people from the Third World, obviously,” and added that the white supremacist “great replacement” conspiracy theory is “not a theory.” [Media Matters, 11/30/23]

Carlson hosted violent celebrity misogynist Andrew Tate on his X program and spread a variety of harmful and baseless conspiracies. Carlson claimed that charges against Tate were part of a conspiracy to silence him and that transgender people are the endpoint of the supposed decline of traditional gender roles, which Tate then suggested would lead to “slavery.” [Media Matters, 7/14/23]

After the Covenant school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, Carlson used the opportunity to fearmonger about transgender people, saying the shooting happened “because of a deranged and demonic ideology.” He also said, “The trans movement is the mirror image of Christianity and therefore, its natural enemy.” [Fox News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, 3/29/23]

Jeffrey Clark

Jeffrey Clark served as the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Environmental and Natural Resources Division during the first Trump administration, and he was a key participant in Trump’s attempts to stay in power following his loss in November 2020.

Leading up to the January 6 insurrection, Trump considered installing Clark as acting attorney general due to his reported willingness to subvert election law. Clark was also identified as an unindicted co-conspirator in Trump’s attempts to overturn the election by special counsel Jack Smith, who alleged that Clark “attempted to use the Justice Department to open sham election crime investigations and influence state legislatures with knowingly false claims of election fraud.” In August, he was criminally charged in Georgia for his role in attempting to overturn the election, along with 18 other defendants. Bannon has proposed that Trump appoint Clark as attorney general in a potential second term.

After leaving government, Clark was hired by the Center for Renewing America as a senior fellow, and he is a regular guest on Bannon’s War Room. In July 2023, he explained to the War Room audience that he’d supported using the Insurrection Act against anti-racist protesters in the summer of 2020 and argued against the longstanding norm that the Justice Department remain free from White House political pressure.

Clark has been adamantly pushing anti-immigrant narratives, criticizing diversity initiatives, and insulting the current GOP leadership. He also pushed the idea of the Justice Department having less independence from the president. Here's a list of these and other such commentary:

As a guest on War Room, Clark argued against the Supreme Court ruling on the Texas border case and claimed that “the state of Texas has a right to resist invasion and a right to repel invasion.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 1/22/24]

On War Room, Clark celebrated a potential Supreme Court ruling as “a first major step in clipping the wings of the administrative state.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 1/17/24]

Clark blamed “DEI and CRT and wokism – and their recent manifestation as antisemitism” on Democrats. [Twitter/X, 1/16/24]

Clark wrote that the Republican Party has “been so, so infiltrated by closet dems” and “only Trump has shone a light on this problem and caused those who were never with us to openly defect.” [Twitter/X, 1/16/24]

Clark wrote that grants Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg provided to local election offices in 2020 were meant to “artificially pump up Democrat voter turnout in the key battleground states under cover of an overhyped COVID crisis.” [Twitter/X, 1/16/24]

Clark pledged to “turn things around” on immigration “starting with the 2024 election,” with “any State, or City, or school district” that puts “illegal immigrant housing over the education of our own citizens” losing “all of its federal funding immediately.” [Twitter/X, 1/10/24]

Clark called the watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) “an anti-American extension of the radical elements of the Democrat party.” He added that “Soros, who funds CREW, is a one-man wrecking ball of the American constitutional order,” referring to philanthropist George Soros. [Twitter/X, 1/4/23]

On Family Research Council President Tony Perkins’ podcast, Clark warned that litigation to remove Trump from the ballot for insurrection makes Republican retaliation “fair play.” [Washington Watch with Tony Perkins, 1/2/24]

On Bannon’s War Room, Clark said there needs to be a “beefed up” religious liberty task force to fight anti-Christian sentiment and Bannon floated him as attorney general in Trump’s second term. [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 12/20/23]

Clark wrote, “No one should get to be an immigrant to the US if he or she is dependent on public welfare.” He continued, “We can properly exclude those people from the country who will become public charges.” [Twitter/X, 12/19/23]

Clark posted on X that DEI is “anti-Enlightenment, anti-American,” and “evil.” [Twitter/X, 12/17/23]

Clark joined Bannon’s War Room and claimed that the Department of Justice should not be independent from White House pressure and influence. He stated, “The president, his chief duty is to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, right? Which means law enforcement, which means the Justice Department.” [Real America's Voice, War Room, 7/3/23]

Mike Davis

Mike Davis is former counsel to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. As founder of the Article III Project, a conservative legal think tank, he has emerged as a ubiquitous talking head on various legal issues in MAGA media, regularly making extreme claims and endorsing Trump’s behavior. Donald Trump Jr. has suggested Davis as a possible attorney general in a second Trump administration.

Among a deluge of extremist commentary, Davis had previously promised a “three week reign of terror” if given the chance to serve as Trump’s attorney general, even threatening to indict Media Matters staff. He also downplayed the attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 and suggested that sedition charges against Proud Boys were about “trying to take out Trump.” In September, Davis promised that a second Trump administration would deport more than 10 million immigrants and pledged: “We're gonna put kids in cages. It's gonna be glorious.”

Davis frequently takes to X and right-wing podcasts to promote violent anti-immigrant, racist, and misogynistic narratives and speculate about possible assignments in Trump’s Cabinet. Here's a list of these and other such commentary:

Davis posted to X, “We must stop importing this third-world trash. Send. Them. Home.” [Twitter/X, 1/30/24]

In a post responding to recent carjackings in Washington, D.C., Davis told his followers: “Arm up. Shoot to kill. Democrat politicians won't protect you from the roving gangs of carjackers and murderers.” [Twitter/X, 1/30/24]

>After the resignation of Harvard President Claudine Gay, Davis posted, “These leftwing black women are objectively unqualified on paper. Now we learn they are frauds.” Davis added, “Defund these race-hustlers in the DEI industry.” [Twitter/X, 1/30/24]

On X, Davis wrote, “How about gas chamber for Members of Congress lying to Americans?” [Twitter/X, 1/22/24]

Davis called for violence against women, posting to X, “How about cutting out the tongues of Democrat activist women who lie about sexual assault?” [Twitter/X, 1/22/24]

Davis posted an image of E. Jean Carroll next to Melania Trump and wrote, “Dear President Trump: Here is the only exhibit you need for Jean Carroll trial.” [GETTR, 1/18/24]

Davis said “Powerful Marxist Black women” like MSNBC host Joy- Ann Reid “are some of the most destructive forces in American society.” [Twitter/X, 1/17/24]

Davis called for “Hamas supporters” in the U.S. to have “their visas revoked” and be “thrown out of the country.” He added, “If they’re naturalized citizens, having them denaturalized and get them the hell out of America because they’re trash, and they need to get the hell out of America because they don’t share our Judeo-Christian values.” [Rumble, The Yossi Schmidt Show, 1/16/24]

Davis wrote: “Never apologize for being a ‘white Christian.’ Be proud. We have been—and continue to be—the greatest force for good in human history. Especially for poor, minorities around the world. The world would collapse without us.” He added that “those trashing us,” such as MSNBC’s Reid, “can go to hell.” [Twitter/X, 1/16/24]

Discussing the possibility of his becoming a member of Trump’s future Cabinet, Davis wrote, “I’m too controversial to get confirmed. But I want to become Trump’s viceroy of DC.” He claimed that some of his policies would be to “retrocede Arlington and Alexandria back into DC. (Republicans will win control of Virginia again.) And repeal the DC Home Rule Act of 1973. Carjackers and murderers will get hung.” [Twitter/X, 1/15/24]

Davis claimed Democrats are “bashing white Christians. And coddling the violent black (and Muslim) underclass.” He asserted that the party will “act stunned when you get crushed on November 5, 2024.” [GETTR, 1/15/24]

Responding to a supposed attempted robbery, Davis posted, “Now these animals are invading Woodley Park. Stay woke, DC.” [Twitter/X, 1/11/24]

Davis claimed that “Biden has (intentionally) allowed unvetted (and un-vettable) fighting-aged men from every trouble-spot on the planet to flood into the United States.” He claimed, “Trump brought us peace, safety, stability, and prosperity. Biden brought us war, crime, chaos, and despair.” [Twitter/X, 1/11/24]

On The Vince Coglianese Show, Davis argued that the House should not certify any votes from states where Trump was taken off the ballot, stating, “The House should not count any votes where they’ve used this bogus legal theory to disqualify a presidential candidate.” [Cumulus News Talk, The Vince Coglianese Show, 1/8/24]

Responding to a clip of Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) refusing to commit to certifying the results of the 2024 election, Davis asked, “Why would anyone commit to certifying the results of an election before the election? That’s like a judge deciding a case before the trial. Idiotic.” [Twitter/X, 1/7/24]

In reponse to pro-Palestinian protesters blocking a freeway in Seattle during the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, Davis posted, “Arrest. Charge. Convict. Imprison. Deport.” [Twitter/X, 1/6/24]

Davis posted, “Happy January 6th! These two good Americans were severely mistreated by a politicized and weaponized justice system,” next to photos of Jacob Chansley, known as the “QAnon Shaman,” and Adam Johnson, the man who removed the House Speaker’s lectern. Davis continued, “Let’s make a deal: We’ll pretend to care about January 6th. When Democrats pretend to care about the much-more deadly and destructive BLM and antifa riots. Or the threats of violence against Jews by Hamas supporters. Or the illegal obstruction campaigns by abortion activists.” [Twitter/X, 1/16/24, 1/6/24]

On Kimberly Guilfoyle’s show, Davis defended Trump from fraud charges as well as insurrection accusations and argued that special counsel Jack Smith and the Colorado Supreme Court are committing election interference. Davis said, “Jack Smith is trying to interfere in the election” and went on to claim President Joe Biden and the Justice Department “want President Trump in a courtroom instead of a campaign trail.” [Rumble, The Kimberly Guilfoyle Show, 1/5/24]

On Fox News, Davis called on the courts to shield Trump from legal repercussions. He told Laura Ingraham, “There's no question that if the D.C. circuit does not hold that the president of the United States, any president of the United States, does not enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution for his official actions or the outer perimeter of official actions, which is the current case law for civil immunity, there's no question the Supreme Court is going to have to take this case and establish that there is criminal immunity.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 1/4/24]

Davis made unfounded and racist statements against former Harvard President Claudine Gay, claiming, “This unqualified Black woman only got picked because of her skin pigment and genitals.” He added, “Americans are tired of #equity, DEI, and the rest of the Marxist nonsense.” [Twitter/X, 1/4/23]

Attacking Gay, Vice President Kamala Harris, and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, Davis posted, “Democrats must stop picking people for crucial jobs based upon skin pigment, genitals, attraction to genitals, or perception of genitals. That’s an idiotic—and discriminatory—way to do anything. Let alone run the most crucial institutions in the world.” [Twitter/X, 1/4/23]

On Steve Bannon’s War Room, Davis attacked Colorado judges who worked to remove Trump from the ballot, listing them by name. [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 12/20/23]

During an appearance on Steve Bannon’s War Room, Davis said, “I would love to put [MSNBC journalist] Mehdi Hasan in a gulag.” [Lindell TV, War Room, 12/11/23]

Davis joined Salem Radio Group’s The Charlie Kirk Show to discuss a possible future Trump administration’s policy plans and fearmongered that “we’re losing our country to the left.” Davis claimed, “The Marxist left has taken over just about every institution in America, including the military, and they’re subversive, and they’re destroying our country from within. … That must be fixed.” [Salem Media Group, The Charlie Kirk Show, 12/8/23]

Boris Epshteyn

Boris Epshteyn is a longtime adviser to Trump, having served on his 2016, 2020, and 2024 campaigns. According to Jon Karl’s book Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party, Epshteyn was “widely viewed as one of Trump’s most sycophantic advisers.” Epshteyn is also the former chief political analyst for Sinclair Broadcast Group, where his “must-run” segments aired on local TV stations from 2017 to 2019. He is a frequent guest on Steve Bannon’s War Room, where he frequently engages in the election denialism that’s endemic to the show.

Epshteyn is reportedly an unindicted co-conspirator in Trump’s alleged attempts to stay in power after losing the 2020 election, he has been interviewed by federal prosecutors, and his cell phone was seized as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation. Epshteyn has separately faced other legal trouble; police records show he was arrested in 2021 for repeatedly groping two women at an Arizona nightclub.

Epshteyn continues to claim Trump’s legal issues are tied to election interference and spouts other election-related conspiracy theories. Here's a list of these and other such commentary:

Epshteyn claimed E. Jean Carroll was lying and had destroyed “mountains and mountains of evidence” while speaking outside the courtroom where Trump’s defamation trial was taking place. He went on to say the trial was “a sham” and “crooked Joe Biden-driven election interference.” [Rumble, The Gateway Pundit, 1/18/24]

On War Room, Epshteyn argued that Trump’s indictments and civil fraud trial are for “political reasons and for election interference.” [Rumble, War Room, 1/12/24]

Speaking with former Trump official Sebastian Gorka, Epshteyn said Trump was successful in “ending the War on Christmas” in his first term, “and which President Trump will again end when he wins in November of 2024 and comes back to the White House.” [Rumble, America First with Sebastian Gorka, 12/15/23]

Epshteyn baselessly stated that Democrats and establishment Arizona Republicans were “stealing this election from MAGA, stealing it from the American people.” He added, “We’ve got to be fighting, we cannot be accepting the rigging and stealing of American elections. We’ve been talking about it for two years.” [Media Matters, 11/14/22]

Liz Harrington

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Trump spokesperson Liz Harrington is a former Republican National Committee official and conservative journalist. She was a key mouthpiece for the stolen election lie after Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential race, falsely claiming there was “major fraud.” Before working for the RNC, Harrington worked as the editor-in-chief at Steve Bannon’s War Room and at both the Washington Free Beacon as well as CNS News. Last year, Harrington attacked Fox News and the Murdochs, claiming they were trying to hurt Trump and calling Fox News “that fake news network.” She’s received backlash in the past for her transphobic and anti-LGBTQ commentary, which includes supporting a ban on trans people serving in the military.

While continuing to promote false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, Harrington often asserts that the upcoming 2024 presidential election is being rigged against Trump or stolen by the Democrats. Here's a list of these and other such commentary:

Harrington has repeatedly made unfounded claims that the Biden administration is coordinating with prosecutors against Donald Trump to interfere in the upcoming election through lawsuits. On X, she called Trump’s legal battles in Georgia “coordinated election interference with the Biden White House.” In another post on X, Harrington claimed Attorney General Merrick Garland “wants the Show Trials of his regime’s number one political opponent in the middle of the 2024 Election” and suggested the prosecution of Trump was “for corrupt government actors to interfere in the People’s elections!” In an appearance on The Gateway Pundit’s Gateway: Beyond the Headline, Harrington called Trump’s legal issues “a sham case” and a chance for Democrats to secure a “sham conviction and try to interfere in the election.” [Twitter/X, 1/9/24, 1/19/24; The Gateway Pundit's Gateway: Beyond the Headline, 1/10/24]

On The Steve Gruber Show, Harrington said the Biden administration is “trying to steal an election.” [Real America’s Voice, The Steve Gruber Show, 1/3/24]

Harrington pushed debunked claims that the 2020 election was stolen, posting, “It has often been repeated there is ‘no evidence’ of fraud in the 2020 Election. In actuality, there is no evidence Joe Biden won.” [Twitter/X, 1/2/24]

Attacking the special counsel investigating Trump, Harrington said it was “obvious” that “Jack Smith is a political actor engaging in election interferences on behalf of the regime.” [Twitter/X, 12/12/23]

During a 2022 OAN appearance, Harrington claimed that Democrats “don’t want to muck up the [election] process that they have right now, which is systemic widespread fraud.” [OAN, Tipping Point, 8/11/22]

Laura Loomer

Laura Loomer is a far-right social media influencer and twice failed GOP congressional candidate in the state of Florida. Loomer has previously worked for far-right media companies such as Infowars and Project Veritas and is affiliated with extremist group the Proud Boys. In April 2023, Trump attempted to hire her in an official campaign capacity but was rebuffed by his own staff “given her history of inflammatory statements and her embrace of the Republican Party’s fringes.” Despite this backlash, she has regularly appeared with Trump and received praise from him at rallies and on social media. Donald Trump Jr. has floated Loomer as the next White House press secretary.

Loomer is known for her anti-Muslim rhetoric, calling herself a “proud Islamophobe,” and for being banned from various social media, fundraising, and online purchasing platforms for violating their hate speech policies. She has said she is “pro-white nationalism."

Loomer has continued spouting far-right conspiracy theories that are racist, antisemitic, and Islamophobic. She also claims the 2024 presidential election will be stolen or rigged. Here's a list of these and other such commentary:

On her podcast, Loomer claimed that “so many rich Jews have a fixation on trying to destroy America.” She added, “I'm really sick and tired of watching all of these Jews with large amounts of money in our country donate to fund the destruction of our nation and the communist takeover of America.” [Media Matters, 1/30/24]

On X, Loomer wrote that “our country has been destroyed because of those acts of disloyalty” to Trump and that his supporters are at risk of being “sent to modern day, dissident concentration camps by the Biden regime.” She then equated Trump with the country at large, writing: “Given how bad things are now, If you are anti-Trump, you are essentially anti-America.” [Twitter/X, 1/18/24]

Before Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis quit the 2024 Republican presidential primary, Loomer accused him of being “a tool of the DOJ and Jack Smith to normalize the weaponization of government against President Trump.” She made similar accusations against former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and claimed that “the deep state plans on killing Trump ahead of the July 2024 RNC Convention.” [Twitter/X, 1/18/24, 1/18/24]

On X, Loomer argued against maternity leave and in favor of forced birth control for members of Congress. “People should decide if they want to be in Congress or be pregnant. Why should taxpayers have to pay for their reps to get pregnant?” she wrote, adding: “Maybe people will get mad at me for saying this, but if you’re in Congress you should be on birth control.” [Twitter/X, 1/18/24]

Loomer shared a conspiracy theory that the House Republican caucus was secretly working with the Democrats to trigger “a contingent election” in which “Congress chooses our next president.” “I truly believe @HouseGOP is intentionally trying to lose their majority,” she added. “House GOP clearly wants the Dems to take control before November 2024 so that they can continue persecuting President Trump. This is deliberate.” [Twitter/X, 1/18/24]

Loomer referred to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as “the illegitimate Alzheimer’s patient and the prostitute DEI VP who are occupying the White House.” [Twitter/X, 1/18/24]

Loomer promoted a conspiracy theory that Nikki Haley and the deep state would use the weather to “rig” the Iowa caucuses. [Media Matters, 1/12/24]

In an appearance on Timcast IRL, Loomer said: “The great replacement is not some conspiracy theory like the left-wing media wants it to be. ... It's very real.” [Media Matters, 1/13/24]

On her podcast, Loomer told her audience, “I will gladly accept the position of press secretary” in a Trump administration. [Rumble, Loomer Unleashed, 11/14/23]

Following Hamas’ attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023, Loomer posted, “RESTORE THE ISLAMIC TERROR TRAVEL BAN!” and “DEPORT ALL JIHADIS.” [Twitter/X, 10/28/23]

Jason Miller

Jason Miller is a longtime Trump aide currently serving as a top adviser and spokesperson for his 2024 reelection campaign. Like Steve Bannon, Miller has close ties with Chinese business mogul Miles Guo, and he was the CEO at Gettr, Guo’s social media platform. Miller told the House January 6 committee that he agreed that Trump had lost the 2020 election, but he has frequently cast doubt on the results in public.

Miller frequently claims that Biden, the Democrats, or other groups are working to rig or steal the presidential election. Here's a list of these and other such commentary:

On X, Miller claimed that President Joe Biden “is a disaster and has done more damage to the African American community than any president in modern history.” Miller added that “Biden is now trying to gaslight Black Americans with misleading attacks, but everybody knows we were better off with President Trump.” [Twitter/X, 1/8/23]

Miller tweeted that Biden is “trying to imprison his leading political opponent as if we were a third-world banana republic.” [Twitter/X, 1/5/23]

Referencing efforts to remove Trump from the ballot in Maine and Colorado, Miller wrote that “tens of millions of Americans” are being disenfranchised “by a weaponized justice system.” [Twitter/X, 1/5/23]

Ahead of the 2024 election, Miller told former Trump official Sebastian Gorka that “we have to be ready for them [Democrats] to pull the exact same nonsense” as 2020. He continued, “They’re going to do everything they can to rig, steal, try to change the rules of the game.” [Salem, America First with Sebastian Gorka, 1/4/24]

Sharing a New York Post article saying that Democrats are trying to remove Republicans from the ballot nationwide, Miller wrote, “Joe Biden and the Democrats are a real-time threat to democracy.” [Twitter/X, 1/4/23]

Sharing a Trump campaign video on X, Miller wrote, “Joe Biden has created Chaos and Weakness on our Southern Border. President Trump is going to stop it.” [Twitter/X, 12/29/23]

Miller tweeted, “It’s almost like Biden actually wants to see lawless, unvetted illegals pour into the U.S.” [Twitter/X, 12/19/23]

Seemingly in response to the Colorado Supreme Court ruling to remove Trump from the state’s 2024 ballot, Miller tweeted, “ELECTION INTERFERENCE!” [Twitter/X, 12/19/23; The Associated Press, 12/19/23]

Miller alleged a “direct connection between the ruling in Colorado” removing Trump from the ballot “and President Trump posting his largest lead ever over Joe Biden today.” He continued, “Watching Democrats resort to lawfare that disenfranchises millions of Americans to win an election is quite stunning.” [Twitter/X, 12/19/23]

Stephen Miller

Stephen Miller is one of Trump’s longest serving advisers and speechwriters. He was behind some of the administration’s most notorious policies, including the so-called Muslim ban and family separation policy. After Trump’s defeat, Miller launched America First Legal, a legal nonprofit attacking diversity, equity, and inclusion policies as part of the conservative culture wars. (According to a report from The Daily Beast, America First Legal spent 85% of its $35 million budget on advertising rather than its promised lawsuits fighting “anti-white bigotry.")

Miller is expected to serve in a senior capacity in a second Trump administration as the chief architect of Trump’s retribution agenda targeting migrants, creating a policy plan to use the U.S. military to carry out the mass detention and deportation of migrants. He regularly appears in the right-wing media to push the white supremacist “great replacement” theory, and former Fox host Tucker Carlson has advocated for Miller to lead the Department of Justice.

Miller maintains his extreme positions on immigration, frequently fearmongering about the southern border, blaming Biden for the immigration crisis, and pushing right-wing conspiracy theories. Here's a list of these and other such commentary:

On X, Miller fearmongered that “foreign nations and terrorist armies could smuggle entire divisions into the U.S. without the slightest resistance.” [Twitter/X, 1/26/24]

On Fox News’ Jesse Watters Primetime, Miller argued that the Biden administration is working “every single day to maintain the policy of mass resettlement of illegal aliens all across the United States of America, including for the first time in history, of single adult men.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 1/19/24]

Miller posted that Joe Biden “willfully and deliberately unleashed hell on earth” through his immigration policies and should be impeached. [Twitter/X, 1/18/24]

Miller wrote: “In 2022, Biden voluntarily released an adult male illegal alien into the U.S. who is now charged with raping a disabled person. This is the immigration policy Democrats are defending and protecting.” [Twitter/X, 1/18/24]

Miller joined Fox News’ Hannity to discuss the New Hampshire primary and claimed, “If you want to save American democracy in 2024, then your only hope and prayer is to vote for Donald Trump.” [Fox News, Hannity, 1/17/24]

On X, Miller claimed: “Joe Biden is leading a deadly insurrection on the Southern Border in order to remake the American electorate and disenfranchise the American citizen.” [Twitter/X, 1/17/24]

On Fox News, Miller fearmongered about the effects of immigration on the U.S., claiming: “The events that are happening now on our border typically take place after suffering crippling military defeat.” [Fox News, Life, Liberty & Levin, 1/14/24]

Miller joined Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle to discuss immigration in Texas, saying that American taxpayers must “stop funding our own destruction” through Biden’s border policies. [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 1/12/24]

Miller posted: “The Biden Administration is voluntarily and deliberately releasing illegals into America by the millions.” He claimed, “They are choosing, purposefully and maliciously, to resettle and relocate the developing world inside the US.” [Twitter/X, 1/3/24]

On Fox News’ Hannity, Miller claimed that “Joe Biden is waging war against America’s national security” with his immigration policies. [Fox News, Hannity, 1/2/24]

Miller posted: “The Democrat Party is openly sabotaging the 2024 election while throwing people in jail for questioning their conduct of the 2020 election.” [Twitter/X, 12/29/23]

Sharing video of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, Miller posted, “To those who say officeholders do not posses immunity, nor protection from prosecution by local jurisdictions, those involved in perpetuating this invasion are susceptible to a great many criminal charges.” [Twitter/X, 12/19/23]

On Fox News’ Jesse Watters Primetime, Miller pushed the white supremacist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, calling immigration “the engineered political transformation of the country” and claiming, “We are being conquered. This is a complete resettlement of America in real time.” [Fox News. Jesse Watters Primetime, 12/19/23]

Kash Patel

Kash Patel held various national security positions in the Trump administration, serving on the National Security Council and as chief of staff to acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller at the end of the term. He was also reportedly almost installed as acting CIA director in the lead-up to the January 6 insurrection, when Trump deemed certain members of his administration insufficiently loyal in his effort to overturn the election.

Patel also appears to be a key source for the false claim that Trump attempted to deploy 20,000 National Guard troops to protect the U.S. Capitol prior to January 6. And he was reportedly involved in feeding Trump “negative information about Ukraine” ahead of his 2019 call with President Volodymyr Zelensky during which Trump threatened to withhold aid to the country, resulting in his first impeachment. Patel was also in charge of the Pentagon’s transition to the Biden administration team.

Patel has a history of pushing misinformation to further right-wing causes. He is closely tied to the QAnon movement and has praised the conspiracy theory’s supporters. He is also a regular on Steve Bannon’s War Room, where the host has floated him as a potential CIA director or as head of the Defense or State Department in a second Trump term. In November 2022, Patel announced that he would be touring the country as a Trump campaign surrogate for the 2024 presidential election.

Leading up to the 2024 election, Patel has pushed Trump’s potential retribution plans, claimed that the election will be stolen, and made recommendations for a possible second Trump administration. Here's a list of these and other such commentary:

On The Charlie Kirk Show, Patel declared that Trump was “totally innocent” of involvement in the January 6 insurrection and repeated the false claim that he’d ordered National Guard troops to protect the Capitol. [Salem Radio, The Charlie Kirk Show, 1/16/24]

On Truth Social, Patel criticized Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade for supposedly “hijacking ... our legal system for political weaponization” in prosecuting Trump. [Truth Social, 1/16/24]

On America First with Sebastian Gorka, Patel decried “Chris Wray’s ideology that has been created by Merrick Garland for one reason, to rig presidential elections.” Criticizing comments by Chris Matthews on MSNBC, Patel said, “This is what you get when you’re on a panel with race-hustling thugs like Al Sharpton.” [Rumble, America First with Sebastian Gorka, 12/28/23]

On Bannon’s War Room, Patel defended Trump’s actions on January 6: “Trump did not commit insurrection — he did not even come close.” He went on to claim that “Trump acted proactively to secure Congress.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 12/20/23]

On Bannon’s War Room, Patel confirmed Trump’s second term retribution plans to retaliate against the press: “We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media.” Patel specifically cited media figures who “who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.” [Media Matters, 12/5/23]

Patel and former Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) specifically appealed to QAnon extremists to build a user base for Trump’s right-wing social networking site Truth Social. [Media Matters, 8/1/22]

Before California GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy became speaker, Patel said he would like to see Trump as speaker of the House. [Media Matters, 1/4/23]

Patel spoke at a ReAwaken America Tour stop at Trump’s Miami resort that also featured an antisemitic influencer who has said the Nazis were merely “protecting their sovereignty” from Jewish people. [Media Matters, 10/16/23]

Kevin Roberts

Kevin Roberts is president of the Heritage Foundation, an influential conservative think tank behind the Project 2025 effort to provide staffing and policy papers for the next Republican administration. Under Roberts’ tenure, which began in 2021, Heritage has increasingly turned to fringe right-wing media to maintain relevance in the conservative ecosystem and stave off new competitors.

Roberts has pushed numerous hard-right positions at Heritage, including eliminating the Department of Education and signing onto the Convention of States, a fringe movement to weaken the federal government’s regulatory power and ability to protect civil rights. He also has endorsed the unitary executive theory, which holds that the president has the almost unlimited power to control the federal judiciary. Notably, Roberts has falsely claimed President Joe Biden did not win the 2020 election.

Roberts has promoted the Project 2025 ideas during media appearances and on X, especially regarding immigration policy and removing Biden administration officials. Here's a list of these and other such commentary:

In an interview with The New York Times, Roberts praised far-right Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, calling him a “very impressive leader” and saying his work to make Hungary a more conservative country “should be celebrated.” [The New York Times, 1/21/24]

Roberts also told The New York Times that “at least some” of Sen. Joe McCarthy’s “tactics” to stamp out political opponents during the 1950s Red Scare “were terrible, but what he got right was the motivation.” [The New York Times, 1/21/24]

On Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria Bartiromo, Roberts claimed that “the American people … are ready for [Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro] Mayorkas to be impeached and removed from office” over “the crisis at the southern border.” [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria Bartiromo, 1/18/24]

Roberts posted to X that the Biden administration's border policies are “destructive” and wrote, “The conservative movement must take action to force the gov. to do its job: protect the American people & secure the homeland.” [Twitter/X, 12/21/23]

Roberts posted: “Years of backroom deals and weakness from Congress have given us the worst illegal immigration crisis in American history.” Roberts repeated the same language in a statement to Fox News on immigration. [Twitter/X, 12/14/23; FoxNews.com, 12/14/23]

Roberts posted to X: “The Left's infiltration of our institutions, exemplified by the Marxist cultural rot in #highered, cannot be placated. It must be decisively defeated.” [Twitter/X, 12/13/23]

On X, Roberts called for defunding “elite” universities: “Calling for the resignation of their presidents is righteous, but not enough. Defund them. Americans should not be forced to fund their enemies.” [Twitter/X, 12/11/23]

Donald Trump Jr.

Donald Trump Jr. is the eldest child of Donald Trump and host of Triggered on right-wing video platform Rumble. He served as a political adviser during the Trump 2016 campaign and later took over the Trump Organization with his brother Eric. (Both Trump sons were later found liable for civil fraud, along with their father.)

Trump Jr. was also instrumental in post-2020 election denial, notably texting then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows suggestions of ways to keep his father in power two days after the election, writing, “We have multiple paths. We control them all.” On January 6, 2021, he pushed Meadows to have his father condemn the violence at the U.S. Capitol, but he has since downplayed its severity, mockingly calling its anniversary “Fake Insurrection Day.”

Trump Jr. heavily promotes his father’s reelection campaign, pushing his talking points online and recently calling for Republican attorneys general to remove Joe Biden from the ballot in their states. On social media and his podcast, he has promoted the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, white nationalists, and QAnon supporters.

Trump Jr. has pushed suggestions for his father’s potential future administration alongside frequent anti-LGBTQ attacks and supported right-wing conspiracy theories such as January 6 revisionism. Here's a list of these and other such commentary:

Trump Jr. told The Hill that Tucker Carlson is “certainly ... a contender” for vice president if his father is reelected. [The Hill, 1/18/24]

During his live coverage of the Iowa caucuses on Rumble, Trump Jr. said immigrants “dilute” the American population. [Rumble, Triggered with Donald Trump Jr., 1/15/24]

Trump Jr. praised a video of mixed martial arts fighter Sean Strickland making anti-LGBTQ comments, calling it “amazing” and adding, “If there were more people willing to talk to the Press like this, they’re bullshit wouldn’t be nearly as pervasive.” [Twitter/X, 1/17/24]

Trump Jr. accused January 6 participant Ray Epps (a frequent target of right-wing conspiracy theories) of being part of a “#Fedsurrection,” posting on X that Epps “gets probation, a $500 fine and is able to phone into his sentencing?!? Are you fricken kidding me? Yea guys, he totally wasn’t put there to incite things by the feds. Our country is screwed… the traitors in charge aren’t even pretending anymore.” [Twitter/X, 1/9/24; NBC News, 9/19/23]

Trump Jr. fearmongered on X that “DEI indoctrination is infiltrating US Service Academies and brainwashing our future military leaders!!!!” [Twitter/X, 1/8/24]

On his Rumble show, Trump Jr. called immigration “the great replacement reality of what the Democrats are trying to do.” [Rumble, Triggered with Donald Trump Jr., 1/1/24]

Trump Jr. shared a graph of supposed “illegal immigrant encounters” under Biden and commented: “tHe gReAt RePLacemEnT tHeOry is A MYth!!!!!!!” [Twitter/X, 1/7/24]

Trump Jr. quoted a post from Libs of TikTok, adding: “Per capita is there a more violent group of people anywhere in the world than radicalized trans activists?” He added: “Given the tiny fraction of the population that they make up it doesn’t seem like anyone else even comes close.” [Twitter/X, 1/4/24]

Speaking on his Rumble show, Trump Jr. called QAnon supporters “patriotic Americans.” [Rumble, Triggered with Donald Trump Jr., 12/28/23]

On his Rumble show, Trump Jr. said he wanted to see Alex Jones in a second Trump administration, possibly as press secretary for “two weeks to a month” to “put these idiots in their place.” [Newsweek, 12/29/23]

On Newsmax, Trump Jr. said that “if Claudine Gay was a straight white male, she wouldn't keep her job at Harvard.” [Newsmax, Eric Bolling The Balance, 12/12/23]

On his Rumble show, Trump Jr. told white nationalist Douglass Mackey that he “may be my favorite Twitter account of all time.” Mackey, who has tweeted that Jewish people have “control of the media,” was convicted of election interference during the 2016 presidential election. [Media Matters, 12/12/23]

Trump Jr. shared a post from Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) claiming that the United Nations “perpetuates child rape,” adding, “As if we needed another reason to defund the UN.” [Twitter/X, 12/7/23]

Russ Vought

:

Russ Vought is a Christian nationalist who served as head of the Office of Management and Budget under Trump, and he worked to implement Schedule F — a policy to remove job protections from career staffers — in the administration’s final weeks. After Trump’s loss, Vought founded the Center for Renewing America, a right-wing think tank that is a key organization in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. The group aims to staff the next Republican administration with an army of Christian nationalists.

Vought has endorsed using ideological purity tests under Schedule F to make it easier to fire civil servants who don’t share his extremist views. In late 2022, Vought and CRA released a proposed budget to combat the “woke and weaponized” federal government that is also a blueprint for how a second Trump administration might unleash the FBI on the disgraced former president’s political enemies. Vought has also advised House Republicans on how to leverage government funding showdowns to enact severe social spending cuts.

Vought has recently complained about the Biden administration’s immigration policy, pushed Project 2025 policy ideas, and attacked GOP leadership. Here's a list of these and other such commentary:

Vought appeared on The Charlie Kirk Show and said that government shutdowns “have always been either a net positive or a win” for the GOP. [Salem Media Group, The Charlie Kirk Show, 1/9/24]

On X, Vought’s organization, Center for Renewing America, posted: “Thousands of illegal migrants are waiting to be processed in Eagle Pass, TX. This is a state-sanctioned INVASION!” [Twitter/X, 12/20/23]

The account also cited the removal of a Civil War monument from Arlington Cemetery as evidence that “our nation’s history is being erased in the name of Critical Race Theory.” [Twitter/X, 12/18/23]

The Center for Renewing America posted a video of migrants — whom it called “illegal invaders” — supposedly waiting for a train from Mexico to the U.S., claiming that the “Biden Border Crisis is BY DESIGN!” [Twitter/X, 12/15/23]

Vought argued in favor of a House rule change that would allow Congress to politically target, and strip the salaries of, individual career civil servants. [Media Matters, 1/12/23]

Vought referred to Christian nationalism as a “boogie man,” and argued that coverage of it will result in a “renewed consensus that the ‘US is a Christian nation & the country’s laws should therefore be rooted in Christian values.’” [Twitter/X, 2/13/23]

Vought’s organization released a budget in December 2022 that called for the elimination of “funding for the recent hiring of 87,000 new IRS agents.” The document falsely claimed a new wave of IRS agents would target “hardworking Americans and struggling families in a craven effort to sustain the broader bureaucracy’s radical progressive agenda.” [Media Matters, 1/10/24]

Vought wrote a chapter of Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership” in which he claimed that “many agencies are not only too big and powerful, but also increasingly weaponized against the public and a President who is elected by the people and empowered by the Constitution to govern.” [Media Matters, 11/9/23]

>Last April, Vought told NBC News: “I think Schedule F is basically doctrine now on the right.” Meanwhile, several articles from mainstream outlets about Vought failed to inform readers about his deep commitments to Christian nationalism. [NBC News, 4/26/23; Media Matters, 4/27/23]

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===

American right-wing media celebrate far-right European electoral success

WRITTEN BY GIDEON TAAFFE

PUBLISHED 06/11/24

After the European Union Parliament — the legislative branch of the 27-member trade bloc — held elections Sunday that resulted in large electoral gains for far-right parties, right-wing media touted the results as good news for Republicans. Conservative media figures claim the results signify “a fundamental political shift” with regard to immigration that will be echoed in the U.S. and could help the GOP win in upcoming elections.

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mma

the MAGA movement and the Trump assassination plot that wasn’t

WRITTEN BY MATT GERTZ

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM JACK WHEATLEY

PUBLISHED 05/29/24

Stephen Bannon’s Tuesday appearance on Alex Jones' show provided a perfect window into the state of the MAGA movement: It’s an unhinged echo chamber running on deranged conspiracy theories and wildly overheated rhetoric, aimed at fomenting grievance and seeking retribution, and it’s unwilling or unable to self-correct in the face of contrary facts.

Bannon, a key Trump ally, told Jones that the FBI’s August 2022 court-ordered search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and resort had been a planned “assassination attempt,” promoting a conspiracy theory that the agents’ standard use-of-force orders revealed the search was part of a scheme by President Joe Biden to kill his predecessor.

“Let me be blunt: This was not a standard operating procedure. Alex Jones, you know that better than anybody,” Bannon told Jones, a notorious false-flag enthusiast.

The host replied that “they were hoping for a confrontation” in which the “Secret Service would think it was an attack.”

Bannon went on to claim that the FBI “had use of lethal force approved” and “wanted someone to bleed out. This entire thing was thought through in a high level of detail, and they weren’t absolutely sure Trump wasn’t going to be there.” He added, “They were looking to have a confrontation that would be an armed confrontation.”

Jones agreed, adding that the agents’ plainclothes attire, instead of uniforms, showed they were “looking for somebody to think it’s a burglary” and “make a mistake.”

In reality, the FBI reportedly picked a date when Trump would not be present for the search, contacted the Secret Service in advance of their arrival, and wore white polo shirts and khakis rather than their usual FBI jackets to avoid attracting attention from guests at Trump’s club.

Bannon subsequently claimed this assassination plot was part of a “vast conspiracy” that requires congressional investigations to “adjudicate” alongside the 2020 “stolen election” and the January 6 “Fed-surrection.” He concluded that when Trump is elected in November, “we’re going to take apart the administrative state brick by brick, and we’re gonna purge the deep state.”

Video

CitationFrom the May 28, 2024, edition of Infowars' The Alex Jones Show.

The FBI’s Mar-a-Lago search triggered an immediate MAGA firestorm in August 2022, with Trump’s media supporters comparing the bureau to the East German Stasi and Nazi Gestapo. They have not been deterred by revelations that the search uncovered a trove of highly classified documents Trump had refused to return, by special counsel Jack Smith charging Trump with 40 federal criminal counts, or by an armed and enraged Trump supporter’s attack on an FBI field office.

In their latest salvo, MAGA commentators used last week’s unsealing of filings in that case to argue that the FBI search had been part of a Biden plot to assassinate Trump. Their theory was facially absurd, and the evidence they cited — an unsealed court filing in the classified documents case which stated that the FBI agents conducting the search had been advised that they “may use deadly force when necessary” — was swiftly debunked. Reporters, legal experts, and the FBI itself pointed out that this “generic” language is part of “every FBI operations order” as part of the bureau’s “standard policy” — and had been similarly provided for document searches conducted at Biden’s own home.

After Trump responded to the MAGA frenzy by claiming that the FBI order showed Biden “was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger,” special counsel Smith noted that the former president’s statements “pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to the law enforcement agents.” But neither the debunking of the assassination claim nor the potential danger to FBI agents is slowing down the likes of Bannon and Jones.

And they aren’t alone — Julie Kelly, the self-proclaimed “J6 conspiracy theorist” who launched the story in the first place, is still at it.

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This is sadly typical. The MAGA right is a constant font of zombie conspiracy theories which are spun up and maintained indefinitely, unaffected by the emergence of contrary facts.

The fervor ignited by their unhinged claims can have serious consequences, as Smith noted — consequences measured in massacres and an insurrection, a shot-up pizza parlor and gym bomb threats, threatened legislators and an assault on an FBI office. And at the end of that yearslong drumbeat, a Trumpist plot to overturn the 2024 election results if Trump loses is looming.

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The right-wing ecosystem that created the Paul Pelosi conspiracy theory

WRITTEN BY MATT GERTZ

PUBLISHED 10/31/22 12:47 PM EDT

It took roughly 48 hours for the right-wing media ecosystem to turn a story about a man who committed political violence after becoming consumed by right-wing conspiracy theories about the depravity of the left into another right-wing conspiracy theory about the depravity of the left.

On Friday morning, a man broke into the San Francisco home of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He was reportedly carrying zip ties and duct tape and, according to law enforcement, was looking for the woman who is second in line to the presidency. She was not present, but the man did find and severely beat her 82-year-old husband, Paul, with a hammer, sending him to the hospital for emergency surgery.

The assailant, who was arrested and identified by police as David DePape, had an extensive Internet footprint that suggests a standard case of online right-wing radicalization. DePape’s writings show his adherence to a wide range of conspiracy theories that are often propped up or adopted in their entirety by prominent right-wing media figures and Republican officials. President Joe Biden on Friday night condemned the impact the Republican Party’s “vitriol” has on those who may be mentally unbalanced.

But in the days since the attack, people who get their news from right-wing sources have instead been told an absurd and baseless conspiracy theory. In this telling, there was no home invasion; instead DePape is actually Paul Pelosi’s leftist gay lover, and the police, Democrats, and the press are covering up that the assault was really a lovers’ spat. The tale was quickly adopted by influential right-wing figures – including Twitter owner Elon Musk – and, if past is prologue, will be accepted by a sizable percentage of the GOP base.

The Pelosi conspiracy theory took hold so quickly thanks to the parallel media ecosystem the right constructed over decades. That ecosystem features numerous outlets that generate conspiracy theories for partisan and financial gain; food-chain mechanisms that swiftly distribute them to millions of people; an existing right-wing audience trained to demand such fantasies; minimal internal guardrails within the right-wing press to provide more credible information; and strong external barriers against contrary information from mainstream news sources.

How the right built a Paul Pelosi conspiracy theory

The right’s conspiracy theorists went to work soon after news of Paul Pelosi’s assault broke. They create dubious but politically beneficial narratives by taking existing facts – particularly ones that emerge early in the life of a story, when initial reports are often wrong – mixing in falsehoods, and using wild logical jumps to put the result in a different context.

First, an investigative journalist at a local TV affiliate reported on Friday that the assailant was wearing only his underwear when police arrived. But the journalist retracted that reporting the same day, and no other outlet confirmed it.

Second, the dispatcher who received a 911 call from Paul Pelosi said that he had identified the intruder as a “friend.” But Pelosi, according to law enforcement, was making that call surreptitiously from the bathroom and speaking “in code” to the dispatcher in an attempt to avoid his suspicion.

Third, some alleged that there were no signs of forced entry at the Pelosi home, suggesting that Paul Pelosi had willingly let DePape inside. In fact, police say he forced entry through the rear door, and aerial photos and video show shattered glass around that entryway (in fact, other internet sleuths claim that the glass pattern is suspicious).

Fourth, Politico reported on Friday based on San Francisco Police Chief William Scott’s press conference that the first police officers responding on the scene “were let inside by an unknown person. They discovered DePape and Pelosi struggling for a hammer.” This generated speculation that a third individual had been present. But Scott did not actually say that, and the SFPD subsequently confirmed only two people, DePape and Paul Pelosi, were at the home when police arrived.

The right’s conspiracy theorists took those four pieces of evidence, mixed in Paul Pelosi’s May DUI charge, and concocted the narrative that hehad been the victim of a drunken gay lovers’ spat that was subsequently covered up.

By Sunday, versions of this speculation were rampant on the right. Commentators who present themselves as credible offered a version in which they were simply asking questions because the press supposedly refused to do so.

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Those who lack such airs simply claimed, as Dinesh D’Douza did, that “this guy, the assailant, is either a sexual partner or a male prostitute, and this is a sexual rendezvous that went sideways.”

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Eventually, the story reached Musk, a troll beloved on the right with a penchant for conspiracy theories. And on Sunday morning, he blasted it out to his 112 million Twitter followers.

After Hillary Clinton shared an article about DePape’s promotion of conspiracy theories and commented that “violence is the result” of the right spreading such lies, Musk responded, “there is a tiny possibility there might be more to the story than meets the eye.” He provided a link to a site with the headline, “The Awful Truth: Paul Pelosi Was Drunk Again, And In a Dispute With a Male Prostitute Early Friday Morning."

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The website, the Santa Monica Observer, had previously alleged that Clinton died in 2016 and had been replaced by a body double for her presidential debate with Donald Trump.

At the same time, the right-wing media generated nonsensical explanations for why the assailant’s Internet footprint is forged and he’s actually a leftist. They cannot accept that the assailant believed right-wing conspiracy theories without taking on responsibility, so they’ve developed an alternate explanation instead.

Roughly 72 hours after news of the assault on Paul Pelosi had broken, the conspiracy theory had been promoted by a Republican member of Congress and by Donald Trump Jr., and “Pelosigaylover” was trending nationally on Twitter.

The conspiracy-minded ecosystem that fuels the right

The right-wing information ecosystem is built to create and propagate conspiracy theories like the latest drivel about the Pelosi attack.

On message boards and social media platforms, an army of right-wing would-be sleuths looking for political advantage or simple amusement are constantly on the hunt for raw materials that they can spin into these alternate narratives.

Hyperpartisan news sites with no journalistic standards – from local ones like the Santa Monica Observer to national players like Gateway Pundit – trawl those venues looking for stories that they can write up and monetize.

The conspiracy theories move up the right-wing media food chain, with more and more prominent influencers and outlets picking up the story and running with it, until it becomes pervasive on the right.

Sprawling conspiracy theories like 2020 election denial, QAnon, Pizzagate, and Gamergate – all of which DePape had championed – worked their way through these networks.

The right-wing audience is uniquely vulnerable to these narratives.

The right-wing press spent decades spinning out these politically convenient narratives about the diabolical nature of their perceived enemies until the audience came to demand them. Few on the right – and none with any real degree of influence – are interested in debunking the rampant lies once they get going. Instead, powerful figures at Fox News and elsewhere end up pushing the likes of QAnon talking points and scoffing at its extremism. And decades of right-wing attacks on the mainstream press have created a bubble in which the audience is unlikely to receive or credit contradictory information from those outlets.

The result is that we consistently see the conspiracy theories come to infest the ranks of the movement, from Vince Foster’s death to QAnon.

I expect the Paul Pelosi fantasy to follow the same route. Republican politicians and prominent Fox hosts will either stand by as the conspiracy theory builds credence on the right or even give a knowing wink and nod to its supporters. Some will probably promote it entirely, perhaps suggesting that these are simply questions that the media refuses to answer.

Credible news outlets will divert resources from covering the rising tide of right-wing political violence or the GOP’s disturbing policy aims if the party gains ground in the midterm elections to pointing out that the right is peddling nonsense about Pelosi. But thanks to the right-wing media bubble, their facts won’t make it to the people inclined to believe it. And so a sizable chunk of the GOP will come to believe an absurd lie.

no lnx

Myths and facts: Debunking right-wing lies and misinformation about Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial

As Trump’s first criminal trial begins, right-wing media repeat his lies and push new falsehoods

WRITTEN BY AUDREY MCCABE, REED MCMASTER, PETE TSIPIS & GIDEON TAAFFE

PUBLISHED 04/19/24

Update (last updated 5/1/24): This article has been updated to include additional examples.

On April 15, former President Donald Trump walked into a Manhattan courtroom for the first day of his trial for charges of falsifying business records in order to conceal hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Trump and right-wing media immediately began spreading lies about the trial.

Right-wing media have wrongly claimed: that a gag order the judge issued on Trump is a violation of his freedom of speech, that the judge has barred Trump from attending his son’s graduation, that Trump should have been charged with misdemeanors rather than felonies, and that Trump should not be prosecuted because Hillary Clinton’s involvement in the Steele dossier is similar and yielded only a fine.

In reality, the case centers on Trump’s attempts to conceal hush money payments to Daniels, who allegedly had an affair with the former president. Trump funneled the payments to Daniels through his former lawyer Michael Cohen, who was sentenced to three years in prison for his role in the scheme as well as other crimes. Prosecutors allege that Trump violated election law in paying off Daniels as it was part of a coordinated effort to assist his 2016 campaign and may have also violated state tax law by mischaracterizing Cohen’s reimbursement.

Experts say Merchan’s gag order is consistent with case law. Merchan also declined to answer Trump’s request to be excused from court on May 17 to attend his son’s graduation, stating that it was too early to make a decision but signaling an openness to it.

Myth: Trump’s gag order is unconstitutional and a violation of his freedom of speech

Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett stated that “the gag order is a clear violation of the First Amendment.” He then claimed that “judges get away with it because by the time it’s challenged on appeal the case is over.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 4/15/24]

Jarrett again criticized Trump’s gag order, saying that especially as the leading candidate for president, Trump has a “constitutional right to speak out to defend himself.” He also claimed that “the judge wants to gag Trump so he can’t respond to some of the accusations against him.” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 4/15/24]

Conservative judicial activist Mike Davis claimed that Trump’s gag order is “illegal” and that “gag orders are supposed to protect criminal defendants.” Davis continued, “You don't put a gag order on a criminal defendant to gag him during a criminal trial, especially when that criminal defendant is a candidate.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room with Steve Bannon, 4/15/24]

Trump ally and anti-Muslim bigot Laura Loomer tweeted that she would “gladly pay the fine for President Trump so he can have free speech.” Trump has amplified Loomer’s content attacking Merchan’s family members, leading Loomer to claim that she would pay Trump’s legal fines “if this asshole named Judge Merchan is really going to target Trump for sharing my videos on Truth Social.” [Twitter/X, 4/15/24; Politico, 4/15/24]

Fact: Experts say the gag order is consistent with New York law and precedent

Merchan has issued a gag order preventing Trump from making public statements that are meant to interfere with the case, including statements about witnesses and their potential testimony, prosecutors, court staff and their family members, and the members of Merchan’s and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s families. Trump has repeatedly disparaged Merchan’s daughter online and has a history of attacking individuals involved in his legal proceedings. [Reuters, 4/12/24; The Washington Post, 4/17/24]

Experts say that Merchan was following case law that goes back decades, that gag orders are rarely found to violate the First Amendment, and that Trump “is free to discuss the criminal justice system but not to make ad hominem attacks on particular people associated with the case.” The gag order does not prevent Trump from speaking about the case, as he can “raise political arguments as he sees fit” as well as comment on Merchan and Bragg. [PolitiFact, 4/11/24; Just Security, 3/27/24; The Associated Press, 4/9/24]

Merchan initially resisted imposing the gag order, urging Trump not to make statements that could incite violence and stating that he was “bending over backwards” to give the former president every opportunity “to speak in furtherance of his candidacy.” After Merchan expanded the initial gag order on April 1, Trump reacted on Truth Social, “They can talk about me but I can’t talk about them???” [The Washington Post, 4/9/24]

Myth: Merchan is blocking Trump from attending Barron’s graduation

After leaving the courtroom on Monday, Trump stated to reporters, “It looks like the judge will not let me go to the graduation of my son.” He later reiterated the claim on Truth Social, claiming that he is “being prohibited from attending.” [Associated Press, 4/16/24]

Newsmax host Carl Higbie claimed that Merchan barred Trump from attending Barron’s graduation. Higbie then encouraged Trump to dare Merchan to hold him in contempt, saying, “If I was Trump, I would say, ‘You know what, man? Bring it. Put me in jail. I beg you.’” [Newsmax, Carl Higbie Frontline, 4/15/24]

Fox News personality Rachel Campos-Duffy claimed that Democrats are “trying to demoralize” Trump by not allowing him to attend his son’s graduation. Campos-Duffy added, “This feels super communist.” [Fox News, Outnumbered, 4/16/24]

Fox Nation host Piers Morgan, appearing on The Five, also encouraged Trump to get himself arrested by attending Barron’s graduation. Morgan stated, “If you're watching, President Trump, just go to the graduation. Every parent in America, whether they like you or hate you, will go, ‘Yeah. I’d have done that too.’” [Fox News, The Five, 4/15/24]

Right-wing influencer Dom Lucre tweeted that it was “barbaric” to not allow Trump to attend his son’s graduation. [Twitter/X, 4/15/24]

Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk urged Trump to risk arrest by attending Barron’s graduation. Kirk stated, “I think Donald Trump should defy the New York judge order and go to Barron's graduation. I think he should just defy the order and go to Barron's graduation. Get arrested. It's just more indictments, not as if you're already not facing 700 years in federal prison.” [Real America’s Voice, The Charlie Kirk Show, 4/17/24]

Fact: Merchan has not made a decision yet regarding Barron’s graduation

When asked if Trump would be excused from attending court on May 17 for the high school graduation of his son, Merchan said it was too early in the trial for a decision but signaled an openness to it if the trial proceeds on schedule. [Rolling Stone, 4/16/24]

Myth: Trump should have been charged with misdemeanors, and the charges were filed outside of the statute of limitations

Fox News host Greg Gutfeld cited Fox legal contributor Jonathan Turley to claim Trump’s charges were an elevated misdemeanor. Gutfeld said, “According to legal expert Jonathan Turley, Trump is on trial for allegedly falsifying business records related to payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. Turley added that it's 'a misdemeanor and the statute of limitations ran out.' Somehow none of that matters in New York City, where guys who randomly punch kids are given a pat on the back and a key to the city, but when it comes to porn star payments you’d better keep records more detailed than a CVS receipt.” [Fox News, Gutfeld, 4/16/24]

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade claimed that Trump’s felony charges are actually misdemeanor crimes. He stated, “So they have to show that the felony charges, the prosecutors must show that Trump not only falsified or caused business records to be entered falsely, which would be misdemeanor, but they also have to show an intent to commit and conceal a second crime. But so far Alvin Bragg hasn't told us what that second crime is. So when are we going to find out what the second crime is? And don't you think defense needs to know?” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 4/15/24]

Fox News legal editor Kerri Kupec Urbahn stated that Bragg “has somehow manufactured these very low-level misdemeanor charges into felonies.” Washington Times editor Charles Hurt also called the crime a “paperwork violation” with “no victim.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 4/15/24]

In an appearance on Fox, Turley called Trump’s hush money trial a “Frankenstein case” made up of a “dead misdemeanor” and “dead alleged federal felony.” According to Turley, “They took a dead misdemeanor, they attached it to a dead alleged federal felony and zapped it back into life. So — many of us are just amazed to watch this actually walk into court because it’s not a recognizable crime that any of us have seen.” [Fox News, America Reports, 4/15/24]

Right-wing radio host Sean Hannity complained on his show that the alleged infraction is a “misdemeanor, unless they can prove it was done with intent to commit or conceal another crime, and this guy has not even brought that up.” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 4/16/24]

Fact: Trump was charged with felonies because he allegedly concealed an underlying crime, and the statute of limitations was extended

Under New York state law, falsifying business records is a misdemeanor, but it becomes a felony if the defendant altered the records to conceal an underlying crime. Prosecutors have three theories demonstrating Trump’s violation of federal and state election law and New York tax law. [Politico, 6/13/23]

Forbes: “The timeline for bringing criminal charges was extended by more than a year during the pandemic, and prosecutors could also argue the five-year clock was paused whenever Trump spent extended periods living in Florida.” PBS reported: “In New York, the clock can stop on the statute of limitations when a potential defendant is continuously outside the state. Trump visited New York rarely over the four years of his presidency and now lives mostly in Florida and New Jersey.” [Forbes, 4/15/24; PBS, 3/11/23]

Myth: Trump should not be prosecuted because Hillary Clinton only paid a fine for the Steele dossier misreporting

Turley falsely compared Trump’s charges to Hillary Clinton and the Steele dossier. He wrote in the New York Post, “Once again, the contrast to other controversies is telling. Before the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton’s campaign denied that it had funded the infamous Steele dossier behind the debunked Russian collusion claims.” [New York Post, 4/14/24]

Far-right troll Jack Posobiec posted, “In 2022, Hillary Clinton quietly settled a campaign finance violation over reporting the Steele Dossier funding as ‘legal services.’ She paid a fine and was never arrested. The same thing Trump is on trial for right now.” [Twitter/X, 4/16/24]

Gregg Jarrett argued Trump’s prosecution was unfair, because Clinton was only fined for the Steele dossier despite also incorrectly booking the expense. He argued, “Hillary Clinton did pretty much the same thing. She too used a lawyer to secretly pay for the phony Steele dossier and booking it as ‘legal expenses.’ She was fined by the FEC but she wasn’t prosecuted.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 4/15/24]

Roger Stone posted, “Hillary Clinton falsely reported the payments by her campaign for the fabrication of the ‘Steele dossier’ as ‘legal expenses.’ I don't recall her being prosecuted. #TwoTieredJustice.” [Twitter/X, 4/16/24]

The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway promoted Turley’s article and highlighted the Clinton comparison. She wrote, “Excellent point from Turley here. When DNC/Hillary Clinton lied about the 2016 campaign funding of the Steele Dossier, there were no criminal charges or media calls for accountability. But the Trump NDA gets charged?? Rule of law destroyed.” [Twitter/X, 4/15/24]

Fact: Trump’s hush money payments allegedly involved the falsification of business records to conceal a crime, rather than mischaracterizing campaign expenditures

Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign hired a firm to conduct opposition research on Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, which led to the compilation of a dossier by former MI6 intelligence officer Christopher Steele. The report made salacious allegations about Trump, many of which have since been discredited. [CNN, 11/18/21]

The campaign misreported the spending as legal services rather than opposition research. Under an agreement with the Federal Elections Commission, the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign paid $105,000 and $8,000 in fines, respectively. [The Associated Press, 3/31/22]

Unlike in Trump’s case, the civil penalty paid by Clinton’s campaign and the DNC “appears to relate to highly technical rules about how campaign spending through an intermediary should be reported.” The DNC and Clinton campaign were fined for improper reporting, while Trump was charged with falsifying business records to allegedly conceal a crime. [Politico, 3/31/22]

The Washington Post reported that “This analogy isn’t terribly strong, given, first, that the campaign and the Democratic National Committee faced punishment for the reporting and, second, that it centered on the mechanics of properly reporting campaign spending to the FEC.” [The Washington Post, 3/21/23]

Myth: All Trump did was use a nondisclosure agreement, which is perfectly legal

On The Faulkner Focus, former federal prosecutor Andrew Cherkasky said, “It would have been perfectly legal … and was legal” for Trump to make a payment for the NDA “to get rid of this nuisance that business people get rid of all the time.” He argued that cases like this end in acquittal “when you have a good jury.” [Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, 4/15/24]

Fox News host Mark Levin disregarded the theory of the case and said, “It's not hush money. They're nondisclosure agreements.” [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Podcast, 4/24/24]

Fox News contributor Andy McCarthy focused on the NDA, saying, “It’s not illegal to bury compromised or politically-damaging information.” He added, “There is nothing criminal about that. Nondisclosure agreements are a staple of civil litigation in the United States.” [Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, 4/26/24]

On Fox News, former Trump attorney Jim Trusty claimed Trump's NDA usage “does not actually constitute anything criminal.” He called the case against Trump “tawdry scandalous distasteful stuff” and complained that, “If nondisclosure agreements were criminal, Congress would be in prison right now.” [Fox News, America Reports, 4/25/24]

Fact: The trial is not about the NDA, but whether Trump illegally tried to cover up the payment for the NDA

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has specifically refuted the idea that the NDA was criminal, but asserts that the crime was in how Trump hid that payment. In an interview, Bragg stated, “We would say it's about conspiring to corrupt a presidential election and then lying in New York business records to cover it up.” [USA Today, 4/15/24]

While there is nothing inherently illegal about a nondisclosure agreement, when an NDA is used to cover up a crime or the money paid is an illegal payment, the NDA can become a criminal matter. As Tess Wilkinson-Ryan of the University of Pennsylvania Carey School of Law explained to Slate: “It’s legally OK if the information being kept confidential is not about a crime, or if keeping it confidential doesn’t otherwise violate the law. If the payment itself is illegal—imagine bribery or blackmail—that’s a matter of criminal law.” [Slate, 3/27/23]

Myth: Prosecutors are charging Trump over killing negative stories, which isn't a crime

Fox News legal editor Kerri Kupec Urbahn said, “It is not a crime to do a catch-and-kill scheme.” She continued, saying, “It is not a crime to suppress bad stories about yourself, whether you are running for president or not. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 4/26/24]

Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen misleadingly claimed that Trump was “accused of suppressing a negative news story.” He added, “If that was a crime, every campaign press secretary in America would be prosecuted.” [Fox News, Outnumbered, 4/26/24]

On The Faulkner Focus, former Assistant District Attorney Phil Holloway claimed David Pecker’s testimony is proof the prosecution is “having a very difficult time finding anything that was actually illegal.” Holloway claimed it is not election interference, but rather “normal campaign conduct.” [Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, 4/26/24]

Fox News contributor Sol Wisenberg argued, “The idea that paying for a catch-and-kill story could constitute election interference in a way that lifts this misdemeanor into a felony … is a joke.” [Fox News, Ingraham Angle, 4/26/24]

Fact: The legality of the catch-and-kill scheme is not in question; it is part of the prosecution's argument that Trump was trying to protect his electoral chances

Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker testified to paying Playboy model Karen McDougal for the rights to her story about having an affair with Trump and then never releasing the story. According to the Associated Press, there had been “some talk of reimbursement from Trump’s orbit, but Pecker was ultimately never paid” for the McDougal story. [Associated Press, 4/25/24]

Pecker testified that he believed Trump wanted the McDougal story killed in order to help protect Trump’s presidential bid. Pecker speculated that Trump’s interest in squashing McDougal’s story was “basically [about] what the impact would be to the campaign and the election.” [The Washington Post, 4/25/24]

The prosecution brought forward the catch-and-kill scheme described by Pecker in part to establish a pattern in which Trump and his associates buried negative news stories close to Election Day, not to question the criminality of the scheme itself. Pecker’s testimony also helps the prosecution introduce other aspects of their argument, including Michael Cohen’s alleged role as an intermediary for Trump. [The Guardian, 4/26/24]

Myth: Legal analysts don’t understand what crime Trump is being accused of committing

Fox News contributor Todd Piro told Laura Ingraham that he can’t say what the crime is, adding, “We’ve read legal scholars say they can't figure out the crime.” He said after watching courtroom testimony he still doesn’t know what the crime is. [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 4/25/24]

Fox News legal editor Kerri Kupec Urbahn claimed it is still “unclear what this underlying crime is that Donald Trump is alleged to have concealed.” Summarizing the first part of the trial, Kupec said, “They did not reveal anything that was criminal in nature or that directly related to Donald Trump's payments to Michael Cohen who paid Stormy Daniels.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 4/25/24]

Fox anchor John Roberts questioned, “Where is the crime?” and emphasized similar comments from Fox News contributors Andy McCarthy and Jonathan Turley, as well as Trump’s argument that the trial should “be over” because there is “no underlying criminal behavior here.” Fox anchor Shannon Bream said prosecutors will have to convince jury members that there is an underlying crime. [Fox News, America Reports, 4/26/24]

Fact: The alleged underlying crime is about Trump committing fraud to better his chances of winning the 2016 presidential election

Trump was charged with 34 felony counts on the basis that business records were allegedly falsified to conceal an underlying crime of violating state and federal election law as well as New York tax code. While New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg still needs to prove that Trump had intent to violate the law, Bragg has extensively explained the underlying crime Trump is accused of committing. [Media Matters, 4/15/24]

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an 5 24

with the defense and the prosecution having rested their cases, closing arguments in Donald Trump's criminal hush money/falsified business records trial are scheduled for this Tuesday, May 28 after Memorial Day Weekend. Those arguments will be followed by jury deliberations, and it remains to be seen whether a Manhattan jury will vote "guilty" or "not guilty" — or if there will be a hung jury.

Meanwhile, the three other criminal indictments Trump is facing appear unlikely to go to trial before the November election.

Right-wing media outlets — from Fox News, Fox Business, Newsmax TV and One America News to Breitbart News and Steve Bannon's "War Room" podcast — have been portraying the trial as a political persecution, ignoring or downplaying the testimony that legal analysts on MSNBC and CNN have been describing in elaborate detail.

READ MORE: [What to watch for in Trump trial's closing arguments

St. Louis-based journalist Eric Berger, in an article published by The Guardian on May 27, warns that right-wing media's trial coverage could benefit Trump politically.

According to Berger, "Trump has retained much of his political support amid his ongoing hush-money trial in part due to a combination of the courtroom's ban on cameras and conservative media echoing his claims that both the prosecutor and judge are corrupt, media analysts say. The experts suggest that the former president could retain political support on the right even if the jury determines he is guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to his reimbursements to Michael Cohen for a payment to Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign."

Media Matters' Matt Gertz told The Guardian that right-wing media outlets are painting the hush money trial as a "witch-hunt ginned up by Joe Biden" — saying that Trump "will be found not guilty" but also "arguing that if he is found guilty, it will be because the jury and the judge are partisan and corrupt." Gertz describes this approach as "heads, we win/tails, you lose."

Gertz told The Guardian, "They know that every alleged infraction or crime committed by Trump is an opportunity for them to prove that they are onboard with the MAGA movement and with Trump specifically by loudly saying that he did nothing wrong and that his pursuers are in fact the real criminals."

READ MORE:[Trump suffered a 'stunning rebuke' in disastrous Saturday night speech: analyst

Howard Polskin, president of the newsletter/website The Righting, believes that the lack of cameras in Justice Juan Merchan's courtroom benefits Trump.

Polskin told The Guardian, "It's Christmas in May for Trump. It was a gift for Trump that there were no cameras in the courtroom. I think there would have been a lot more coverage on both left, right and mainstream if that were the case."

READ MORE:[Why Alito's response to inverted flag controversy is as troubling as symbol itself: analysis

Read The Guardian's full report[at this link

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mma 3 24

Earlier this week, right-wing media returned to their time honored tradition of publicly freaking out about the beloved educational program Sesame Street, charging that the Biden administration is using the comical over-eater Cookie Monster as part of a woke political agenda to attack innocent corporations — or even more bizarrely, that perhaps President Joe Biden is only responding to inflation in general, and a specific phenomenon known as “shrinkflation,” because of a public protest by the furry puppet character.

The latest iteration of conservatives’ bizarre anti-Sesame Street fixation seemingly began on March 4, when the official X account for everyone’s favorite gluttonous children’s character tweeted a complaint, “Me hate shrinkflation! Me cookies are getting smaller,” then followed up over an hour later, “Guess me going to have to eat double da cookies!” (Perhaps the lovable monster subscribes to his local newspaper, The New York Times, which just published a feature on “shrinkflation” on March 1.)

The White House’s own official account then responded later in the afternoon:

IFrame Content

Then, at a White House event on March 5 about fighting corporate price gouging — another topic that has right-wing media attacking the president — Biden further chimed in on shrinking product sizes: “I’ll tell you what — I’ll tell you who did notice: the Cookie Monster. He pointed out cookies are — his cookies are getting smaller. He’s paying the same price. I was stunned when I found out that’s what actually happened.” The president also announced the launch of “a new Strike Force” targeting “Unfair and Illegal Pricing to crack down on companies who break the law while keeping prices high for American consumers.”

Yes, Cookie Monster, big companies are price-gouging

The aforementioned New York Times article on “shrinkflation” found that companies are still reducing package sizes despite inflation having cooled off: “After peaking at 9.1 percent in July 2022, it had eased to 3.1 percent as of January. And consumers might be less willing to accept shrinkflation now that firms are facing less severe cost pressures, especially because food company profits have been — and in many cases remain — high. They may simply feel ripped off.”

“Shrinkflation” is really one aspect of the overall inflation problem — and multiple analyses have found that “greedflation” was an exacerbating factor in inflation these past few years. Following supply chain disruptions as the global economy recovered from the pandemic and an increase in oil prices in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, companies took advantage of the public’s economic alarm to justify further price increases beyond just the increased costs of production.

A study last year by two progressive think tanks in Britain, reported in Fortune, found that corporate profits increased at a faster rate than costs did. Another study reported in Fortune, from the American think tank Groundwork Collaborative, found that profits drove 53% of inflation during the second and third quarters of 2023, and more than one-third overall since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and caused inflation to be 1 to 3 points higher than otherwise might’ve occurred.

Bloomberg recently reported on an analysis by Goldman Sachs finding that companies are quick to raise prices in the face of increased costs, but then slow to actually lower them again once their own costs go back down. An article in The Wall Street Journal in May 2023 actually made the argument for bilking consumers: “‘Greedflation’ Is Real — and Probably Good for the Economy.”

Conservatives breathlessly warn of conspiracy between Biden and Sesame Street to serve his “political agenda”

Right-wingers regularly attack Sesame Street, because they don’t get the whole point of the show

While right-wing media sees a political conspiracy in the Cookie Monster account’s latest pronouncements on current events, The Washington Post pointed out that the account previously “has appeared to post about Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, has spoken about therapy and has endorsed self-care,” while another recent post from the character Elmo’s account inadvertently started a public dialogue about mental health.

But even deeper than that, the show has always been dedicated to teaching children (and maybe some parents, too) how to get along in a diverse world. “Since 1969, children and adults alike have flocked to the place where multiethnic, multigenerational, and even multispecies residents coexist in harmony,” says a PBS site explaining what the show is all about. “The people on this very special street learn life's lessons together, provide viewers with strong role models, and teach children that everyone brings a special ability to the community. Here, children learn to use their imaginations, build social skills, and respect people's differences.”

All of which is to say, right-wing media has been attacking this cultural treasure of a program for many years.

During an earlier effort to increase public awareness about the

importance of vaccinations, co-hosts on Fox & Friends Weekend claimed that Sesame Street was feeding “propaganda” directly to children.Co-host Rachel Campos- Duffy claimed the programming “looks like a Big Pharma commercial on Sesame Street. It's so creepy.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends Weekend*, [11/7/21]

//

  1. ### Fox News lets Trump ramble on about inflation — which his policies would actually make worse

03/05/24 3:18 PM EST

  1. ### Laura Ingraham praises companies for contributing “shrinkflation”

02/12/24 8:22 PM EST

  1. ### Tens of millions of Americans are inundated by credit card junk fees — and now right-wing media are rallying to defend this price gouging

03/06/24 4:26 PM EST

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