gateway pundit

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http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/susan-rice-and-pro-trump-propaganda-machine

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MMA

The Gateway Pundit's Joe Hoft calls for the National Guard to remove judges and “throw them behind bars”

Hoft: “You cannot have the rulings that these judges have and and be of a sound mind. And you're a criminal. And same with Jerome Powell.”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published 09/05/25

Jim Hoft's website, The Gateway Pundit,“is one of the worst purveyors of false information on the internet.” The website — to which Hoft's brother, Joe, is a contributor — reportedly became “a favorite news source” of President Donald Trump after it “pushed false claims of a stolen election“ for years following the presidential election of 2020.

During Trump's second term, the website has enjoyed access to the administration. In August, Jim Hoft interviewed Vice President JD Vance, during which Vance said the far-right website was “so important,” and a Media Matters review found that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called on The Gateway Pundit 5 times at press briefings during the first three months of Trump's second term, more than The Washington Post (4) or The Associated Press (3).

On September 3, Joe Hoft appeared on For the Love of Freedom with Danielle Walker and said that judges, who he alleges are “sabotaging our legal system,” and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell are “criminal” and need to be held accountable.

Video

Citation

From the September 3, 2025, edition of For the Love of Freedom with Danielle Walker, streamed on Rumble

JOE HOFT (THE GATEWAY PUNDIT): We have to deal with our judges. We have to get rid of these corrupt judges. We have to remove them from office. If it means, in my opinion, and I don't care what people say, if it means we need to send the National Guard in to remove these people from their office and throw them behind bars, then we have to. These people are not working for the country. They are sabotaging our legal system, destroying it by making these judgments that are grabbed out of nowhere because the judge just is a radical, radical, nonethical, disgusting human being. I think the same thing with Jerome Powell.

...

The judges need to be removed from office, and I think it charged. They need to be, we need to hold them accountable. You cannot have the rulings that these judges have and and be of a sound mind. And you're a criminal. And same with Jerome Powell. He's costing this country a trillion dollars a year by not lowering these rates.

Trillion dollars to every, you know, split amongst all Americans. Trillion dollars because he won't lower those rates, which should be lowered significantly to the point that we'd save a trillion. And that would really help the economy. It helped the housing industry and all this. I don't know why real estate agents aren't screaming for this guy to lower the rates.

And he won't because he's a vile, disgusting human being. He did the same thing with Trump his first term, raised the rates, kept raising them, and just crashed the, almost crashed the economy himself. And so these kind of people, we just cannot allow them to continue. They're too damaging and the damage is too severe.

20-Plus Times Jim Hoft And The Gateway Pundit Were Absurdly Wrong

01/25/17

### Former Trump aide: “Gateway Pundit was one reliable place he knew he could go for validation, and maybe even some new ideas”

01/03/24 12:58 PM EST

### By the numbers: As Trump snubs legacy media, data shows his press briefings elevate right-wing outlets

04/25/25

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MMA 1 24

A January 3 Washington Post article by Sarah Ellison explores the influence of far-right MAGA site Gateway Pundit and its founder, Jim Hoft, whose false claims Media Matters has documented for years.

Ellison expertly examines Hoft's influence in spreading pernicious voter fraud claims, which others in right-wing media build upon. She even quotes Steve Bannon saying that Hoft and Gateway Pundit provide an “infrastructure” for pro-Trump voices to riff on:

The site’s founder, Jim Hoft, who started blogging as a hobby in 2004, is among “the best at creating a right-wing echo system,” right-wing podcast host and former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon said in an interview. Hoft did not respond to requests to be interviewed for this report.

Bannon said Hoft is often one of the first to pick up a social media post or a local news story that other right-wing personalities then repeat and aggregate. He “isn’t afraid to take a leading edge where you don’t have all the facts but they are coming together,” Bannon explained. Once Gateway Pundit puts one of its signature all-caps headlines on a story, that provides what Bannon calls an “infrastructure”[PERMISSION?] upon which his own podcast and other right-wing outlets and influencers can build.

...

In the weeks before he left office in 2021, Trump brandished printouts of Gateway Pundit articles questioning the results of the election, say former aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private White House conversations.

“When he was looking for evidence, Gateway Pundit was one reliable place he knew he could go for validation, and maybe even some new ideas,” said one former aide.

The site has been influential in promoting false election fraud theories even though some of the most influential figures on the right say they don’t trust it. One prominent conservative radio host, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of offending political allies, said in an interview that the site’s stories are “bull----.”

Gateway Pundit represents a “a fringe segment of so-called conservative media that’s driven by conspiratorial clickbait to drive revenues to stay afloat,” the host said.

A former Trump administration official who denies that Joe Biden rightfully won the 2020 election nevertheless told The Post in an interview that if you cite Gateway Pundit in an argument, “it means you’ve lost. You can’t use it to make an argument. You can only use it to hear what you want to hear.”

The entire piece is worth reading, specifically to learn how Gateway Pundit has amplified false and misleading claims about voter fraud in Michigan.

With the 2024 election on the horizon, it's worth remembering that the earliest, most viral false claims to arise may well be sourced – directly or indirectly – to Gateway Pundit.

REF WAPO

WAPO NO LNX

Democracy in America

Election 2024

Democracy in America

A right-wing tale of Michigan election fraud had it all – except proof

Gateway Pundit, a favorite news source of former president Donald Trump’s, has pushed false claims of a stolen election even as others have pulled back in the face of consequences

By Sarah Ellison

January 3, 2024

The story had all the elements of a blockbuster crime saga: burner phones, semiautomatic weapons, silencers and bags of prepaid cash cards. “NOW WE HAVE PROOF!” blared the headline on the right-wing website Gateway Pundit. “Massive 2020 Voter Fraud Uncovered in Michigan.”

The story referenced “thousands of fraudulent ballots” caught by Muskegon City Clerk Ann Meisch. Grateful readers deluged her office with hundreds of calls, hailing her as a hero.

But Meisch knew it wasn’t true.

According to police reports, the Michigan attorney general’s office and an interview with Meisch, an employee of a voter registration drive company had submitted to the Muskegon city clerk thousands of voter registration applications weeks before the 2020 election, some with faked signatures and faulty addresses.

Meisch’s staff spent hundreds of hours weeding out the bad applications. The guns the police found were legally registered to a landlord who had nothing to do with the registration drive. The prepaid phones and cash cards were given to temporary employees to contact new voter prospects.

“There were no fraudulent ballots,” Meisch said in an interview, “not a single one that anyone in my office was aware of.”

But for Gateway Pundit, which is run out of its founder’s home and whose small staff produces stories that help set the agenda for Donald Trump’s most ardent followers, the August story provided weeks of headlines that radiated across right-wing media and were repeatedly amplified by pro-Trump influencers. That’s despite the fact that it was published nearly three years after the election — and after Meisch’s staff had thwarted any fraud.

The outlet’s emphasis on long-debunked fraud claims helps explain why election denial has proved so durable, despite the many efforts to halt the spread of disinformation and impose consequences on those who persist in it.

Trump himself faces multiple criminal counts for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election on the disproven grounds that it had been rigged against him. The Trump lawyers who pushed false voter fraud claims have, in some cases, been hit with criminal charges, as well as censure and disbarment proceedings. In mid-December, a federal jury ordered former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani to pay $148 million to two election workers who sued him for defamation. Trump’s largest media ally, Fox News, agreed last year to pay $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems to settle a defamation suit.

Some right-wing outlets, such as Fox’s smaller cable-news rival Newsmax, have pulled back from election-related conspiracy theories in the face of lawsuits and threats of legal consequences.

But through it all, Gateway Pundit has continued trumpeting disproven election fraud stories, even as it faces defamation suits over its coverage of the 2020 election. It has also taken its own legal action against fact-checkers, disinformation researchers and story subjects, while pressing in court to make it harder for social media companies to crack down on misinformation.

The outlet’s reporting was a favorite of Trump’s as he clung to the presidency more than three years ago, aides said, and it has become a key amplifier of his continued fraud claims as he campaigns to return to the White House. Gateway Pundit traffic peaked in November 2020 at nearly 7 million page views, and the site still averages more than a million visits each month, according to Comscore, which measures the readership of media sites.

Less than a year from the 2024 election, the latest polls show that some two-thirds of Republicans falsely believe that the 2020 presidential election was rigged. Gateway Pundit’s influence helps explain why, experts in disinformation say. Though the site employs only a handful of regular writers, it has played an outsize role in popularizing false claims.

“Gateway Pundit is a known source of disinformation that quickly trades up the chain,” said Joan Donovan, an assistant professor at Boston University studying online disinformation and media manipulation. “Because when they report a piece of information, it gives others license to do so.”why?

The site’s founder, Jim Hoft, who started blogging as a hobby in 2004, is among “the best at creating a right-wing echo system,” right-wing podcast host and former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon said in an interview. Hoft did not respond to requests to be interviewed for this report.

Bannon said Hoft is often one of the first to pick up a social media post or a local news story that other right-wing personalities then repeat and aggregate. He “isn’t afraid to take a leading edge where you don’t have all the facts but they are coming together,” Bannon explained. Once Gateway Pundit puts one of its signature all-caps headlines on a story, that provides what Bannon calls an “infrastructure” upon which his own podcast and other right-wing outlets and influencers can build.

That infrastructure was useful to pro-Trump One America News, a small cable network that pushed conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. A former OAN producer attested that he and his colleagues were directed to consult Gateway Pundit when they arrived at work to inform the day’s programming, according to depositions and documents from a defamation lawsuit filed against the Trump campaign and others, including Gateway Pundit, by a former Dominion Voting Systems executive who was falsely accused by Trump allies of helping to swing the 2020 election.

“Check Gateway Pundit, Epoch Times and The Blaze right when you get in. … These are very helpful to find good OAN content,” read one Jan. 14, 2021, email to producers from the channel’s news director. OAN settled in the case under undisclosed terms in September.

“Gateway Pundit’s articles were chopped-up sentences that were drawn from whatever crazy thing a Twitter user was saying about election denial,” the former producer, Marty Golingan, said in an interview, “and they would spin it with maximum outrage and reactionary emotion.”

In the weeks before he left office in 2021, Trump brandished printouts of Gateway Pundit articles questioning the results of the election, say former aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private White House conversations.

“When he was looking for evidence, Gateway Pundit was one reliable place he knew he could go for validation, and maybe even some new ideas,” said one former aide.

The site has been influential in promoting false election fraud theories even though some of the most influential figures on the right say they don’t trust it. One prominent conservative radio host, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of offending political allies, said in an interview that the site’s stories are “bull----.”

Gateway Pundit represents a “fringe segment of so-called conservative media that’s driven by conspiratorial clickbait to drive revenues to stay afloat,” the host said.

A former Trump administration official who denies that Joe Biden rightfully won the 2020 election nevertheless told The Post in an interview that if you cite Gateway Pundit in an argument, “it means you’ve lost. You can’t use it to make an argument. You can only use it to hear what you want to hear.”

Gateway’s origins

:{:{In the nearly two decades since its founding, Hoft’s website has spread debunked conspiracy theories on a wide range of topics — for instance, casting doubt on President Barack Obama’s birth certificate and suggesting that student survivors of the 2018 Parkland, Fla., school shooting were part of an anti-Trump plot.}:

More recently, Gateway Pundit has helped spread misinformation about the attack on then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, who was bludgeoned in the couple’s San Francisco home last year by an intruder intent on kidnapping his wife. It has also falsely claimed that U.S. aid money for Ukraine is being laundered and going into the pockets of Democrats.}:

But the site’s most notable focus in recent years has been promoting disproven narratives about election fraud.

Hoft created Gateway Pundit in 2004, inspired by the role that bloggers played in debunking a “60 Minutes” segment on George W. Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard, according to former associates, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private conversations. Bloggers had been the first to point out that “60 Minutes” had unwittingly relied on falsified records in telling its story; CBS ultimately retracted the piece.

Hoft, 60, rarely grants interviews. But years ago, the Iowa native described in a message posted online ahead of a high school reunion how he started the site.

“So much has happened since I left Fort Dodge,” Hoft began his note to his former classmates at a Catholic school, explaining that “something exciting happened in late 2004. I started writing a little political blog” that, after a few years, “gained thousands of readers every day.”

The work started getting him invited on “paid trips to different conservative events around the world,” Hoft wrote, including a 2007 visit to Israel sponsored by a conservative political group. There he met Andrew Breitbart, who at the time was an editor at the Drudge Report. The two became friends and developed an appreciation for the power of the internet to take a small ember of a story and turn it into a conflagration.

“Jim is a direct descendant of Andrew Breitbart,” Bannon said, referencing the founder of the right-wing media site Breitbart News. “Remember, they’re both about citizen journalism, and Jim knows how to harness the energy of regular citizens.”

Trump’s candidacy was a boon for Hoft and for Gateway Pundit, which, according to a study conducted by Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center, became one of the most popular sites on the right in 2015-2016. Among those sites, the study found, “Gateway Pundit is in a class of its own, known for ‘publishing falsehoods and spreading hoaxes.’”

In 2020, Gateway Pundit became a key part of what researchers at the University of Washington and Stanford University among others deemed a “disinformation campaign” produced by “hyperpartisan media and political operatives” working “alongside ordinary people to produce and amplify misleading claims.”

Instead of operating from the top down, this kind of campaign seizes on the social media posts of “concerned citizens” and turns them into shareable pieces of content that can spread to different outlets and to powerful influencers, the researchers found.

In one illustrative example given in the study, Gateway Pundit helped circulate a photo posted on Twitter by a writer for conservative outlet the Blaze in September 2020. The photo purported to show 1,000 mail-in ballots found in a dumpster in Sonoma County, Calif.

“Big if true,” read the caption. Five hours later, Gateway Pundit weighed in with this headline: “EXCLUSIVE: California Man Finds THOUSANDS of Unopened Ballots in Garbage Dumpster — Workers Quickly Try to Cover Them Up.”

The county responded in a Facebook post: “This is not true.” Instead, the county said, the photo depicted old ballot envelopes from the November 2018 election that had been discarded in accordance with California law.

Gateway Pundit updated its story after the post: “The County of Sonoma put out a statement saying the ballots were from 2018. The county says the ballots were already opened. You can judge for yourself.”

In May, Hoft, alongside a co-director of a coronavirus vaccine skeptics group, sued the researchers, alleging that the entities colluded to “censor” speech by sharing their research with social media platforms as part of an attempted crackdown on misinformation. A representative for Stanford said the case, which is in its early stages, is “completely without merit.” A representative for the University of Washington declined to speak about ongoing litigation.

Election workers under threat

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Gateway Pundit enjoyed a social-media-fueled traffic spike similar to the one it had during the 2016 election. A German Marshall Fund analysis found that “verified account shares of its content” on Twitter increased ninefold from the first quarter of 2018 through the fourth quarter of 2020, reaching 7.2 million shares, more than for The Washington Post, NBC News or NPR. Nine of its 10 most-shared articles “included disinformation about voter fraud,” the analysis found.

One of Gateway Pundit’s highest-profile stories of 2020 was published after a volunteer Trump campaign attorney presented a misleading video during a post-election hearing in Georgia. The video purported to show that Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss, her daughter, had tampered with ballots.

That day, Gateway Pundit published the first of 58 articles on the two women that would appear over the next year and a half, despite the fact that Georgia election officials had quickly debunked claims that the pair had engaged in election fraud. Gateway Pundit’s stories cast Freeman and Moss as “crooked” operatives who counted “illegal ballots from a suitcase stashed under a table!”

In 2021, the women sued Gateway Pundit, Jim Hoft and Hoft’s twin brother, Joe, who is a frequent contributor to the site. Gateway Pundit and Jim and Joe Hoft filed a counterclaim, alleging that the case against them is designed to drive Gateway Pundit out of business. The counterclaim was dismissed in 2023.

The lawsuit by Freeman and Moss, which is awaiting trial, alleges that the falsehoods about them “have not only devastated their personal and professional reputations but instigated a deluge of intimidation, harassment, and threats that has forced them to change their phone numbers, delete their online accounts, and fear for their physical safety.”

In their response, the Hofts said articles in Gateway Pundit about Freeman and Moss were “either statements of opinion based on disclosed facts or statements of rhetorical hyperbole that no reasonable reader is likely to interpret as a literal statement of fact.”

A federal jury recently ordered that Giuliani pay the two women $148 million for his own false claims that they helped steal the election from Trump. His lawyer, Joseph D. Sibley IV, told jurors that Gateway Pundit had been “patient zero” for the false claims.

Not a smoking gun

Meisch, the Muskegon city clerk, fears she may come under the same kind of attack when people learn that she doesn’t believe she uncovered massive voter fraud in her city.

“I’m just worried people will turn on me,” she said.

Gateway Pundit’s Aug. 8 story about Muskegon, a formerly booming foundry town on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan that Trump narrowly lost in 2016 and 2020, outlined a purported voter fraud conspiracy. The report was built on a police investigation that had been reported on three years earlier by local news outlets. The police had found no evidence of a broader effort to subvert the election, but referred the case to the FBI because the voter registration company at the center of the case was based out of state. The FBI did not respond to requests for comment.

Gateway Pundit published a copy of the 2020 police report, which contained new details about the investigation, including that police had found guns in the storefront that the voter registration company had rented. Almost immediately after publication, other right-wing outlets picked up and amplified the piece. The same day the story was published, Bannon hosted Hoft on his daily podcast to discuss it. Over the next two days, then-Fox News host Lou Dobbs, conservative podcaster Joe Oltmann and Right Side Broadcasting, a pro-Trump streaming service, cited the story.

Dobbs called it a guide to “how the Marxist Dems stole Michigan.” Oltmann said the gun silencers, also known as suppressors, were evidence “of organized crime.” Bannon said the story showed that “demon” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, was a “liar.”

For the next 10 days, Gateway Pundit averaged a story a day on the topic, eventually publishing at least 40 pieces. During that period, an array of right-wing podcasters all discussed the story on their shows, including former Fox personality Dan Bongino, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and Jack Posobiec, a far-right blogger.

Twelve days after the initial story was published, the Michigan attorney general’s office issued a statement responding to the report, citing its “false claims of election law violations.”

“Despite Gateway Pundit’s continuing claims to the contrary, the 2020 election has been thoroughly litigated and audited and has been proven well beyond a reasonable doubt that it was fair and accurate,” the statement read.

The voter-registration company employee who had handed in the faked registration applications to the clerk’s office had not filled them out herself; she was responsible for collecting the registration forms from many employees and submitting them in batches, according to Nessel’s office. Voters registration in Michigan are nonpartisan.

The state attorney general’s office said that while it had not ruled out that a crime may have been committed in Muskegon, numerous state agencies had investigated and none had uncovered evidence of successful fraudulent registrations because they had all been “intercepted and not filed into the state’s voter database.”

“This is once again, not a smoking gun for their long-debunked theories,” the statement read.

But Gateway Pundit was unbowed. The same day, the site published another piece on Muskegon and Hoft appeared on Bannon’s podcast again, calling Nessel’s statement “confirmation” of the Gateway Pundit story.

On Sept. 5, Trump posted about the story on Truth Social, without comment, and was reposted 3,300 times.

In late August, the Michigan Republican Party held a news conference in Lansing, the state capital, that party Chairwoman Kristina Karamo billed as an opportunity to “address the recent reports of election corruption uncovered in Michigan.”

“The constant questions surrounding our election system is an absolute threat to our republic,” Karamo said. “No one is going to continue to convince us that these are all just a bunch of anomalies.”

Gateway Pundit “slanted the story to make it seem that the attempt to interfere with the election was successful,” Karen Buie, the Muskegon County clerk, said in an interview. “There was an attempt. You can’t negate that. But it failed because we have systems in place.”

Meisch, the city clerk, said in an interview that she is bracing for even more mistrust of the system that she has worked for over 30 years to protect. Already, she said, paranoia among voters has been growing as baseless conspiracy theories spread about voting machines and drop boxes.

“We haven’t yet seen the full impact of the Gateway Pundit story,” said Meisch. “We won’t see that until the next [presidential] election.”

But for Gateway Pundit, the impact is already apparent. In July, the month before the Muskegon story, the site’s traffic fell below 700,000 unique visitors for the first time in years, according to Comscore.

In August, it more than doubled, to 1.5 million.

Clara Ence Morse and Alice Crites contributed to this report.

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HARWELL: Yeah, 100%. I think that was the most stunning claim she made, and that was one that was a real headline from one of the committee hearings, which was that Twitter, in her words, protected Trump because he was a star.You know, he had brought a large amount of attention and clout to Twitter. Twitter in social media is effectively an also-ran, right? They're not a Facebook or an Instagram or a TikTok. They're a news platform, and Donald Trump helped make Twitter into a very influential company. And so in her words, she felt like the company had become deferent to Trump because they felt like they couldn't punish somebody who was beneficial in this way. There was kind of a mutually beneficial arrangement here.

But there were other people who spoke to the company, too, from inside Twitter that also suggested that there was some fear of the backlash of being too tough on Trump. And, you know, even before January 6, Trump had always been very infamous for what he would say on Twitter, as anybody who was online during those years knew. I mean, it was a lot of borderline or over-the-line tweets that people were wondering, why is Donald Trump able to talk like this on the platform? Anybody else who was sharing these kinds of messages would be treated differently, and this is what Anika ended up saying to the committee - was that he was treated differently. He was given special treatment because of this impactful role he had in the company....

:{:{}:

You know, I will say Facebook had stood up some election integrity efforts even before January 6 that were about, you know, if somebody posts something about the election being stolen, we're going to post a disclaimer that actually that's false. We're going to link you to proactive, right, accurate information. Facebook had very notably disbanded those efforts before January 6. I think they sort of felt like the election's over; we're not needed anymore. That was specifically called out as an institutional failure that could have led to some of these things. But it all sort of came back to, could the company have done more, taken down more, been more active in addressing these calls to violence? And would that have made any difference on January 6?

DAVIES: There was also mention in this memo that you and your colleagues found of a white list that Facebookkept of certain accounts that were exempted from the fact-checking that would occur on other accounts. Among the people on that list -Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr. Glenn Beck, Gateway Pundit, various other conservative things. Did the committee find that troubling, the committee's investigators?

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https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/how-steve-bannon-made-election-denier-mark-finchem-maga-hero-and-launched-his-campaign

on the June 13 episode of the War Room podcast, host Steven Bannon railed against the January 6 committee for not inviting one of his favorite election deniers to testify at its public hearings. “They want to see the receipts?” Bannon ranted. “They don’t have Finchem. Let’s hear from the guys that have the receipts.”

Bannon was referring to Mark Finchem, Arizona state representative, candidate for secretary of state, and arguably the standard bearer of the 2020 election denialist movement. Finchem’s role in Bannon’s universe is difficult to overstate. As Bannon’s remark that day illustrated, Finchem serves as one of a handful of characters who — in this epistemologically closed feedback loop — has the goods that prove Joe Biden is an illegitimate president.

Finchem, of course, does not have the goods. But in Bannon, Finchem has found a mutually beneficial, symbiotic relationship wherein each person’s fantastical claims have an eager recipient. He has been on at least 57 episodes of Bannon’s podcast since late 2020, during which the two have tossed baseless conspiracy theories back and forth, much to the delight of Bannon’s devoted audience. Finchem’s history in law enforcement (he retired with a “poor rating”) and modest role in Arizona’s state government gave his early War Room appearances the patina of legitimacy; to the show’s listeners, he was the rare whistleblower ready to risk it all to uncover the truth. Bannon rarely — if ever — mentions Finchem’s membership in the extremist militia the Oath Keepers, though that would likely just underscore his conservatives bona fides for the War Room audience.

Finchem now stands a good chance of becoming Arizona’s top election official, tasked with overseeing the voting operations of a swing state whose congressional delegation and electoral votes could have profound national consequences. Bannon has been his champion every step of the way, providing a crucial platform that helped transform Finchem from local oddball to MAGA hero with a national fanbase.

His ubiquitous presence in Bannon’s orbit has provided him not only with a massive audience, but also with access to the MAGA donor class. Finchem’s campaign has raised more than $1.2 million through early October, including $5,000 from former President Donald Trump’s Save America PAC and $9,300 from Wendy’s franchise kingpin Lewis Topper. Brian Kennedy, another election denier and *War Room* favorite, donated $5,000 to Finchem as well.

Finchem’s fundraising has far outpaced his Democratic challenger, despite — or because of — his extremist positions, which are manifold.They also align almost completely with Bannon's stated beliefs. Finchem has repeatedly called for a decertification of Arizona’s 2020 election results, including in a debate last month, despite zero evidence of widespread voter fraud. Last month, he said it was “fantasy” that Biden could win legitimately in Arizona, telegraphing his belief that a Democratic win is, by definition, evidence of fraud. He has embraced QAnon, just as Bannon has provided a platform for the conspiracy theory. During a June fundraiser, he vowed that he wouldn’t concede if he loses. “Ain't gonna be no concession speech coming from this guy,” Finchem said. He could've been reading from a transcript of Bannon's election-day show in 2020, when Bannon advised Trump to declare victory before all the votes were counted.

Finchem floundered early in his career; in 2013 he pushed a conspiracy theory that then-President Barack Obama was planning to establish a “totalitarian dictatorship.” Following the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, Finchem said the event was likely a “deep state PSYOP” — that is, a false flag. But with Stop the Steal, and Steve Bannon, Finchem’s conspiracy-mongering found a home.

“You're becoming a star”

Finchem was a little known local politician before becoming one of the most prominent election deniers in the country. His meteoric rise occurred nearly simultaneously with his first appearance on War Room, on December 4, as he went from 3,000 Twitter followers in late November 2020 to more than 33,000 by December 8.

From the outset, Bannon and Finchem were singing from the same sheet music. On the December 15 show — Finchem’s fifth appearance — Bannon introduced him as “the driving force” making sure only “legal votes” were counted in Arizona. He contrasted Finchem with the “fantasists” who “all want to be James Bond.” The level-headed Finchem, on the other hand, was working to make sure Dominion voting machines were “seized” for a full forensic audit.

Bannon continued the segment by calling Finchem “a perfect example of a deplorable,” which the MAGA crowd has reappropriated as a term of endearment. “You’re an American patriot and an American hero,” Bannon told Finchem, later adding, “You’re becoming a star."

[vid]

finchem appeared on the show several more times in the following weeks, including on January 6 and 7 to discuss Trump’s attempted fascist coup. By then, he had amassed over 55,000 Twitter followers and was well on his way to conservative stardom. He’d also developed a keen ear for taking Bannon’s leading questions and running with them.

As the fascist mob was beginning to retreat from the Capitol, Bannon and Finchem fantasized about a looming constitutional crisis. “Are we going to be in a situation that becomes evident to everybody that the electors that were awarded to Biden were illegally elected — er, put forward, by the governor?” Bannon speculated. “And that there’s a swath of overwhelming evidence that Trump actually won Arizona?”

“What situation are we going to be in then to the people in Arizona?” he continued.

“I’ve said this over and over, and I’m not going to stop saying it,” Finchem said, not missing a beat. “This ain’t over." [vid]

"How are we gonna get your folks to show up?”

After his initial burst of appearances, Finchem became a mainstay in the War Room bullpen of regular guests.Over the course of 2021, Finchem would regularly push election conspiracy theories out to the War Room audience, sometimes following Bannon’s lead and sometimes introducing the absurd ideas himself. His appearances often take on a millenarian quality; there is always some impending, dramatic denouement — a report, or audit, or hearing — that will change everything and undo the historic wrong of the 2020 election. When that moment fails to arrive, the two simply move forward with their faith unshaken.

In February, Finchem cited a report from Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft — a conspiracy theory peddler who has repeatedly been voted “dumbest man on the Internet” — to argue that Maricopa County’s own audit of the 2020 election was “fake.” In fact, both the county’s election and audit were reliable and sound.

In July, Finchem appeared on War Room to push the debunked theory that Dominion voting machines were connected to the internet and therefore their vote counts were unreliable. Finchem argued that a recent Arizona senate hearing had found that Dominion’s “anti-virus software [was] not updated since August, 2019.” He then added, “If you're not going to be on the Internet, why would you need to have an antivirus update on a regular basis” — the implication being that the supposed presence of the software was proof the machines had been connected to the internet.

This idea would’ve been familiar to War Room listeners, as Michigan election denialist Patrick Colbeck had been pushing it to Bannon and anybody else who would listen to him since Trump’s loss in 2020. There was no truth to it when Colbeck pushed it, and there was no truth to it when Finchem pushed it.

By that point, Finchem was already running for secretary of state — he’d announced his candidacy in March of 2021 — and keeping the War Room audience on the line would be key to juicing turnout the following November. [vid]

just a few days later, Finchem again appeared on War Room, and again cited a conspiracy theory put forward by Hoft’s Gateway Pundit site. This theory became known as “SharpieGate,” and traveled widely in right-wing activist and media circles. It was completely and totally false.

“Apparently one of the election workers high up in the food chain, Kelly Dixon, ordered her staff to use ballpoint pens for early voting from 10/23 to 11/2 then they suddenly switched positions and they said we need — emphasis added — to use markers on Election Day,” Finchem said. “We've now seen with the evidence collection — paper that does not have the bleed proof coating on it that was just used for the ballot on demand thing."

“What that does is that actually forces post-ballot casting adjudication, which is an area that is fraught with potential for mis-assigning ballots because they have to interpret what the voter meant,” Finchem continued, incorrectly.

[vid]

finchem continued to appear on War Room throughout the year and into 2022, as Bannon gave him crucial boosts in the run-up to Arizona’s primaryon August 2. Bannon interviewed Finchem at least once in June, twice in July, and once on August 1, in a final push before the primary the following day. In each of those segments, Bannon was effusive in his praise of Finchem, offering him not only a platform for his ideas but also opportunities to drive traffic to his website for fundraising and organizing purposes.

“You got their heads blowing up, Finchem,” Bannon told him in June.

The following month, Finchem appealed to Bannon’s audience for help in the final push of his primary campaign. “We can always use another contribution,” Finchem said. Moments later, he gushed to Bannon: “God bless you and this platform.”

The day before the primary, Bannon had Finchem on again. “This is all about who shows up. How are we gonna get your folks to show up?” Bannon asked. “Where do they go, how do people volunteer, what do they have to do in the next 24 hours?”

Then, the day after the primary, when Finchem had clinched the nomination, Bannon again invited him on for a victory lap — and to do more fundraising for the impending general election. “We’re gonna have to raise about $2 million, brother,” Finchem said, as Bannon enthusiastically gestured at him to underline the point. “If people would click on the donate button — we’ve spent every single penny on this primary, so we are now back to ground zero.”

Bannon’s roadmap forward

In Finchem, Bannon has an uncompromising zealot who knows in his gut — as Bannon does — that Democrats can’t win elections. “If they can’t cheat they can’t win,” Bannon has said while interviewing Finchem. And in Bannon, Finchem has a household name in his corner, singing his praises month after month, incentivizing the Arizona politician to hold the extremist line.

Arizona is arguably the leading edge of the MAGA movement, as Finchem is joined on the ticket by fellow election deniers in Kari Lake, who is running for governor, Blake Masters, running for senator, and Abe Hamadeh, running for attorney general. As of publication, Finchem is slightly leading his opponent, according to a recent CNN poll, and all of the other races are close.

Mainstream reporters often overstate Bannon’s supposed strategic prowess. He endorses extreme, politically weak candidates — Roy Moore comes to mind — who adhere to his uncompromising approach to electoral politics. But if Finchem wins control of Arizona’s elections, it will be in no small part due to Bannon’s mentorship. There would be little difference between Finchem’s approach to election administration in Arizona and the way Bannon himself would run elections in one of the country’s most critical swing states.

Bannon’s show also offers conspiracy theorists like Finchem an opportunity to hone their media skills and talking points prior to being subject to mainstream scrutiny, like working the regional boxing circuit before walking into the ring at the MGM Grand. Finchem put these skills to good use last week, taking advantage of a weak interview from CBS’s Ed O’Keefe to spread his bogus ideas and lies on a national platform with zero pushback.

Two days later, Bannon celebrated the interview. One of his guests on the show that day was Mark Finchem.

---

mma 4 22

The far-right, conspiracy theorist website The Gateway Pundit has spent the weeks following Russia's invasion of Ukraine pumping out the Kremlin’s propaganda materials and narratives.

Founded in 2004 by Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit is a voraciously pro-Trump blog that has spread conspiracy theories about everything from the 2018 Parkland school shooting and former President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, to the Las Vegas mass shooting and the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Most recently, the blog has served as a promotional platform for Russian propaganda in the month after the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

Between March 6 and March 9, Hoft published three articles promoting the repeatedly debunked — and Russia-created — conspiracy theory that the U.S. was funding biological weapons in Ukraine.Two of those articles relied on Russian state media. The conspiracy theory quickly spread through the right-wing media ecosystem.

In the second half of March alone, the blog has based its coverage of the war in Ukraine on Russian propaganda at least four times:

In a March 29 article, Gateway Pundit questioned “Western media outlets” and their portrayal of Russia’s position in the war in Ukraine. The site also said that Russia managed to destroy a “Ukrainian neo-Nazi entity that controlled Mariupol,” a claim that originally came from a Russian colonel-general and was reported by the Russian state media outlet TASS. Russia justified its invasion of Ukraine by promising to “denazify” the country and has seized on the existence of a far-right movement as proof. But the movement, which was active in Mariupol between 2014 and 2015, separated its political and military wings in 2016. Its military wing has since been integrated into the Ukrainian National Guard.
In the same March 29 article, Gateway Pundit also attempted to throw cold water on reports that Russia was suffering “massive losses” in Ukraine. While the article didn’t mention hard numbers, on March 25 the Russian Defense Ministry told RT that the country lost 1,351 servicemen, a far cry from the western and Ukrainian estimates of anywhere between 7,000 and 15,000.
On March 14, a Gateway Pundit article embedded a video of the Russian representative to the United Nations telling the UN Security Council that a U.S. program of biological research in Ukraine resulted in the spread of dangerous pathogens. In addition to the video, the article included a transcript but, naturally, no mention that the entire narrative around nefarious biological research labs and weaponizing pathogens has been debunked.
On March 29, a Gateway Pundit article linked to a timeline from a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson alleging to show about 30 years’ worth of “US-Ukraine bioresearch.” The existence of the research labs was never a secret, but including the timeline implied a type of discovery. And the piece includes pro-Russian language that characterizes the 2014 “Revolution of Dignity” in Ukraine as an “anti-constitutional coup d’etat in Ukraine.” The article did include a warning to view the information with “extreme caution,” before reprinting the entire timeline with no additional information.

In addition to relying on Russian disinformation and state media, Gateway Pundit has published several articles that advance Russian interests, including referring to Ukraine as a “former Soviet satellite,” claiming that the situation in Ukraine is “desperate” and “getting worse,” saying that President Joe Biden is in a state of cognitive decline, and claiming that Ukrainian refugees at the U.S. southern border are being turned away because of COVID-19. (Russia has been running an anti-vaccine campaign in Ukraine.)

This is not the first time the website has repeated Russian propaganda. In 2016, articles promoted misinformation about supposed voter fraud by the Democratic Party that originated from the Russian troll farm the Internet Research Agency.

The Gateway Pundit has long been a far-right cesspool of conspiracy theories and hoaxes. The site has called for violence against Democrats, endorsed white nationalists, and celebrated the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6. And now it’s actively aiding an unprovoked, unwarranted, and inhumane invasion by giving a platform to Russian propaganda and spin.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/russias-invasion-ukraine/conspiracy-theory-about-hunter-biden-and-ukrainian-biolabs-went-qanon

no lnx twt pix vid

a conspiracy theory about Hunter Biden and Ukrainian biolabs went from QAnon supporters and far-right message boards to the Kremlin and Tucker Carlson

WRITTEN BY ALEX KAPLAN

PUBLISHED 03/28/22

A version of a false conspiracy theory about Ukrainian biolabs that holds that Hunter Biden is connected to those labs was spread by the Russian government, Chinese state media, and Fox News host Tucker Carlson, after supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory and users on far-right message boards pushed the claim.

In late February, a false conspiracy theory spread online -- spurred on by a QAnon-supporting Twitter account known as “Clandestine” -- that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was targeting U.S.-linked labs working to create bioweapons. In reality, the labs are focused on detecting diseases, the U.S. program aims to prevent the development or spread of biological weapons, and the conspiracy theory has its roots in a longstanding Russian disinformation effort. The false claim has spread online among far-right figures and QAnon supporters, and the Russian government has invoked the conspiracy theory to justify the invasion following its spread in parts of the American right.

In the months before the invasion, a separate conspiracy theory circulated online suggesting that Biden was tied to labs involved in potentially nefarious activity around the world, including possibly causing the coronavirus pandemic.Although Ukraine was not the only focus of the conspiracy theory, it was mentioned as one of the countries supposedly involved in these efforts; this claim also followed previous allegations from right-wing media about wrongdoing by Biden in that country.

In particular, a thread from a QAnon-supporting Twitter account called “Blue Canaries” claimed in October that Biden was connected to an effort to manufacture “bio agents under diplomatic cover at ‘secret’ labs” and sell “pandemic insurance and trackers to help countries get ahead of what they are putting out.”

Blue Canaries Twitter

Blue Canaries’ Twitter thread quickly spread among some online conspiracy theorists, including on 8kun’s “/qresearch/” message board, the forum dedicated to “Q,” QAnon’s central figure. It was shared on-air by Infowars host Owen Shroyer, who hyped the thread as “unbelievable,” as well as by Jeffrey Pedersen, a QAnon influencer and show co-host known online as “intheMatrixxx,” who called it “a very interesting thread/dig.”

8kun Hunter biolabs1

CitationFrom 8kun's “/qresearch/” message board

Soon after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in late February, and as Clandestine’s biolabs conspiracy theory Twitter thread took off online, the Blue Canaries Twitter thread mentioning Biden was invoked again and began to spread among users on far-right message boards.

QAnon forum Hunter biolabs

It was also featured onPedersen’s MatrixxxGrooove Show(also known as MG Show) just one day after Russia’s invasion began. Pedersen -- who had by that point shared Clandestine’s claim about biolabs as a reason for the invasion -- extensively discussed Blue Canaries’ Twitter thread, linked it to Biden, and suggested “President [Vladimir] Putin and Russia have been worried about this.” Co-host Shannon Townsend added, “This looks like the biggest thing that they would be worried about considering what we’ve experienced in the world for the last two-plus years. Why would he not be afraid that this was going on? And what if we could prove that it was going on all over the country of Ukraine, right next door to him?”

Video CitationFrom the February 25, 2022, edition of the MatrixxxGrooove Show

Following that MatrixxxGrooove Show episode on February 25, both Blue Canaries’ Twitter thread and the claim that Biden was tied to Ukrainian biolabs continued to spread via some social media accounts and on far-right message board site 4chan. On February 28, RedPill78’s Zak Paine, a QAnon show host who participated in the Capitol insurrection, discussed Biden “in regards to those biolabs in the Ukraine” and the “ongoing conversation about biological weapons facilities in the country of Ukraine that were set up by the United States government.”

On March 8, Infowars published an article claiming Biden was “connected to US biolabs in Ukraine,” mentioning some of the same organizations cited by the Blue Canaries thread -- repeating claims that the outlet had pushed on-air months earlier. Two days later, far-right blog The Gateway Pundit came out with its own piece claiming Biden’s investment fund had “provided capital for the firms behind the creation of Biolabs in Ukraine,” citing Infowars’ “excellent article with connections between Hunter Biden” and the supposed biolabs. Pedersen shared both articles and wrote, “You heard it on the MG Show first,” adding that “we also beat infowars” on pushing the conspiracy theory.

Gateway Pundit Hunter biolabs

CitationFrom The Gateway Pundit

Following The Gateway Pundit’s article, the conspiracy theory gained more exposure on some mainstream social media platforms, getting thousands of total engagements on those platforms.

The Russian government invoked this particular version of the conspiracy theory on March 24, with the Ministry of Defense accusing Biden’s investment firm of having a “close connection” to military contractors responsible for “Pentagon biolaboratories around the world” -- similar to what Blue Canaries had suggested those months prior. Russia’s Defense Ministry also released a diagram of supposed connections between Biden, the Democratic Party, George Soros, various U.S. companies and federal agencies, and foreign governments as evidence for the conspiracy theory,and the claim was subsequently pushed by Russian state media. Chinese state media also pushed the claim, citing the Russian government.

Russian and Chinese state media Hunter biolabs

On the evening of March 24, Fox News host Tucker Carlson -- who had previously pushed the broader biolabs conspiracy theory to justify Russia’s invasion -- pointed to a National Pulse article from earlier that day to say that “a private equity firm run by Hunter Biden funded some of the research into pathogens in these biolabs.” The on-screen chyron said, “Report: Hunter Linked To Ukrainian Biolab.” (The MatrixxxGrooove Show’s Townsend had also shared the National Pulse article and claimed that his show found what the article claimed “over a month ago.”)

Video fileCitationFrom the March 24, 2022, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight

For his part, Clandestine -- the QAnon supporter who caused the initial biolabs conspiracy theory to spread widely online following the invasion -- joined in hyping the Biden angle and cheered Carlson’s points, calling them “digestible doses for the normies” that are “culminating into a mass realization the likes of which the world has never seen.”

THE LATEST

Piers Morgan plugs new show on Fox Nation: “I'm going to lead the charge to save our language to let pregnant people go back to being called women.”

04/01/22 3:32 PM EDT

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04/01/22 3:17 PM EDT

Joe Rogan: “Imagine” getting “into bed” with White House press secretary Jen Psaki

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Fox News is using the “Libs of TikTok” Twitter account like a wire service for anti-LGBTQ attacks

04/01/22 1:52 PM EDT

Pagination

Current page1

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IN THIS ARTICLE

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

Tucker Carlson

QAnon Conspiracy Theory

Facebook and Instagram have allowed and profited from advertising pushing the false Ukraine-US biolabs conspiracy theory

03/16/22 11:59 AM EDT

YouTube is making money off a false Ukraine-biolabs conspiracy theory that is tied to Russian disinformation and QAnon

03/08/22 3:27 PM EST

QAnon supporters and far-right figures hail Russian invasion of Ukraine as Putin taking down the “cabal”

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https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/10/boom-rising-star-rep-byron-donalds-destroys-crazy-democrat-carolyn-maloney-thugs-oil-execs-house-committee-hearing-video/

no lnx pix vid

Crazy Democrat Carolyn Maloney After She Thugs Out Against Oil Execs at House Committee Hearing–VIDEO

By Jim Hoft

Published October 28, 2021

427 Comments

Carolyn Maloney and House Democrats thugged out against the top oil company executives on Thursday at the House Oversight Committee blaming the oil companies for spreading misinformation on global warming.

These are the same people who spread disinformation that the world will end in 9 years if we don’t buy more Chinese windmills.

Maloney and Democrats are attacking oil executives as gas prices continue to surge to record highs under the misguided Biden administration.

It’s as if they WANT Americans to be destroyed. Weird.

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) took his time to BLAST Maloney and Democrats for harassing the oil company executives and deny them their freedom to speak out and spend their company money as they wish.

TRENDING: LIVE-STREAM VIDEO:Russia Convenes UN Security Council to Present Evidence of US Military Biological Activities in Ukraine -- 11 AM ET -- LIVE NOW!

Rep. Byron Donalds: Let’s be clear you need an apology because what I witnessed here today was just rank intimidation by the chair of this committee. Trying to get you to pledge on what you are going to spend your money on is a gross violation against the First Amendment… It is disgusting. It is absolutely disgusting. Somebody needs to call Merrick Garland and tell him to get in here and watch the intimidation that came from this very panel today. Because this is not about defending big oil or defending big anything. It is about the people in this country to be free, say anything they want, think what they want, spend their money how they choose. And if we’re not going to be any better than the Chinese, how do we ever expect to beat them on the world stage.

Rep. Donalds was terrific! Truly a rising star.

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Jim Hoft

Doctor Makes False Claim About Stillbirths in Canadian Hospitals

By Brea Jones

Posted on December 16, 2021

the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant people, and the World Health Organization says the vaccines are safe for them. Yet online articles cite a Canadian doctor who falsely claims that the vaccines have caused an unusually high number of stillbirths in Canadian hospitals. A hospital representative told us there was “no truth to this claim."

Full Story

Pregnant people have an increased riskfor severe disease from COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC also reports that among delivery hospitalizations from March 2020 to September 2021, women with COVID-19 were at increased risk for stillbirth.

The CDC says that implementing COVID-19 prevention strategies, including vaccination before or during pregnancy, is critical to reducing the impact of COVID-19 on stillbirths.

And, as we’ve reported, there is no evidence that the COVID-19 vaccines pose a risk to pregnant people and their fetuses.

But Dr. Daniel Nagase, a Canadian family physician, has falsely claimed that the vaccines are the cause of an “increase in stillbirths” across Canada, with one birthing center in Vancouver having “13 stillbirths in a 24-hour period.”

Conservative outlets are spreading Nagase’s unfounded claim. TheGateway Pundit, a website that has repeatedly spread misinformation, carried a headline on Dec. 11 that said: “Doctor Warns Stillbirths Are Rampant Among Fully Vaccinated Mothers, Launches Investigation.”

Trending Politics, another conservative website, borrowed content from the Gateway Pundit story and ran a similar headline: “SHOCK REPORT: Rampant Stillbirths Among Fully Vaccinated Mothers Concerning.”

But Canadian health officials have refuted Nagase’s claim.

‘No Truth’ to Claim About Stillbirth Data

In a video shared in the Gateway Pundit article, Nagase named Dr. Mel Bruchet — a former family doctorfrom Vancouver who has also advocated for the use of ivermectin on COVID-19 patients — as the individual who shared the information about the Vancouver stillbirths with him.

“That is what I heard, but the thing is I also heard a similar story out in Waterloo, Ontario. So, in Waterloo, Ontario, I have a more reliable statistic that there was 86 stillbirths between January and July,” Nagase said. “Normally, it’s only five or six stillbirths every year. So, about one stillbirth every two months is the usual rate. So, to suddenly get to 86 stillbirths in six months, that’s highly unusual. But, the most important confirmation that we have from the Waterloo, Ontario report was that all of the 86 stillbirths were fully vaccinated.”

Nagase nodded his head “yes” when asked in the video if he meant all the stillbirths involved fully vaccinated mothers.

But Celso Pereira, a spokesperson for the regional health authority Vancouver Coastal Health, told us in an email that VCH was “aware of disinformation spreading on social media regarding stillbirths at Lions Gate Hospital (LGH) as a result of mothers having been vaccinated against COVID-19.”

“There is no truth to this claim and the individuals spreading this false information have no affiliation to either Lions Gate Hospital or Vancouver Coastal Health,” Pereira said.

“There has been no notable change to the incidence of stillbirths in the VCH region throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. This type of disinformation adds unnecessary stress to expecting parents who have received a COVID-19 vaccine, on health-care staff who must reassure their patients, and on the health-care system, as resources are stretched further during the ongoing pandemic response,” Pereira said.

“COVID-19 vaccines are recommended for pregnant women and safe for both mother and fetus,” Pereira also said.

Dr. Peter Potts, joint chief of staff at Grand River Hospital in the Waterloo region of Ontario, told the Canadian news site CityNews that 12 stillbirths occurred in the last fiscal year between both Grand River Hospital and Cambridge Memorial Hospital in Cambridge, Ontario.

“This year, we have had 982 deliveries in Cambridge and four still-births,” Kristin Wadsworth, chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Cambridge Memorial Hospital, said in the CityNews article.“That is a still-birth rate of 0.41%, which is our average.”

Potts also said, “we feel COVID vaccinations during pregnancy are a normal part to prenatal care and the obstetricians and midwives in the community strongly support the vaccination during pregnancy. There is a growing body of evidence that the vaccination is safe.”

On its website, the CDC says “the benefits of receiving a COVID-19 vaccine outweigh any known or potential risks of vaccination during pregnancy.” In fact, the CDC says, “people who have COVID-19 during pregnancy are at increased risk of preterm birth and stillbirth.”

This isn’t the first time that he has attracted the attention of Canadian health officials. Nagase triggered a public health warning from the Alberta Health Service in October, after he claimed online to have treated COVID-19 patients with the unapproved drug ivermectin while he acted as afill-in doctorat AHS.

“Neither the veterinary nor human drug versions of ivermectin has been deemed safe or effective for use in treating or preventing COVID-19,” AHS said in its statement on Twitter. “It is extremely disappointing that someone would spread misinformation about COVID-19 treatment in this way,” the health service’s statement said.

As we’ve written, the Food and Drug Administration says “currently available data do not show ivermectin is effective against COVID-19.”

The CBC reported that, following the incident, Nagase wasn’t scheduled to work as a fill-in physician at AHS and that the health service would conduct a review.

Editor’s note: SciCheck’s COVID-19/Vaccination Project is made possible by agrant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.The foundation has no control over FactCheck.org’s editorial decisions, and the views expressed in our articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundation. The goal of the project is to increase exposure to accurate information about COVID-19 and vaccines, while decreasing the impact of misinformation.

Sources

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Risk for Stillbirth Among Women with and Without COVID-19 at Delivery Hospitalization — United States, March 2020 — September 2021.” Updated 26 Nov 2021.

“Doctor who says he gave ivermectin to rural Alberta COVID-19 patients prompts warning from health authority.” CBC News. 8 Oct 2021.

Gill, Divya. “Stillbirth rates not increasing in the region according to hospital officials.” CityNews Kitchener. 27 Nov 2021.

Jones, Brea.“Bogus Campaign Signs in Virginia Were Not Posted by McAuliffe or Democrats.”FactCheck.org. 29 Oct 2021.

McDonald, Jessica. “CDC Data Thus Far Show COVID-19 Vaccination Safe During Pregnancy.” FactCheck.org. Updated 8 Nov 2021.

“Nagase, Daniel Yoshio” webpage. College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia. Accessed 13 Dec 2021.

Parks, Gord. “Dr. Nagase Files Conflicts of Interest Complaints Against B.C. Top Docs.” Brightlight News. 23 Nov 2021.

Powe, Alicia. “(VIDEO) Doctor Warns Stillbirths Are Rampant Among Fully Vaccinated Mothers, Launches Investigation.” Gateway Pundit. 11 Dec 2021

Risdon, Melanie. “WATCH: Emergency doctor says authorities are ‘standing in the way of life-saving medications’.” Western Standard. 6 Oct 2021

Salvatore, Johnny. “SHOCK REPORT: Rampant Stillbirths Among Fully Vaccinated Mothers Concerning.” Trending Politics. 11 Dec 2021.

Snowdon, Wallis. “Doctor who says he gave ivermectin to rural Alberta COVID-19 patients prompts warning from health authority.” CBC News. 8 Oct 2021.

Spencere, Saranac Hale. “Evidence Points to Safety of COVID-19 Vaccines for Pregnant People.” FactCheck.org. Updated 16 Aug 2021.

Van Beusekom, Mary. “COVID-19 tied to higher risk of stillbirth, maternal death.” Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. 22 Nov 2021.

Vancouver Coastal Health (@VCHhealthcare). “Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) is aware of rumours and disinformation spreading on social media regarding stillbirths at Lions Gate Hospital (LGH) as a result of mothers having been vaccinated against COVID-19.” Twitter. 24 Nov 2021.

Categories
- FactCheck Posts
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1 22 an

[media crit]

Donald Trump went into the 2020 election with some of the worst approval ratings on record for a sitting president. He made virtually no effort to appeal to those who didn’t vote for him. How was he able to remain standing, and how did he even potentially have a chance at a second term even if he lost the popular vote? One big reason is that he and his acolytes had convinced their base that the media can’t be trusted.

As we know by now, whenever the media aired even mildly critical coverage of Trump or those who were supposedly helping him make America great again, the response on the right was some variation of “(noun) (verb) fake news!” Indeed, it’s almost an article of faith among the Republican base that the media can’t be trusted.

If your news diet consists of the likes of Fox News, Newsmax, right-wing social media, and Christian conservative outlets, you probably think that when the mainstream media isn’t making things up, it’s crossing lines that should never be crossed in order. But there’s one problem—with few exceptions, it’s right-wing media that engages in that very behavior. And while some of those elements are finally answering for the worst of their sins, others are long overdue for a dose of accountability.

Contrary to what Trump and his diehards would have us think, whenever mainstream media outlets make a mistake, those mistakes are usually corrected fairly quickly once caught.A case in point was a 2017 editorial in *The New York Times* that held 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin partly responsible for a grisly 2011 mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona. The Old Grey Lady’s editorial board claimed that just days before the shooting, Palin’s political action committee circulated a map that placed stylized crosshairs on the districts of 19 Democratic House members. The implication was clear—that map was a big reason why one of those lawmakers, then-Rep. Gabby Giffords of Arizona, nearly died that day.

That claim was slammed on all sides of the aisle, prompting the Times to partly retract the editorial within five hours of it going online. All of the inaccurate information was retracted within two days.Despite this, Palin sued the Times for defamation. As near as can be determined, Palin is suing because she didn’t just want the Times to retract, but to grovel. The suit was due to go to trial in late January, but was pushed back to early February after the rabidly anti-vaccine Palin caught COVID-19.

Palin faces tough sledding under current precedent for libel and defamation suits. As a public figure, she would have to prove that when the editorial board greenlighted the initial version of the editorial, it did so acting with actual malice. That is, Palin would have to convince a jury that the editorial board either knew the story was false or published it with reckless disregard for whether it was true or false. Remember, the statements at issue were retracted in almost no time at all in modern media terms. Her onlychance of winning is to take this case all the way to the Supreme Court in hopes of making it easier for public figures to win libel suits.

As it currently stands, Palin’s suit betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how media outlets with actual standards work. Indeed, the Times’ quick retraction stands in marked contrast to the behavior of celebrity gossip blog Gawker. In March 2016, Gawker was effectively forced out of business when it was ordered tocough up $140 million in damages to pro wrestler Hulk Hogan for posting a clip of a sex tape of Hogan. While its sister sites (such as sports culture blog Deadspin, tech blog Gizmodo, and feminist blog Jezebel) were sold to Univision at a bankruptcy auction, Gawker itself wasshut down that August. Ultimately, Gawker settled with Hogan for $31 million that November.

A number of observers slammed the verdict for itspotential chilling effect on freedom of the press, especially after billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thielrevealed that he had bankrolled the suit. Thiel openly admitted that he wanted to punish Gawker after its now-defunct tech gossip sister, Valleywag, outed him as gay in 2007. Indeed, in a post-mortem about Gawker on its last day of business, NPR media reporter David Folkenflikobserved that Thiel’s involvement in Hogan’s suit against Gawker portended “ugly implications for press freedom in light of adversaries with nearly infinite resources.”

At its peak in 2015, Gawker hadover 23 million visits per month, making it one of the most visited sites in the world. With that level of popularity, it’s only fair to wonder—why was no one willing to ride to Gawker’s rescue? Granted, potential buyers might have beenskittish about having to deal with the massive legal headache of a lawsuit bankrolled by a billionaire. But surely someone with the wherewithal to withstand Thiel’s resources would have rescued Gawker solely on the principle of defending freedom of the press, right?

By then, however, Gawker had lost a lot of goodwill as a result of two instances where its disregard for standards dating back to the days of typewriters and leaflets was exposed for all to see. In 2015, Gawker ran an article that claimed Conde Nast Chief Financial Officer David Geithner, the brother of President Obama’s Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, was being extorted by a gay porn star and male escort. As the story goes, when Geithner reneged on a deal to meet up with the porn star on a trip to Chicago, the escort went to Gawker and offered to tell all. He supplied copies of text exchanges between himself and Geithner and a selfie that Geithner supposedly sent him.

When the story went live, the criticism came inhard,fast, and fromall directions.Most of the detractors argued that it served no public interest to even imply that Geithner was gay. For example, the University of Minnesota’s Jane Kirtley, a media law expert, told The Daily Beast that absent evidence that Geithner gave “preferential treatment to people in the hiring process” or was guilty of sexual harassment, she was “really hard-pressed” to see a legitimate reason for running the story.

But this story had a more fundamental problem than lack of public interest. It was sourced almost entirely from a guy who was extorting Geithner. Specifically, the bulk of the story came from texts provided to Gawker staff writer Jordan Sargent. Despite this, according to Mother Jones, Gawker took onlyone working day to research, vet, and fact-check the story before it went live.

A number of media experts found the rapid turnaround time for this story extremely problematic. Ken Paulson, former editor-in-chief of USA Today and current president of the First Amendment Center, told Mother Jones that stories that could even potentially wreck someone’s reputation “are typically vetted over a longer period.” Over that time, Paulson added, details could come up that “could give you pause about publishing.” First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams was interviewed in the same article, saying that when there is evidence of blackmail or extortion, it ought to be “a blinking yellow light, or even a blinking red light” to thoroughly vet it before you even consider publishing it.

Gawker’s defense, at the time, seemed to be that the story was true and nothing else mattered. In response to withering criticism—including from Gawker’s own readers—Natasha Vargas-Cooper of Jezebel harrumphed in a since-deleted tweet that in her mind, “if it’s true, you publish.”

The fact that Gawker seemed to justify this story simply because it was true appeared especially tone-deaf a mere four years after the News of the World wasforced out of existence due to rampant phone-hacking. Indeed, Gawker’s ethos appeared little different from that of WikiLeaks. By then, we’d known since at least 2010 that Julian Assange’s idea of transparency includedreleasing unredacted Social Security numbers—and dismissing any potential harm as “collateral damage.”

A mere 18 hours after the story went live, Gawker Media’s six-member managing partnershipvoted to remove it over thefurious objections of Gawker’s editorial staff. But when Gawker founder and CEO Nick Denton deliveredthe official explanation for removing the post, he proved that he still didn’t get it.

Denton said that the story about Geithner was “true and well reported,” which would have been enough to justify running it “in the early days of the Internet.” However, he said, “Gawker is no longer the insolent blog that began in 2003,” and this meant that potential stories “have to be true and interesting” in order to pass editorial muster. Denton went further in a memo to Gawker’s editorial team, saying that he was “ashamed” to have his name attached to the story, even if “we were within our legal right to publish.”

There are times when what was considered good reporting years ago is patently unacceptable now. For instance, the relentless coverage of Britney Spears in the early 2000swould never be tolerated today given greater awareness about mental health and sexism. But this didn’t even come close to being one of those times. By suggesting that an article that essentially amounted to aiding and abetting extortion would be even remotely acceptable in 2003, Denton made his statement announcing the article’s deletion amount to a non-apology apology. It also casts a pall on the good that Gawker actually did—like turning the hot lights on Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s substance abuse, or revealing that Bill O’Reilly used his influence to start an investigation of his ex-wife’s boyfriend.

Soon after the furor over the Geithner article died down, it became even clearer just how serious Gawker’s cultural problem was. In July 2015, Vanity Fair writer Richard Lawsontweeted a mea culpa about his days at Gawker. He admitted that he’d written, on orders from his boss, “baseless posts accusing an actor of raping an ex-boyfriend.” That actor wasJames Franco.

From 2008 to around 2014, Gawker churned out a series of articles that attempted to out Franco. The first of these articles, penned by Lawson, was a follow-up to ablind item in the New York Postin which an unidentified actor reportedly broke into his former boyfriend’s apartment and violently raped him. Inhis article, Lawson mused that the three likely suspects were Will Smith, Christian Bale—and Franco.

Soon afterward, Lawsonwrote another article suggesting that based on Gawker commenters’ sentiment, “the people” felt Franco was a gay rapist. He then followed that up witha third article suggesting that the “gay rapist” Franco had actually been mentioned by the person who tipped off the Post about the supposed violent attack. If there is any difference between that article and Trump’s penchant for spewing baseless garbage that’s supposedly based on what “many people are saying,” I don’t see it.

Later, other Gawker writerspenned articles suggesting that Franco was gay, based on the thinnest reeds of evidence. According to The Daily Beast, this was part of Gawker’s “creepy obsession with outing closeted men.” Granted, Franco is no angel. In 2021, he not only settled a lawsuit alleging that he harassed several students at the acting school he ran from 2014 to 2017, but admitted sleeping with some of his students.

Seen in this light, it’s no wonder that it took more than six years and at least one false start for Gawker to be revived. It returned in the summer of 2021 as a sister publication to women’s magazine Bustle, who bought Gawker’s remains in 2019. One would have thought that given Gawker’s popularity, it would have been revived sooner. However, NPR’s Folkenflik noted that when Univision bought Gawker’s sister sites, it concluded that Gawker itself was “too toxic to touch.”

Given how long it took for Gawker to be revived, any potential white knights must have reached the same conclusion. Who would want to take on an organization that not only believed there was a time where extortion was at all acceptable, but had no qualms about running libel?

Indeed, even as I write this, the articles libeling Franco are still available on Gawker’s website. That contrasts sharply with how the Times handled the initial version of its editorial attack on Palin. Contrary to what she and her fellow deplorables would have us believe, mainstream media outlets have standards—and those that lack standards get culled.

The same, however, can’t be said for some mainstays of right-wing media. For instance, when former Alabama chief justice Roy Moore made a bid for the U.S. Senateseat that came open when Jeff Sessions was tapped as Trump’s attorney general, Breitbart led a relentless smear campaign against the women who claimed Moore sexually assaulted them or pursued improper relationships with them. And it did so even though its editor-in-chief, Alex Marlow,believed at least one of the accusers was credible.

Marlow made this shocking assertion in an interview with CNN’s Oliver Darcy in December 2017, a month after Moore’s narrow loss to Democrat Doug Jones. He revealed that he believed that Moore’s initial accuser, Leigh Corfman, had “a lot of credibility.” Corfman, you may recall, claimed Moore sexually assaulted her when she was 14.

By admitting that he believed Moore’s accusers were credible even as Breitbart was smearing them, Marlow effectively put big, fat asterisks by every story Breitbart ran about the election. Victim shaming is bad enough, but doing so when you have reason to believe a victim is telling the truth is absolutely heinous. It’s even more so considering that Marlow admitted Breitbart went all-in for Moore to protect Trump.

Project Veritas also joined in on this disgraceful campaign. Its ringleader, James O’Keefe, even went as far as having one of his minions, Jaime Phillips, try to plant a bogus story in The Washington Postclaiming that Moore had impregnated her.But that story came apart when the Post did some actual journalism and discovered Phillips’ story had more red flags than a lifetime of Alabama football games. Most damningly, Phillips had created a GoFundMe page boasting about her goal to join “the conservative media movement” in exposing “the liberal MSM.”

To pile obscenity on top of insult, O’Keefe revealed in December 2017 that he believed Moore’s accusers were credible. And yet, he felt compelled to smear them because—wait for it—he felt their credibility was “not my subject matter,” and his real goal was exposing “bias in the media.” So the man whose stock in trade is targeting journalists for supposed bias admitted that doing so was so important that he felt compelled to shame victims that he believed were credible. Let that sink in.

To give you an idea how outrageous Breitbart and Project Veritas’ behavior was here, imagine if every news outlet that passed on the prospect of exposing Harvey Weinstein’s depravities had reason to believe Weinstein’s accusers were credible—and yet ran stories effectively calling them liars. It makes Palin’s squawking about theTimes’ failure to basically grovel before her look hypocritical as all hell.

Fortunately, at least two other members of the deplorable fever swamp are facing long-overdue accountability. Take InfoWars, for instance. Even after Alex Jones was kicked off mainstream social media and blackballed from smartphone app stores, it looked like he was going to continue his years-long promotion of conspiracy theories and hate speech—albeit with a much reduced audience.

But what may have been the beginning of the end for Jones came in 2018, not long after Facebook and YouTube gave him the boot. Several families of Sandy Hook victims, along with an FBI agent who responded to the shooting, sued Jones for defamation. Specifically, they wanted Jones held to account for his numerous claims that the Sandy Hook victims and survivors were “crisis actors.” These claims have resulted in the survivors being relentlessly harassed and trolled. The family of Noah Pozner, for instance, has had to move numerous times due to the harassment, and now live under high security in an undisclosed location. They have never been able to visit their son’s grave.

A series of legal reversals for Jones and InfoWars culminated in the fall of 2021. That September, a Texas judge issued three default judgments against Jones and InfoWars in two defamation suits filed by Sandy Hook families. The judge had lost patience with Jones’ refusal to turn over documents, and found it egregious enough to conclude that Jones had already lost. In November, a Connecticut judge issued a default judgment in a suit filed against Jones in another lawsuit. While damages will be determined at trial later this year, they are likely to add up to hundreds of millions of dollars—in all likelihood, enough to put InfoWars out of business.

Another fixture of the deplorable fever swamp, Gateway Pundit, may also face extinction after beingsued for orchestrating a vicious trolling campaign that falsely accused Georgia election workers of stealing their state for Joe Biden. The two workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, claim that Gateway Pundit started a flood of disinformation that reached all the way to Trump, who attacked Freeman by name in his now-infamous attempt to shake down Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Dozens of bogus stories about Freeman and Moss resulted in death threats, doxing, and kidnapping attempts, among other things. Rather than apologize, Gateway Pundit actually tried to raise money off the lawsuit, netting over $81,000.If there is any justice, though, that fundraising effort will be a futile exercise. Gateway Pundit and its impresarios, the Hoft brothers, ought to get a very hard lesson on why private citizens only need to prove negligence in order to win libel suits.

The Times moves in almost no time at all by current media standards to retract claims about Palin—and yet, Breitbart, Project Veritas, and Gateway Pundit refuse to even attempt to apologize for far worse. What’s wrong with this picture?

The answer to that question is simpler than you may think. For all the caterwauling we hear from the right about the media not having any standards, we have seen instance after instance where the media has shown it actually does. Moreover, whenever elements of the mainstream press show they don’t have standards, they are weeded out. The demise of Gawker is a stark example of what happens when you catapult your way into the mainstream, only to show you have little regard for basic standards of decency.

If we are to remove the tinder from our politics, we must subject the media to the same level of accountability that Gawker faced, and what InfoWars is more than likely to face. As Gawker learned in 2016, that standard ought to apply regardless of political shade. But if Palin and other right-wingers are willing to take off their blinders, they would see that their own side of the media divide is long overdue for a cleaning.

Poll 426 votes Show Results

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ref no pix twt

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/sarahmimms/arizona-election-results-oan-reporters-fundraising

two reporters at One America News, a far-right TV station, are running a dark money organization that they say is helping fund a counter-reality “audit” that former president Donald Trump and his supporters believe will overturn Arizona’s 2020 election results in his favor.

What’s more, one of those reporters, Christina Bobb, is the network’s most visible correspondent covering the very “audit” that she is helping scare up money for on OAN’s airwaves, while she and the network enjoy unique access to the process where private contractors and volunteers are searching for fraud and have examined ballots for nonexistent watermarks and “bamboo fibers.” OAN has a deal as the exclusive livestream partner for the audit.

:{:{}:

Christina Bobb hosting her show Weekly Briefing on OAN pix

Bobb has not made a secret of her work to keep that audit going. On April 9, she tweeted that she’d founded a group called Voices and Votes to help the Republican-led Arizona Senate complete its audit of the vote in Maricopa County. The group reached its $150,000 fundraising goal that same day,according to Bobb, and she’s continued soliciting money for the audit since, both on Twitter and on air.

According to its website, Voices and Votes is run by Bobb as the CEO and president, as well as OAN’s White House correspondent Chanel Rion, who is listed as the chief marketing officer, and Courtland Sykes, Rion’s fiancé, who is listed as the group’s chief operations officer. The group’s website also says that Voices and Votes is registered as a 501(c)(4) organization, meaning its donors will never be made public.

That also means that the group will never have to give an accounting of how much money it has raised or where that money actually went. Bobb did not respond when BuzzFeed News asked how much Voices and Votes has brought in, but insisted that all of the money raised “has gone to the auditors.”Cyber Ninjas, the firm leading the audit, and its CEO did not respond to multiple requests for comment on whether it had received money from Voices and Votes.

twt]

it’s important to pause here and note that the audit itself is not really an audit at all. What happened is the Arizona Senate, which is controlled by 16 Republicans (to 14 Democrats) sent a subpoena to Maricopa County, which was upheld by a judge, forcing the county to hand over 2.1 million ballots, as well as vote tabulators and a bunch of election data. The “audit,” which is being run by outside contractors hired by the Senate, will have no force or effect on the 2020 election results; Joe Biden is president, and Arizona already did an audit of Maricopa County in the presidential race and didn’t find a single ballot discrepancy. The county itself, which is not involved in the current Senate audit either, also hired two independent firms to review its elections equipment in February, which came back clean as well.

On Monday, Maricopa County’s Board of Supervisors, which is majority Republican, wrote a scathing letter to Arizona Senate President Karen Fann, calling the audit a threat to democracy and telling her to end it. “The Arizona Senate is not acting in good faith, has no intention of learning anything about the November 2020 General Election, but is only interested in feeding the various festering conspiracy theories that fuel the fundraising schemes of those pulling your strings. ... The result is that the Arizona Senate is held up to ridicule in every corner of the globe and our democracy is imperiled,” the board wrote.

But, as Bobb told her OAN audience a few weeks ago, the new Senate audit will “unravel the Democrats' schemes from 2020” and Trump “will determine our next House and Senate” — whatever that means. In the same segment, she backtracked slightly, saying that “maybe” the audit would show there was no fraud. “Maybe,” she said, laughing, “Biden legitimately won Arizona.”

Needless to say, no legitimate newsroom would allow its reporters to fundraise for an actual news event they’re covering. Nonetheless, Bobb has continued soliciting donations for Voices and Votes, actively fundraising to keep the story she is covering going. Bobb tweeted as recently as April 28 that the audit isn’t “fully funded yet” and asked followers to “please help get this audit across the finish line!” That weekend she dedicated segments of her Weekly Briefing show to her reporting from the audit and an interview with the Arizona Republican Party chair.

[twt]

after reaching her $150,000 goal, Bobb announced the group’s “second pledge,” this time without naming a monetary goal, tweeting, “Let’s get this audit funded!” with a donation link.

Just a week later, the Arizona Republican Party tweeted that OAN would be the exclusive livestreamer of the audit. The network now runs nine cameras 24/7 showing contractors examining the 2.1 million ballots. And Bobb herself has been there reporting on it for OAN the whole time, posting photos of herself alongside some of the architects of the audit and thanking those “true Patriots” for making it happen.

Bobb and OAN are getting access to the audit that no other news outlets have, reporters on the ground say. While reporters at other Arizona and national media outlets have had to rotate through a few select spots to cover the audit, Bobb and a writer with the Gateway Pundit, another pro-Trump outlet, are exempted from that pool. She reported live from the coliseum where the audit is taking place every day last week.

Bobb disputed that she and OAN had received any “special treatment” in an email to BuzzFeed News on behalf of Voices and Votes. While she acknowledged that she had different access than members of the Arizona press corps, she said her access to cover the audit depended on “availability.” “I have been denied access at certain times and had to go on different days or at different times,” she wrote. “I am not permitted to attend whenever I want.”

Bobb also noted that OAN is not “in any way” affiliated with her fundraising group “other than allowing me to mention my efforts on air” and said the network “has not received anything as a result of Voices and Votes' donations.”

“I have openly and honestly disclosed all my efforts on air, and have handled the funds exactly as I said that I would,” she said.

Rion did not respond to requests for comment. Fann, the Senate president, deferred questions about OAN’s access to former Arizona secretary of state Ken Bennett, who is serving as an audit liaison. Bennett did not respond to multiple requests.

OAN correspondent Chanel Rion asks then-president Donald Trump a question during a White House press briefing on April 6, 2020. pix ]

Bobb noted last week that Arizona senators won’t say what would happen if the audit does find “some type of fraud” — which won’t happen, because legitimate audits have already been conducted — and that senators have said this audit is about promoting trust in future elections, not about 2020. “They would not commit to saying that they would overturn anything, but they did say they were certainly taking a look at it,” she said, citing anonymous Arizona legislators.

OAN did not respond to requests for comment on the conflict between Bobb and Rion’s work for their network and their affiliation with Voices and Votes or whether the network has a conflict-of-interest policy.

The audit itself has so far been a farce, enough so that one of the Republican state senators who voted for it told the New York Times that in practice the audit is “ridiculous” and “makes us look like idiots.” At one point, workers were checking for any traces of bamboo in the ballot paper in a frankly stupid and racist attempt to test a conspiracy theory that thousands of illegal ballots were shipped in from Asia. They were shining UV lights on ballots for reasons that weren’t really explained by officials at the time but seemed to line up with a QAnon-adjacent theory that Trump’s Department of Homeland Security had watermarked real ballots so the Democrats’ fraudulent ones could be easily found. That prompted the Maricopa County Elections Department to publicly post a fact check: “There are NO watermarks on Maricopa County ballots.”

Then there’s the firm that the Arizona Senate hired to run the whole thing, Cyber Ninjas, owned by Doug Logan. As the Arizona Mirror reported, Logan repeatedly posted conspiracies about the election being stolen and falsehoods about Dominion Voting Systems on his since-deleted Twitter account. Logan is also the author of a three-page document of “election fraud facts” posted to former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell’s website intended for senators to use in explaining why they would object to the election results and try to give the White House back to Trump, the Mirror also reported. Logan, it's worth noting, stood behind the document in a statement to the Mirror.

His firm and three others are now paying contractors $15 an hour and bringing in volunteers to examine the ballots — among them was a former state representative who lost his 2020 race and was also filmed on the Capitol steps during the Jan. 6 insurrection. With the process taking way longer than expected, a big bill is coming and it’s unclear who is paying it.

The Arizona Senate only gave $150,000 in taxpayer money to the project, which they knew was a laughable sum for an election audit of this size, and is allowing Cyber Ninjas to raise the rest from whoever. And several prominent Trump supporters have stepped up. Former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, who has peddled some of the more out-there election conspiracy theories, kicked in $1 million and has his own dark money group raising funds, per the Arizona Republic. MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell told the Daily Beast that he had donated. And Lin Wood, an attorney who filed a bunch of lawsuits trying to overturn the election, told Talking Points Memo and confirmed to BuzzFeed News that his 501(c)(4) #FightBack had donated to Bobb’s Voices and Votes.

Meanwhile, reporters at other outlets who are not paying for the audit had to fight to cover it at all. At one point, the Arizona Senate told media that they could only have access to the audit if they signed up for at least five six-hour shifts as volunteer observers. To be clear, they wouldn’t then get to report on the audit, their only access under this plan was as workers for the audit they were trying to cover. And, the Senate said, they could not bring laptops or cellphones or even a paper and pen with them. “People observing even executions are allowed to bring their notebooks in with them,” Arizona Capitol Times reporter Julia Shumway, who has since covered the audit, told BuzzFeed News.

Shumway and her colleagues eventually did get press access to the audit, but only after the Arizona Mirror, the Arizona Republic, and the Arizona Broadcasters Association got lawyers involved. Now, reporters have to pool their resources with one print journalist, one videographer, and one photographer allowed into the audit at any given time, and they must be escorted, even to the bathroom, Shumway said. Meanwhile, Bobb and a reporter for the Gateway Pundit can report outside of the pool.

When asked about the discrepancy in treatment for OAN and the Gateway Pundit and every other news outlet, Fann told PBS that OAN was given livestreaming rights to the audit because “they have covered this from the beginning. They are one of the firms that came in right off the bat and said we will help do all the 24-hour video so everybody has access to this 24/7, that they wanted to be a part of it. So I don’t think that’s a bad idea. If there was another network had come up and said that first, we would have went with them probably.”

She later accused other, unnamed reporters of trespassing and said they had worried about too many members of the media “walk[ing] all over the place and tak[ing] pictures.” Asked if she had any similar concerns about OAN, she responded simply, “No, huh-uh. Nope.”

UPDATE

May 18, 2021, at 2:13 p.m.

The Arizona Mirror, the Arizona Republic, and the Arizona Broadcasters Association brought the legal fight to get reporters access to the audit. A previous version of this story was unclear on who led the legal effort.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/right-wing-media/

:{:{When the Electoral College met on Monday, December 14, electors officially voted to give President-elect Joe Biden the 306 electoral votes he won in the 2020 presidential election. But in the right-wing media, the myth that President Donald Trump is the real winner and still has a legitimate path to victory persists. New York Times reporter Jeremy W. Peters, in an article published the following day, points to election coverage as a prime example of the}::{ alternate reality that exists in the right-wing media bubble — where fiction is accepted as fact.}:

"One by one, presidential electors in all 50 states and the District of Columbia formally recognized Joseph R. Biden, Jr. as the president-elect — the latest and most significant rejection so far of Mr. Trump's desperate attempts to undo the will of the voters," Peters explains. "But inside the sprawling and self-reinforcing network of websites, podcasts and video news that has fed some of the most reckless and unrealistic claims about the election, the myth of Mr. Trump's political survival endures."

Peters goes on to cite some specific examples of the type of nonsense that came from the right-wing media on December 14.

"The lead story on theGateway Pundit, which researchers have identified as one of the major sources (of) pro-Trump misinformation online, floated the idea of a 'BOMBSHELL' ruling in a case on Monday that the site teased as a possible game-changer: 'Will a Small County in Northern Michigan Be the Key to Overturning the Nation's Election Results?,'" Peters observes. "On a podcast hosted by Mr. Trump's former White House chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, a conservative activist vowed to file a new lawsuit seeking to reverse the electors' vote — adding to the dozens of suits so far, nearly all of which have been dismissed."[twt]

another far-right media figure who has been exalting Trump as the real winner of the 2020 election is radio host Mark Levin, who, Peters notes, "was one of the first to give a national platform to the conspiracy theories of the lawyers Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, whose various claims of fraud involve a multinational network of saboteurs and domestic enemies of the president both dead — Hugo Chávez of Venezuela — and alive: 'Never Trump' Republican officials."

Peters points out that far-right conspiracy theories have a "lost history in the Republican Party," and he cites the John Birch Society as a prime example of the 1960s. The Times reporter stresses, however, that "the fringe never, of course, enjoyed the support of the sitting president" back then.

Taking Peters' argument a step further, it should be noted that some people on the right didn't hesitate to call out the Birchers as nutcases — most notably, the late National Review founder William F. Buckley. Although the conservative Buckley bashed liberals and progressives on a regular basis during the 1960s and 1970s, he was no fan of the John Birch Society.

But as Peters points out, the "fringe" has so much influence in right-wing media in 2020 that even Fox News' Tucker Carlson "faced a backlash" when he "questioned" Powell's "credibility."

Reflecting on the influence of the John Birch Society during the 1960s compared to the lunatic fringe now, Yochai Benkler — a Harvard Law School professor who has been studying right-wing media — told the Times, "What you didn't get then was the same market exposure. You didn't have tens of millions of voters exposed."

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/trump-fox-feedback-loop-amplifies-deranged-conspiracy-theory-about-dominion-and-vote

no twt vid

Fox News propagandists continue to push fever-swamp fantasies that voting machines switched a large number of votes from President Donald Trump to President-elect Joe Biden, even after election security officials conclusively determined that was not the case, and Trump is amplifying those wildly irresponsible claims to falsely assert that he won the election.

With his reelection hopes thwarted at the ballot box, Trump is trying to steal the election if he can and delegitimize it if he can’t, with the help of his sycophants at Fox and Republican leaders.

Those despicable and dangerous efforts originally revolved around baseless allegations of voter fraud committed through mail-in ballots. But as those claims have been shot down in court, Trump and his right-wing media allies have pushed increasingly deranged conspiracy theories about computer systems changing votes to benefit Biden. They have focused in particular on Dominion Voter Systems, which makes software used in voting machines in localities around the country, including some in Georgia and Michigan.

This campaign against the democratic system will not change the results of the election, but it has already resulted in a majority of Republicans believing the election was stolen from Trump.

On Thursday, Trump, who has spent the days since the election watching cable news coverage and ranting on Twitter, live-tweeted a segment from the far-right network One America News that claimed that “DOMINION DELETED 2.7 MILLION TRUMP VOTES NATIONWIDE.”

This claim is crazy, false, and apparently based on the “analysis” of an anonymous poster at a pro-Trump message board whose findings were credulously parroted by the Gateway Pundit conspiracy theory blog.

Trump’s tweet apparently spurred a response from Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council Executive Committee and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council, who said in a joint statement released by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency that “the November 3rd election was the most secure in American history” and that “there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.” The signatories include top U.S. cybersecurity officials, state and local elections administrators, and voting machine industry representatives.

Even Fox’s “news” side pointed out that Trump’s claim was baseless. Network correspondent Eric Shawn reported on “the president's attacks on Dominion voting machines” during a Thursday night Special Report package, explaining that experts, including cybersecurity officials at DHS, say that what Trump claimed had not happened. He described Trump’s comments as “disinformation.”

But Fox Business host Lou Dobbs has never allowed facts to get in the way of his adulation for the president and his willingness to champion Trump’s lies. “President Trump is zeroing in on Dominion voting machines," he said, shortly before the CISA statement went out on Thursday evening. “Dominion voting systems used in 28 states across the country including battleground states Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.”

After highlighting purported flaws with the Dominion machines identified by Texas elections officials, he asked Trump lawyerRudy Giuliani, “How important do you believe the concerns that are being expressed in a number of states about the ability of these machines not to be hacked?” Giuliani replied, “First of all, the machines can be hacked. There's no question about that. Their machines can be hacked.” He added that Dominion was “founded as a company to fix elections. They have a terrible record and they are extremely hackable.”

Giuliani went on to claim that he had identified hundreds of thousands of “illegal votes” in Pennsylvania and Michigan that will “overturn the vote” in those states (this will not happen). He concluded, “This was a stolen election.”

Fox prime-time star and Trump operative Sean Hannity also the Dominion conspiracy theory, a few hours after federal, state, and local officials and his own network had debunked it. After describing purported flaws with Dominion systems, Hannity referred to a 2017 congressional hearing about cybersecurity of voting machines, airing a comment from an expert about “how you hack a voting machine to cheat” using a “vote stealing program” that, if installed, “could steal elections without detection for years to come.”

“Now, am I saying tonight this happened with Dominion in this cycle?” Hannity asked after airing that comment. “No. How would I possibly know?” But without further review, he claimed, “there's good reason to not have confidence or not to believe this is fair."

[vid]

trump cheered the Fox segments for pushing a conspiracy theory that had been debunked by his own government’s cybersecurity experts.

“Must see @seanhannity takedown of the horrible, inaccurate and anything but secure Dominion Voting System which is used in States where tens of thousands of votes were stolen from us and given to Biden,” he tweeted shortly after Hannity’s segment. “Likewise, the Great @LouDobbs has a confirming and powerful piece!”

Sharing video from Hannity’s segment on Twitter, Trump commented, “These states in question should immediately be put in the Trump Win column. Biden did not win, he lost by a lot!”

By the next morning, the conspiracy theory had made it to Fox & Friends, with George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley falsely claiming that Dominion voting systems switched “thousands” of Michigan votes --only to be shot down by Steve Doocy of all people, who pointed out that “the software did not affect the vote counts.”

The Trump-Fox feedback loop is powering increasingly unhinged attacks on American democracy. And the longer it goes on, the clearer it becomes that the Murdochs and other network executives either have no control over their hosts, or want them to do exactly what they’re doing.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trump-says-he-didnt-approve-of-border-wall-project-but-these-key-players-bragged-of-his-approval

After Steve Bannon’s arrest on Thursday, Donald Trump tried to put a Grand Canyon-sized gap between himself and the “We Build The Wall” border scheme. Bannon, Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato, and Timothy Shea were indicted on counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The federal indictment says the crew pilfered “hundreds of thousands of dollars” and a Bannon-controlled nonprofit received more than $1 million in funds.

The federal government is seeking to take possession of the fraudulently purchased items, like the flashy boat Kolfage purchased and used in recent “Trumptilla” boat parades. Incredibly enough, Bannon and Kolfage recorded a video promoting their scam fund and folks, you are not going to believe this—Bannon actually jokes they are filming in Saint-Tropez in southern France before adding: “We are on the million dollar yacht of Brian Kolfage. Brian Kolfage, he took all that money from Build The Wall.” Kolfage then lets out an awkward laugh. Watch them joke about the fraud below. You cannot make this up.

[twt mma] after you collect yourself, watch the video below this because it just keeps getting better. First up, let’s revisit Trump’s statement trying to put daylight between himself and the We Build The Wall project. He repeatedly says he “didn’t like it” and thought it was “showboating and maybe looking for funds.” In a stumbling response, he repeatedly said he never approved of the project and Bannon aside, that he didn’t know anyone involved. As you’ll see below, most of the folks involved in the project said otherwise.

Let’s listen to former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who has been described as a “racist traveling con man” because of his history of helping cities enact racist laws and then billing them to represent them in court cases they inevitably lose.

[vid: t i feel bad about bannon charges]

kobach is legal counsel for We Build The Wall, because of course he is, and he recorded an “interview” with Jennifer Lawrence, who is also listed on the We Build The Wall website as the communications director for the organization. Listen to Kobach describe his conversation with Donald Trump and brag that Trump said: “I want the media to know this project has my blessing.”

It should be noted that just before Bannon’s arrest on Thursday morning byfederal postal inspectors on a yacht off the coast of Connecticut, federal investigators were also serving a warrant on Lawrence and another associate, Dustin Stockton. The pair told CNN that “heavily armed federal agents” served the warrant and confiscated their cell phones.

No doubt, Kobach must be sweating. Going after lower-level employees is a sure sign they’re angling for bigger fish. And while Kobach bragged about Trump’s full-throated approval, he wasn’t alone. Lexi Churchill of ProPublica found other examples claiming Trump’s full endorsement. Amanda Shea, wife of the recently indicted Timothy Shea, shared a photo of the crew with Donald Trump in August 2019, with a caption saying: “A summer of winning came to a high note in the Hamptons. I had the absolute pleasure and honor of spending time with President Trump who had a lot of questions about the wall We The People built through We Build The Wall. He was impressed, but more importantly, incredibly personable and easy to talk to. I forgot that I was speaking with one of the most powerful men in the world.”

Shea also touted the meeting on Twitter.

Churchill also found an interview Kolfage did with The Gateway Pundit in which Kolfage bragged of Trump’s support, saying: “President Trump loves what we are doing.”

And wherever a right-wing grift exists, you knowJunior isn’t far behind. Of course he promoted the wall and congratulated Kolfage on “[t]his is private enterprise at its finest. Doing it better, faster, cheaper than anything else. What you guys are doing is amazing.”

Trump’s Acting Homeland Security Director Chad Wolf, who a federal court ruled is illegally serving in the role, called the group’s work a “game changer” and said he “welcomed” their efforts.

So it would seem this is another in a long list of lies from Donald Trump. He welcomed this group’s efforts right up until ProPublica reported on the shoddy construction of the privately built wall, which was in danger of falling over. Nevertheless, the contractor, Fisher Industries, was awarded a massive government contract to build Trump’s wall and Trump reportedly “personally and repeatedly” intervened to make sure Fisher was awarded the project.

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https://theintercept.com/2020/08/15/white-house-plants-pro-trump-conspiracy-theorists-among-reporters-briefing-room/

IN AN APPARENT effort to make his daily news conferences even more like campaign events than they already are, the White House press office has been packing the briefing room with supporters of President Donald Trump from far-right media outlets who can be relied on to toss him softball questions and initiate attacks on his political rivals.

Clearly in on the plot, Trump solicited a question each day this week from one of the guests invited by his press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, to stand at the back of the room — where representatives of One America News, The Epoch Times and Gateway Pundit compromised the health of reporters by violating social distancing and mask-wearing guidelines.

On Monday, Trump called on Chanel Rion, a far-right Republican operative and conspiracy theorist now working as a correspondent for One America News,a San Diego cable channel dedicated to spreading lies about Joe Biden and elderly protesters battered by the police.

Rion gave Trump the opportunity to unleash a familiar riff from his pre-pandemic rallies by suggesting to him that Biden might have been considering President Barack Obama’s former national security adviser, Susan Rice, as his running mate because, “she can best cover up a lot of the Obamagate surveillance crimes that have taken place during your campaign.” Trump responded by accusing Obama and Biden of “probably treason.”

The next day, Rion triggered another familiar Trump diatribe by asking for his take on the resignation of Carmen Best, the first Black woman to lead Seattle’s police force, after the city council voted to cut her department’s budget. “What does this say about our country?” Rion asked Trump. “And what does this say about the Defund Police movement?” The president replied by repeating the lie that Seattle’s Democratic mayor had let “a radical left group, Antifa and others, take over a big portion of the city.”

On Wednesday, Rion drew Trump’s attention to what looked like a fairly lame conservative prank — the fact that the obscure website antifa.com was suddenly redirecting traffic to Biden’s campaign site. Suggesting that this stunt might somehow indicate support for Biden from the loose network of antifascist groups Trump has falsely portrayed as a shadow army, Rion asked if the president thought Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, should “publicly denounce the Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization?”

[twt]

They should,” Trump replied. “I think they’re afraid to. In my book, it’s virtually a part of their campaign: Antifa.” There was nothing remotely surprising in Trump making the absurd argument that Biden, a centrist Democrat, is secretly part of an antifascist subculture, but Rion’s play-acting as a White House correspondent is not intended to elicit any new information from the president. The point of these exchanges is to shield Trump from what tough questions about his failure to lead a coordinated federal response to the Covid-19 pandemic and to give him an opportunity to repeat lines he has already rehearsed, delivered as if they were answers to questions of vital importance.

Rion, who has been attending briefings as a guest of the White House press secretary since April, previously traveled to Ukraine with the president’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to promote false accusations about Biden spread by the pro-Russian lawmaker Andriy Derkach. An American intelligence assessment released last week concluded that Derkach was involved in a Russian plot to undermine Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party by “spreading claims about corruption — including through publicizing leaked phone calls” from 2016 between the former vice president and Ukraine’s president.

On Thursday, shortly after Trump praised the crackpot legal scholar who invented a racist conspiracy theory that Harris was not eligible to be vice president, even though she was born to immigrant parents in Oakland, he turned again to Rion. This time, however, she asked if he would, instead, take a question from Emel Akan of The Epoch Times, another of his press secretary’s guests from an equally rabid pro-Trump media outlet.

When Trump agreed, Akan asked him how the U.S. would respond to “the recent attack on press freedom in Hong Kong,” specifically the arrest of the publisher of the popular Apple Daily tabloid news site, Jimmy Lai, who has been an outspoken critic of the pro-Beijing leadership in the semiautonomous Chinese city. Lai could be charged with “collusion” with the United States for meeting Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Washington last summer to discuss Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protest movement.

Although Trump began by saying, “Well, I think it’s a terrible thing,” he appeared to have little familiarity or interest in the subject of press freedom, or democracy in Hong Kong, pivoting quickly into his stock complaints about China’s trade policies. He even seemed to gloat a bit when he said that, as a result of the U.S. withdrawing the “tremendous financial incentives” for businesses based in Hong Kong, American companies might profit from the crackdown on the territory.

“We’ve now withdrawn all of those incentives. It’s going to be very hard for Hong Kong to compete,” Trump said. “And I will tell you that the United States… will end up making a lot more money because of it, because we lost a lot of business to Hong Kong,” he added. “We made it very convenient for people to go there, for companies to go there. We’ve withdrawn all of that and the United States will be a big beneficiary from an economic standpoint.”

While Trump’s answer was not the kind of stirring endorsement of press freedom Akan might have expected from an American president, inciting an attack on China’s government was probably gratifying to the owners of The Epoch Times. The paper is owned by members of the dissident Chinese Falun Gong spiritual movement who have spent heavily to promote Trump as a useful battering ram against their ultimate enemy: the Chinese Communist Party that considers the banned sect a cult. An Epoch Times echoes Trump’s rhetoric that China is to blame for the global pandemic, but urges people to call it not “the China Virus,” as Trump does, but the “CCP Virus.”

The White House press secretary’s invitation to the Epoch Times writer to participate in the briefing alongside reporters and photographers from some of America’s leading news organizations is remarkably brazen given that last year, when The Epoch Times was outside of the president’s own campaign, the site spent heavily to promote the baseless conspiracy theory that Biden had abused his power as vice president in 2016 to protect his son’s business interests in Ukraine.

Since then, the site has been banned from advertising on Facebook, after NBC reported that the newspaper had secretly placed Facebook ads promoting President Trump.Last week, Facebook also removed 303 fake accounts linked to The Epoch Times for spreading misinformation about Covid-19 and pro-Trump conspiracy theories about supposedly shadowy figures behind the ongoing racial justice protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

On Friday, after Trump twice refused to answer a question from The Associated Press about whether he believes the QAnon conspiracy theory in which he is a central figure,he from Alicia Powe, who writes for the far-right Gateway Pundit blog.

Powe, who has claimed that the Clinton Foundation controls the FBI and is stifling investigations of child sex-trafficking rings and the murder of Seth Rich, asked Trump to comment on the accusation that Biden had claimed credit for the normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

[vid]

powe’s question was based on a blog post by the founder of Gateway Pundit, Jim Hoft, which amplified an attack on Biden from the Kremlin-owned site Russia Today. Hoft’s post also quotes the analysis of Heshmat Alavi, a supporter of a militant Iranian cult called the Mojahedin-e-Khalq, who, as my colleague Murtaza Hussain revealed last year, is a fictional character.

McEnany did not respond to a question about whether she or someone else in her office invited Powe to the briefing on Friday, but Powe is a former blogger for WorldNetDaily, the far-right website that helped create the racist “birther” conspiracy theory to undermine President Barack Obama. Alyssa Farah, the White House director of strategic communications, is the daughter of Joseph Farah, who founded WorldNetDaily. In the 1990s, Joseph Farah was a leading proponent of the conspiracy theory that deputy White House counsel Vince Foster might have been murdered.

The presence of Rion, Akan and Powe also infuriated the White House Correspondents Association, whose members have agreed to send only 14 reporters a day during the pandemic, to maintain safe social distance.

The WHCA, which normally decides which accredited journalists are allowed in to the briefing room on a given day, also wants the aisles at the sides and the back of the room to be open for photographers and video crews to operate safely. “It is outrageous that the White House continues to invite ‘guests’ to press briefings, putting the health and safety of everyone in that workspace at greater risk,” the WHCA president, Zeke Miller, said in an email. “The WHCA’s social distancing guidelines were crafted in consultation with the White House based on the recommendations of the CDC and the nation’s leading public health professionals. Trampling on those guidelines endangers the critical work of reporters who have maintained independent press coverage of the presidency throughout the pandemic.”

Until April, OAN was a member of the correspondents’ association but the cable channel was expelled after Rion kept showing up at briefings when it was not her turn. Since then, she has attended press events as a guest of the White House press secretary.

Unlike the original, freewheeling coronavirus task force briefings — which came to a sudden halt in April when Trump mused that doctors should “check” to see if injecting patients suffering from Covid-19 with bleach or isopropyl alcohol, or exposing them to ultraviolet light, might cure them — the president’s current news conferences are much shorter and seem designed mainly to get his lengthy, written opening statements on the air and get him out of the briefing room after taking just a handful of questions.

Trump’s opening statements at the latest briefings are often nakedly political in nature, featuring crude, jarring attacks on Biden and other Democrats. “Today, we saw Joe Biden continue to politicize a pandemic and to show his appalling lack of respect for the American people. That’s what it is,” Trump said at the start of Thursday’s briefing. “At every turn, Biden has been wrong about the virus, ignoring the scientific evidence and putting left-wing politics before facts and evidence.”

After then blatantly lying about Biden’s suggested response to the pandemic in the most idiotic terms — “Sleepy Joe rejects the scientific approach in favor of locking all Americans in their basements for months on end” — Trump concluded, with a stunning lack of self-awareness: “To Joe, I would say: Stop playing politics with a virus. Too serious. Partisan politics has no place here. It’s a shameful situation for anybody to try and score political points while we’re working to save lives and defeat the pandemic.”

Trump’s prepared remarks at these briefings almost always feature highly misleading health and economic statistics intended to convey the false impression that the federal government’s pandemic response is the envy of the world.

At Tuesday’s briefing, for example, Trump said in his opening statement: “Since the end of July, the seven-day average for cases in the United States has fallen by nearly 20 percent, but the virus continues to increase in nations across the globe. Last week, France and Germany both recorded their highest daily number of new cases in three months — not that I want to bring that up, but might as well explain it to the media.” While those statistical measures of the increase by percentage of new cases in Europe and decrease by percentage in the U.S. were accurate, what they hid was the fact that, in raw numbers, the pandemic is obviously far less under control here than there.[shillenberger pat m cherrypick]

The day Trump made those remarks, 53,315 new Covid-19 infections were confirmed by testing in the U.S. Germany’s highest number of daily infections in three months, recorded this week, was 1,445. Cases are down more in the U.S. but from a very high level to a slightly less high level. In much of Europe, cases are rising but from very low baseline. Adjusted for population, the U.S. recorded 154 new cases per million on Friday, while France had 41 and Germany 17.[graf]

While the pandemic is resurgent in many parts of the world, Trump has been unable so far to brow-beat the public into accepting his obviously false claims that things are better in the United States than in Europe or Asia. A new poll released by Monmouth University on Thursday showed that 52 percent of Americans “think the United States’ handling of the pandemic is worse than other countries,” while just 15 percent feel the U.S. is doing a better job than others and 29 percent say it is doing about the same.

Having complained on Wednesday about what he called “a wiseguy question” from a reporter who noted that two top Federal Reserve officials “said that the economy hasn’t recovered strong enough because the country hasn’t contained the virus,” Trump devoted part of his opening remarks at Thursday’s briefing to falsely complaining that Biden, who, “never takes questions.”

“I take questions; he never takes questions,” Trump continued. “And you sort of wonder what’s going on, because they’re not that difficult. Some can be nasty, but they’re not that difficult.”

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islamophobe escalator:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/ssrc-cdn1/crmuploads/new_publication_3/islamophobia-2018-midterms-ssrc.pdf

...Categories of tweets tagging Rashida Tlaib 13. PJ Media #ISLAMOPHOBIA / 19 nomination for state legislature. The article was based on an anonymous comment on a forum for the Somali diaspora, Somalispot.com.59 The post claimed, without providing evidence, that Omar’s previous husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, was actually her brother. Five days later, AlphanewsMN.com, a fringe website in Minnesota, ran a story claiming, “New Evidence Confirms Rumors About DFL Candidate’s Marriages.” Omar has repeatedly denied the allegation and has never been charged, though she has avoided addressing certain inconsistencies.60 The largest local newspaper, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, did not give credence to the claims at the time.61 Despite the fringe media allegations, the story remained unproven and essentially faded away until it was revived during the 2018 primary by PJ Media (Figure 13), a conservative news site that attracts an average of fifteen million unique readers per month62 and is rated by Media Bias/Fact Check as “right-wing” and “borderline ‘Questionable’ based on numerous failed fact checks.”63

On August 8, six days before the primary vote, PJ Media posted this story: OMAR’S MEDIA AND PARTY SUPPORTERS HAVE BEEN AGGRESSIVELY UNINTERESTED IN A DISTURBING ALLEGATION ABOUT OMAR WITH LEGAL RAMIFICATIONS: THAT IN 2009, SHE SEEMS TO HAVE MARRIED HER BROTHER. THAT ALLEGATION HAS BEEN PUBLIC FOR NEARLY TWO YEARS WITHOUT OMAR ADDRESSING ITS SPECIFIC FOUNDATIONS. NEWLY UNCOVERED EVIDENCE—EXCLUSIVELY PUBLISHED BELOW—ADDS ANOTHER ALLEGATION: ILHAN OMAR HAS SINCE SIGNED OFF ON APPARENT FALSEHOODS, UNDER PENALTY OF PERJURY, DURING HER 2017 DIVORCE FROM THE MAN IN QUESTION: AHMED NUR SAID ELMI.64 The story included copies of divorce documents and screengrabs of pictures on social media, but none of the “evidence” proved Omar’s first husband was her brother. Nevertheless, the allegation had been rereleased into the echo chamber. The same day, Robert Spencer, cofounder of Stop Islamization of America,65 reposted the story on his Jihadwatch.org website, which is dedicated to tracking the “current state of radical jihad theology and ideology.”66 Daniel Pipes’s Middle East Forum, which the Center for American Progress puts “at the center of the Islamophobia network,”67 also posted an excerpt of, and link to, the PJ Media story on its Islamist Watch website.68 Two days later, on August 10, Gateway Pundit, an extreme right-wing website,69 ran a headline, “Democratic Congressional Candidate from Minnesota Divorces Her Brother,” 70 which cut and pasted from the original 2016 Powerline story.

The uncorroborated story was given another boost on August 12 when media provocateur Laura Loomercrashed a joint event between Omar and Rashida Tlaib (see Appendix 2: Queen of the Trolls).71 “VIDEO: Laura Loomer Confronts Democrat Muslim Candidate on Why She Married Her Brother—Is KICKED OFF FACEBOOK after Posting the VIDEO,” Gateway Pundit reported.72 On August 16,Gateway Pundit published news that Loomer was suing Tlaib for assault allegedly committed during the confrontation, and reprinted most of the previous story.73

A week later, American thinker.com mentioned the allegation in an article on Muslims running for office nationally.74 14. Married her brother 20 / #ISLAMOPHOBIA On October 23, two weeks before the midterm election, PJ Media revived the story yet again with “exclusive new evidence” that consisted of high school records of a man by the same name as Omar’s ex-husband. The new allegations were quickly picked up by WMD.com, which reposted the first few paragraphs of the PJ Media story and then linked to the piece.75 The story set off a social media frenzy (Figure 14). A tweet linking back to the article and demanding that she be “thrown in jail or deported” was retweeted more than 5,000 times.

A Laura Loomer tweet asking, “@IlhanMN why did you marry your brother?”was retweeted 890 times over the next three days. In fact, a keyword search of the 90,000 tweets tagging @IlhanMN in the eight weeks before the election found that (after “Minnesota” and “Congress”) three of the top six words in tweets tagging Omar involved terms associated with the alleged marriage (Figure 15). The word “brother” and the terms “marry/married” appeared in more tweets—almost 16,000—than any others, followed closely by “fraud.” The way in which innuendo was a hallmark of alt-right media coverage of the allegations was reflected in an October 27 article on AlphanewsMN.com, one of the two sites that originally published the story. Under the headline “Did City Pages Expose Evidence of Ilhan Omar’s Marriage Controversy?” writer Preya Samsundar reported:

[CITY PAGES] WROTE THAT ILHAN OMAR’S FATHER IS NAMED “NUR SAID ELMI MOHAMED”. A DAY LATER, [THE] ARTICLE WAS CHANGED AND NOW OMAR’S FATHER’S NAME APPEARS IN THE ARTICLE AS “NUR OMAR MOHAMED”. WHY THE SUDDEN CHANGE? IT COULD VERY WELL BE THAT BY ADMITTING THAT ILHAN OMAR’S FATHER’S NAME IS NUR SAID ELMI MOHAMED, IT VALIDATES THE INFORMATION DISCOVERED EARLIER BY ALPHA NEWS THAT ILHAN OMAR MARRIED HER BROTHER AND COMMITTED IMMIGRATION FRAUD… THE ORIGINAL NAME USED BY CITY PAGES TO IDENTIFY ILHAN OMAR’S FATHER LENDS CREDENCE TO THE FRATERNAL STATUS OF AHMED NUR AID ELMI UNDER SOMALI NAMING CONVENTIONS. THE CHANGE WOULD ALSO REMOVE ANY SUSPICION FROM THE READER THAT OMAR MARRIED A MAN WITH AN ALMOST IDENTICAL NAME OF HER FATHER.76

But the story did not rest there. It was resurrected by another right-wing media outlet, and given credibility by Donald Trump in July 2019, the same week Trump posted a series of racist tweets about Omar. As he departed for a campaign rally at which he would again denounce Omar, prompting the crowd to break into chants of “Send her back,”77 Emerald Robinson, a reporter for the hard-right One America News Network, asked if the administration was looking into “possible immigration fraud committed by Ilhan Omar for possibly marrying her brother.”78 Trump’s response: “Well, there’s a lot of talk about the fact that she was married to her brother. I know nothing about it. I hear she was married to her brother. You’re asking me a question about it. I don’t know, but I’m sure there’s somebody who will be looking at that.” 15. Ilhan Omar network top keywords #ISLAMOPHOBIA / 21

With that, the story had been released back into the social media echo chamber with new imprimatur of credibility for those who wanted to believe it.

5.3.2 Case Study: FGM A similar twisting of facts by online outlets led to a false allegation about Omar that formed the basis of another Twitter narrative: that she supports female genital mutilation (FGM). Omar’s native Somalia has one of the highest rates of FGM in the world.79 Despite Omar’s opposition to the procedure, its high prevalence in Somalia has made the issue a potent vector for innuendo. “In 2017, Omar rejected Muslim reform-driven efforts against gender discrimination and female genital mutilation (FGM),” the website for the Clarion Project reported in August 2018.80 The group describes itself as “a non-profit organization that educates the public about the dangers of radical Islam,”81 though it is designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-Muslim hate group. This October 17 post by Laura Loomer,an influential anti-Muslim troll,

...

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breakout dem debate v biden on bussing so

https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/right-wing-site-launches-birther-styler-conspiracy-theory-about-kamala-harris-but-cnn-quickly-debunks-it/

Harris gave a showstopping performance Thursday night at the second Democratic debate, making her a prime target for criticism.And as a viral post from the far-right site Gateway Pundit showed, we can expect conservative media to generate more racist conspiracy theories about her, just like it did when Barack Obama rose to prominence.

CNN’s Daniel Dale, the most rigorous fact checker of the president, debunked the conspiracy theory, which will hopefully stop it in its tracks before it gets started. So here’s what we know is true about the facts in question:

Harris was a part of the second class of integrated public elementary schools in Berkeley, California, in 1969
While the elementary schools had been segregated before 1968, the high school in the city was not
The segregation was not formally entrenched in law, but like much of the era’s racial discrimination, it was de facto segregation

Harris brought up her history of being part of early integration efforts in criticizing Joe Biden’s past positions on the issue and his comments about segregationists. It was the most powerful moment in Thursday’s debate.

The viral Gateway Pundit post, which I won’t link to, contested this history. It falsely said she “lied” and that the schools were integrated before she was born. But the evidence for this theory was a picture from the high school yearbook in 1963, which showed both black and white students listed together. As the facts listed above show, though, this is consistent with Harris’ account (which officials confirmed to Dale). She was part of the second integrated class at her elementary school, which had been segregated, even while the sole high school in the city was integrated.

It’s not clear if Gateway Pundit will issue a correction, or if it will just go on attacking Harris baselessly. But as we saw with the birther lie about President Barack Obama, racist smears against Democratic candidates can persist in the right-wing media world without any basis in fact. Indeed, you can spout this nonsense and still become president.

---

rww

818

an apparent response to a report by Right Wing Watch, Jim Hoft, founder of the right-wing blog Gateway Pundit, publicly announced this weekend that the site’s former White House reporter, Lucian Wintrich, had quietly left the site “several weeks ago.”

Last week, Right Wing Watch reported that Wintrich told us he was on paid leave from Gateway Pundit when we noted him engaging in a conversation promoting scientific racism with white nationalist podcast host Nicholas Fuentes. Although Hoft claims that Wintrich had left the site weeks ago, during the podcast, which first aired on August 7, Wintrich still claimed he was employed at the site and was introduced as “New York City bureau chief from the Gateway Pundit.” Hoft never responded to our emails.

https://www.alternet.org/can-lawsuits-slow-tide-right-wing-conspiracy-theory-seth-richs-family-wants-find-out

amanda m

In the era of Donald Trump, conspiracy theories aren't just getting more prominent and more numerous. They're also becoming more personal. One of the hallmarks of the modern era of social media-fueled, right-wing paranoia is the increasing tendency of conspiracy theorists to target not just politicians and celebrities for their lurid myth-making. Now such concoctions may affect the lives of ordinary people who, in the past, would likely have not had a high enough profile to attract this kind of obsessive rumor-mongering.

Now the targets are turning to the courts to fight back.The parents of the Sandy Hook massacre victims are suing Infowars founder Alex Jones for spreading conspiracy theories alleging that they faked their children's deaths. (Perhaps in an effort to shield himself, Jones has backed away from such theories and now says he believes the killings actually happened.)

Brennan Gilmore, a Virginia activist who happened to film the attack that killed Heather Heyer at the Charlottesville protests last summer, is also suing Jones and a blogger behind Gateway Pundit for conspiracy theories meant to discredit him. And the family members of Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee staffer murdered in July 2016, in what police say was a botched robbery, are suing Fox News and others for stoking conspiracy theories that Rich, rather than Russian agents, may have been behind the hack of Democratic emails given to WikiLeaks -- and was murdered in retaliation.

Now the circle of litigants has opened up further, as Brad Bauman, a public relations expert who has volunteered as the Rich family's spokesperson, is also suing a series of conservative figures for defamation, alleging that they have spread conspiracy theories accusing him of covering up for a nefarious Democratic Party plot.

Bauman's case is of particular interest to me, because it illustrates the way Trump-era conspiracy theories metastasize, growing ever more complicated and strange as conspiracy theorists attempt to integrate conflicting evidence into their overarching theory — and how, in the process, the number of people who become targets for harassment and abuse can grow.

“Having watched what Brad went through," Melissa Ryan, a progressive activist and friend of Bauman's, said to Salon, "it gave me a new understanding for the kind of hell that conspiracy theories can wreak on a person’s life that I wouldn’t have understood otherwise.”

Bauman was unable, for legal reasons, to speak to Salon. But his legal complaint lays out a (relatively) simple story: As the conspiracy theories around Rich's murder started to grow louder, friends and colleagues of Rich asked Bauman to help the family, which he says he did on a volunteer basis for no payment. Soon, the right-wing rumor mill began to focus on Bauman, and accusations began to fly that he was an agent working for the DNC to help cover up Rich's murder. Bauman's suit says he was then doxxed by internet trolls (meaning that his home address and other private information was revealed) and that articles on right wing websites and social media accusing him of engaging in a cover-up have caused him emotional distress and damaged his business.

I reached out to Ed Butowsky,a financial adviser who lives in Texas and is one of the defendants in Bauman's lawsuit. Butowsky has been active on right wing sites like Gateway Pundit and WorldNetDaily in pushing the idea that Bauman was somehow "assigned" by the DNC to the Rich family. (Bauman denies this and says, in his suit, that he has never worked for the DNC.)

“It’s a nuisance lawsuit. There’s absolutely nothing behind it," Butowsky insisted, having called me back at 7:38 a.m. after a day of phone tag. "I still don’t understand this, nor many of these other lawsuits against me.”The conversation was a maddening glimpse into the rhetorical spiderwebs that form around conspiracy theories.

Butowsky is being sued not just by Bauman, but by the Rich family for allegedly ingratiating himself with them under false pretenses, in order to promote his conspiracy theory about their son. Butowsky hired a private detective, claiming he was acting on the family's behalf, but allegedly used that detective instead to push insinuations, on Fox News and other outlets, that Rich was murdered as part of a Democratic conspiracy.

Our brief conversation — under 15 minutes — was whiplash-inducing. At one point, Butowsky told me, “Fly down to Dallas. I’ll give you your Ph.D. in the Seth Rich story."

But when I followed up by asking him why he's so interested in Rich's death, he got miffed: “I don’t have a huge interest in this story.”

I noted that all these lawsuits came after Butowsky -- as he admitted in a 45-minute interview published on Gateway Pundit -- reached out to the Rich family and hired a detective to look into the case. All of which, I suggested, constituted a reasonable definition of someone "interested" in this story. Then how could he claim, I asked, to give someone a Ph.D. on a topic he claimed to have little interest in? "Because I’ve been sued by everybody," Butowsky said.

At that point, Butowsky became agitated, and insisted that instead of asking him any further questions myself, I watch the 45-minute interview at Gateway Pundit. Then he got off the phone.

That interview at Gateway Pundit is a confusing mess of digressions, self-pity and elaborate, complex insinuations that are largely impenetrable to outsiders to the Seth Rich conspiracy-theory crowd. The crux of it, as someone who had to watch it for professional reasons, is that Butowsky would like viewers to believe he was a disinterested party who, for somewhat mysterious but totally innocent reasons, ended up spending huge amounts of time ingratiating himself to this family and thousands of dollars on a private detective to look into an internet conspiracy theory.

This itself provides a major insight into how these conspiracy theories work in the age of the internet. The dense complexity, the crushing amount of content that no human being has the time to thoroughly consume, the use of insinuations to push noxious ideas while retaining plausible deniability: All this serves to disorient people such that they give up even trying to understand the truth of the situation.

“They’re undermining the ability of the average American to discern what is true, what is false, what to believe and what not to believe," Bauman said on a press call in September, regarding what he's learned from being caught up in this.

"Even if you’re not actively sharing conspiracy theories, you’re sort of exposed to it," Ryan argued, saying this leads to "the dehumanization" of the figures involved, even for right-wing audiences who don't necessarily follow or believe all the ins and outs of whatever conspiracy theory is burning up conservative media at the moment.

For instance, Ryan continued, many right-wing figures at first "weren’t comfortable sharing conspiracies about the Parkland students, calling them crisis actors." But after a month of such content swirling around the internet, the students started to seem less human, and ordinary people who consumed right-wing media became "very comfortable sharing doctored images of the students that weren’t true.”

During September's press call, Bauman attested to the power of humanization, noting that after trolls had made his phone number public, he decided to just start taking the calls when conspiracy theorists rang him. He said that most of them, after a person-to-person conversation, had dialed down their outrage and paranoia, which made him feel it's possible to "bring people back to a place where they’re thinking much more clearly about things."

Unfortunately, however, getting every conspiracy theorist on the phone to hammer it out is a task more onerous than watching every conspiracy theorist's lengthy YouTube video. Which is why these theories are now being brought to court, not just to correct false or damaging assertions, but to exact real-life consequences on people who spread them. In their suit against Fox News and Butowsky, the Riches explicitly state that they "seek to help prevent similar malicious and reckless conduct to protect future innocent victims from similarly becoming political fodder."

Whether that will work remains to be seen. In the meantime, the ecosystem supporting all these conspiracy theories, which all too often target ordinary private citizens, continues to expand through social media, blogs and internet forums. Far more must be done to protect people who, often through no fault of their own, become enmeshed in major news stories that make them into leading targets of conspiracy theorists.

https://www.alternet.org/legal-scholar-explains-how-sandy-hook-parents-can-achieve-justice-against-conspiracy-theorist-alex

tried to debunk wapo on moore, cf okeefe epic fail

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https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2017/01/25/22-times-jim-hoft-and-gateway-pundit-were-absurdly-wrong/215106

The Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft said the Trump administration has promised that the site will “have a White House correspondent this year.” Hoft's website is one of the worst purveyors of false information on the internet, having repeatedly fallen for fake stories, published numerous articles with factual inaccuracies (later pulling some, but leaving others uncorrected), and pushed fact-free conspiracy theories about a wide range of topics including President Obama’s birthplace.

BACKGROUND:

The Gateway Pundit’s Hoft Says Site Will Have White House Correspondent

Trump Heavily Promotes Gateway Pundit

Trump Is Favoring Propagandists For WH Press Access

Media Have Frequently Criticized Gateway Pundit For Errors

22 TIMES JIM HOFT AND THE GATEWAY PUNDIT WERE ABSURDLY WRONG:

Gateway Pundit Attacked Wrong Asian Woman For “Sneaking Photos” At Hearing

Gateway Pundit Claimed Picture Of Cleveland's NBA Title Parade Was Trump Rally

Gateway Pundit Pushed Fake Story About Bus Of Paid Protesters

Gateway Pundit Fell For Hoax About Paid Protest Group

Gateway Pundit Falsely Claimed John Podesta Said “It’s OK For Illegals To Vote With Driver’s License”

Gateway Pundit Posted -- Then Removed -- Article Claiming Clinton Campaign Manager Deleted Tweets Because Of FBI Announcement

Gateway Pundit Falsely Claimed Obama Made Confederate Flag Pin In 2012

Gateway Pundit Falsely Claimed CNN Lightened Photo Of Fort Lauderdale Shooter

Gateway Pundit Fell For Fake Photo Of Oregon Shooter

Gateway Pundit Claimed “Tests Show" Obama’s Birth Certificate Is “A Forgery”

Gateway Pundit Fell For Parody Article About Obama Birth Certificate

Gateway Pundit Falsely Claimed Michelle Obama Deleted Hillary Tweets

Gateway Pundit Fell For Twitter Joke About Postal Voter Fraud

Gateway Pundit Suggested Hillary Clinton Had “A Seizure On Camera”

Gateway Pundit Fell For Racist Hoax Video About Anti-Trump Vandalism

Gateway Pundit Lie: Trump Would Have Won Popular Vote If Not For “Illegal Vote Tally”

Gateway Pundit Thought Closed Captioning On Jumbotron Was Applause Instructions

Gateway Pundit Falsely Claimed Obama Was Going To "Ban Sport Fishing"

Gateway Pundit Falsely Claimed Obamacare Allows “‘Forced’ Home Inspections”

Gateway Pundit Suggested Obama Was “Photoshopped Into Famous Situation Room Photo” Taken During Bin Laden Raid

Gateway Pundit Fell For Fake Photo Claiming Obama Patted Melania Trump On The Butt

Gateway Pundit Fell For Fake Facebook Page To Claim Mass Shooter Was Obama Fan

Gateway Pundit’s Hoft Says Site Will Have White House Correspondent

Jim Hoft: “We've Got” The Trump Administration’s “Word That The Gateway Pundit Is Going To Have A White House Correspondent.” During a January 19 event, Gateway Pundit editor Jim Hoft announced that the Trump administration promised that his site would have a White House correspondent and Hoft said Lucian Wintrich would fill the position

wintrich, holt

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https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/07/19/Pro-Trump-internet-personalities-throw-tantrums-after-ADL-identifies-their-hateful-rhetori/217316

Pro-Trump internet trolls claimed that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was a "terrorist organization" and compared the group to Nazis after ADL identified some of the biggest online personalities of the “alt-right” and “alt-lite” movements and called them out for spreading hateful rhetoric.

The ADL recently published a list of “alt-right” and “alt-lite” figures, identifying key players in both the white supremacist “alt-right” and the fringe right-wing media landscape of media trolls and smear merchants it inspired, which the ADL called the “alt-lite.” It included internet troll and Infowars contributor Mike Cernovich; smear merchant Jack Posobiec, who once received a temporary White House press pass; disgraced Breitbart provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos; The Gateway Pundit’s Lucian Wintrich; and Rebel Media’s Gavin McInnes, using the “alt-lite” banner to describe their prior affiliation and promotion of “alt-right” figures and ideologies. In a Periscope live stream, Cernovich responded to the list’s publication by urging his followers to spread the hashtag “#ADLTerror” on Twitter. Cernovich also called ADL “a terrorist organization” that had “targeted” him and his family for “murder and assassination” by including his name in the list.

Soon after Cernovich launched the hashtag, other alternative media personalities who were also mentioned in the ADL’s list rallied to attack the organization.Posobiec compared ADL’s members to Nazis and claimed the “death list”was being used to target Trump supporters;Wintrich called the ADL a “liberal terroristorganization” whose “only qualifier” to label people a hate group leader was support for Trump; Yiannopoulos accused the ADL of trying to get pro-Trump media figures like himself “hurt or killed by painting targets on our backs”; McInnes threatened to “sue the living shit out of everyone even remotely involved” with the list if he was attacked following its publication.

Allies and supporters of those on the ADL’s list also joined in on the attack. The Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft accused the ADL of publishing “a murder hit list” and stated that his website would take “further action” against the organization if it did not remove Wintrich’s name. Rebel Media’s Laura Loomer decried the ADL’s decision to publish a “hit list,” asking why the organization is “encouraging violent leftists to attack members of the right.” And “Ali,” a rising star among pro-Trump media personalities, also promoted the hashtag. Fans of these personalities created memes and videos and spread them on social media to show their support.

WhileBuzzFeedtechnology reporter Charlie Warzel pointed out that the ADL didn't necessarily provide full evidence of the actions that earned these trolls a spot on the list, the ADL was right to include them based on their habits of engaging in hateful rhetoric and online harassment. The organization correctly identified them for using their platforms to spread vitriol and honestly documented their efforts to sanitize their movement’s prior affiliation with “alt-right” circles and differentiate itself from white nationalism.

Warzel also correctly noted that these trolls are "more of a media arm than an ideological group of any kind." These individuals do not spread hate in the traditional way that has been the modus operandi of the “alt-right” figures also included in the ADL’s list.Rather than organizing community events and advocating for any specific policies, these figures have built a potent anti-liberal media apparatus that can be -- and often is -- mobilized to harass and smear any chosen target-of-the-day.

Over the past several months, these right-wing media personalities and pro-Trump internet trolls have fueled and engaged in harassment and doxing campaigns against a variety of people. They misquoted pop star Ariana Grande after a terrorist attack at her concert in Manchester, smearing her as “anti-American.” CNN reporter Andrew Kaczynski’s family received dozens of threatening phone calls following an article he wrote about the origin of an anti-CNN meme Trump tweeted. And the internet trolls falsely accused popular online satirist Vic Berger of being a part of an online cohort of pedophiles. They were also key proponents of the “Great Meme War” with CNN, during which social media sites were flooded with high volumes of anti-CNN memes and numerous CNN employees were doxed and harassed.

Though these alternative media figures and internet trolls are now rebranding away from the “alt-right” leaders who once inspired them, they still deserve to be on the ADL list and should remain there until they cease using their platforms to incite harassment and encourage extremist rhetoric.

---

...

The Alt-Right Assault on Susan Rice: A Perfect Case Study of the Pro-Trump Propaganda Machine

By Alex Kaplan [1] / Media Matters [2]

April 6, 2017

For most of the last decade, the flow of misinformation was often easy to track in media, with right-wing media often forcing mainstream outlets to follow the stories and tone they favored. Now, a couple of months into President Donald Trump’s administration, this pattern has changed and new players have entered the ecosystem. Groups that used to be contained to their own bubble have been able to insert themselves into the food chain and been able to spread not just misleading, but patently false information to right-wing outlets and sometimes even in turn to mainstream media. A new dubious allegation regarding Susan Rice, former national security adviser to President Barack Obama, illustrates how this new pattern can spread pro-Trump misinformation and propaganda from fringe sources into mainstream media outlets.

Recently, fake news and the white nationalist “alt-right” movement [3] have become two of the country’s biggest problems in terms of fighting misinformation. Both government officials [4] and websites like Facebook [5] and Google [6] are trying to lessen the harmful impact as websites that share fake news continue to mislead [7] news consumers. And the “alt-right” is growing in prominence thanks in part to President Donald Trump’s choice of Stephen Bannon, the former chairman of “alt-right” website [8] Breitbart News, as his chief strategist. Fringe “alt-right” forums, on sites like Reddit, 4chan, and 8chan, exercise influence by pushing conspiracy theories [9] and leading [10] harassment campaigns [11].

These different groups do not operate in a vacuum. Repeatedly, they have come together to spread and amplify their misinformation and claims. Often, a claim will start on a fringe outlet or forum, and other such sites will amplify the misinformation, then fake news purveyors will push it, and then the claim will jump into more traditional right-wing media before sometimes spreading into mainstream media. Trump aides and other people connected to Trump have even promoted some of those stories, crucially helping them break through at times.

And that brings us to Rice.

On April 2, Mike Cernovich, a self-described [12] member of the “alt-right,” claimed in a post on Medium [13] that the “White House Counsel’s office identified Rice as the person responsible for the unmasking” of Trump officials caught in surveillance of foreign officials “after examining Rice’s document log requests.”The claim then spread among fringe outlets such as The Gateway Pundit [14] -- which said the unmasking “was purely for political purposes” -- and Infowars [15], and spread via posts on 4chan [16] and Reddit [17].

img

As the claim started getting pickup on Twitter [18], Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, promoted [12]Cernovich with a tweet linking to the main page of his Medium blog (the next day, Donald Trump. Jr praised Cernovich [19] for “breaking the #SusanRice story”).

...

e claim was then echoed by Bloomberg’s Eli Lake [20], who added a layer of credibility to the attempted smear, writing that Rice “requested the identities of U.S. persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign.” Meanwhile, multiple fake news purveyors [21] hyped [22]the [23] allegations [24], dubiously claiming that Rice “could be headed to jail” for “absolute treason.”

[imgs]

Lake conceded in his piece, however, that Rice’s requests “were likely within the law.” Legal and national security experts echoed that conclusion [25], saying Rice’s actions weren’t “odd or wrong,” did not indicate “anything improper whatsoever,” and were “within the scope of the job of a national security advisor like Rice.” Lake's caveats did not prevent him from going on both Sean Hannity's radio [26] and Fox News show [27], where the right-wing host described the story as "worse than Watergate."

As the claim spread into the mainstream, some in right-wing media criticized mainstream outlets for not giving the story enough attention [28] or for not presenting it [29] the way they would. Although some [30] mainstream figures have echoed the consensus of experts, others [31] have also suggested [32] that Rice [33] could be guilty of some kind of wrongdoing. Fox News in particular insisted that something must be improper if not illegal about Rice's actions, and in their scramble to claim they may have had the story before Cernovich, likely outed themselves [34]as another outlet that the White House used as a puppet for the Rice leak.

Right-wing criticism of mainstream media’s coverage will likely ramp up, spurring some mainstream outlets to defend their coverage or possibly tweak some of their framing under pressure.

This is the new media ecosystem in the Trump era. No longer are these false claims all originating in traditional right-wing media before mainstream outlets give in to pressure to cover them [35]. Now they can start from these fringe pro-Trump propaganda outlets, with right-wing media picking them up. Meanwhile, members of the “alt-right” continue to gain more prominence [36] and acceptance [37] in traditional conservative and conservative media circles. Indeed, radio host Rush Limbaugh, while hyping [38] the Rice story, bragged that mainstream media outlets are “not the arbiters anymore”; whitewashed the original source of the story, Cernovich, as simply a “pro-Trump blogger,” and said CBS’ 60 Minutes “tried to destroy him”; and criticized mainstream outlets for dismissing the story because it was pushed by right-wing media.

This is not the first example of misinformation following such a trajectory. In March, after a federal judge in Hawaii placed a hold on Trump’s revised Muslim ban, fringe “alt-right” outlets such as Infowars and Gateway Pundit pushed a conspiracy theory [9] that appeared to have started on Reddit alleging that Obama conspired with the judge. The claim then spread among [9] fake news [39] purveyors [40] and was pushed by [9] Donald Trump Jr. before breaking through to more traditional conservative media figures and outlets like Hannity [41] and the Independent Journal Review [42]. Later that month, in order to back up Trump’s false claim that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower, Infowars dubiously claimed[43] it had National Security Agency documents that provided proof. The claim made its way around other “alt-right” outlets and fake news purveyors and wound up being pushed at the top of the Drudge Report [44].

This is the danger that the new media environment presents. The fringe is no longer being siloed; it has actively been raised into the mainstream by pro-Trump forces both known and unknown, and has been repeatedly validated by both mainstream reporters and especially an administration that has no hesitation about lying to the world. It’s crucial that mainstream media outlets understand [45] this new environment and the kind of claims and conspiracy theories it puts forth. It is one thing to share the mainstream with extremist cranks, propagandists, and liars. It's another thing to succumb and do their pro-Trump misinforming for them.

Erick Erickson Criticizes Trump for Inviting 'A Known Purveyor of Fake ...

www.mediaite.com/.../erick-erickson-criticizes-trump-for-inviting-a-known-purveyor...

16 hours ago - Today, well-known conservative Erick Erickson posted a piece on The ... But, he says,Gateway Pundit is a different animal altogether. ... if it is intentional or just because of some level ofinsanity. ... Dan Abrams, Founder.

day, well-known conservative **Erick Erickson** posted a piece on The Resurgent slamming President Donald Trump for allowing Gateway Pundit, a “known purveyor of fake news,” to White House press briefings.

The headline is strong: “Trump Invites a Cesspool of Fake News to Cover the White House. And I’m Not Talking About MSNBC.”

Erickson begins the piece saying that “The press has largely brought it upon themselves,” because he’s “lost count of the stories reported by the media and retracted or modified substantially in the same day.” But, he says, Gateway Pundit is a different animal altogether. “I’m not sure there is a greater purveyor of fake news on the left or right than that site,” he says.

From malarkey about terrorism to showing NBA fans as Trump supporters to you name it, Gateway Pundit runs nonsense and I still have not determined if it is intentional or just because of some level of insanity.

Gateway Pundit wrote that John Podesta was encouraging illegal immigrant voting based on an email that actually did not mention illegal immigrants.

He posted a picture of the Cleveland Cavaliers’ victory parade and claimed it was a Trump rally.

Then there was the confederate flag campaign button for Obama that actually was not from the campaign.

And, as he says, “the list goes on and on.” The problem with this, Erickson argues, is that it gives Gateway Pundit “a credibility that will most assuredly be abused to spread even more fake news.”

Read the entire post here.

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Treasonous #NeverTrumper Blog Attacks Gateway Pundit ...

www.thegatewaypundit.com/.../treasonous-nevertrumper-blog-attacks-gateway-pundit...

1 day ago - Treasonous Erick Erickson the founder of the anti-Trump Redstate blog, a popular website among smug elites who hate Trump, posted an ...

Missing: dn ‎insanity

Unhinged New York Leftist Freaks Out on Judge ... - The Gateway Pundit

www.thegatewaypundit.com/.../unhinged-new-york-leftist-attacks-judge-jeanine-fck-...

Feb 4, 2017 - An unhinged New York leftist attacked Judge Jeanine during her street talk segment. The woman was screaming about Nazis and white ...

Missing: erickson ‎dn ‎insanity

forget 'fake news', fake hate crimes are on the rise! - The Gateway Pundit

www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/12/forget-fake-news-fake-hate-crimes-rise/

Dec 24, 2016 - After all, Dan Rather, Brian Williams, Jon Stewart and others are their heroes! Patty ♥ • 1 month ago. why such hatred and discontentment.

hannity src several times? eg

:{:{Hannity “Embraced A Piece Of Fake News:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}: About President Obama Deleting Endorsements Of Hillary Clinton From His Twitter Account.” Hannity promoted “a piece of fake news about President Obama deleting endorsements of Hillary Clinton from his Twitter account,” and “used the made-up news to claim that President Obama's legacy might be "jail." Hannity later apologized for advancing this false news story, tweeting “correction. Live on radio I read a gateway pundit report that @MichelleObmaa had deleted mentions of HRC. And a listener said BHO and …” “Elizabeth Warren did same. Fact is they didn’t. I humbly apologize. Live radio.” [*Media Matters*,11/1/16; Premiere Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 11/2/16]}:

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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/9/24/904846/-

no links

Recently, one of the members of the St. Louis Teabagger Hate Cabal is in some hot water for promoting and linking to White Supremacist websites, such as diversityiscrap.com. The man in question is Jim Hoft, who has penchant for this nonsense. He runs Gateway Pundit, run on First Things' website, which is a Roman Catholic Conservative blog.

His blog is ofted cited by Teabaggers and Repunks for their news, and has a history of outright lying and dangerous conduct. Hoft and his ilk need to be held accountable for his actions.

Adam Shriver of the St. Louis Activist Hub has been on Hoft's case for a while now for these race-baiting stunts and more devious actions.

St. Louis Tea Party Leader AGAIN Promotes Racist Websites

Warning: disturbing content follows.

St. Louis Tea Party leader and right-wing blogger Jim Hoft (aka Gateway Pundit) has once again promoted a racist website on his blog. Today he posted a link to a racist youtube channel promoting a blog that repeatedly uses the n-word and portrays black people as criminals and drug addicts while complaining about the victimization of white people. I'll have more on this disgusting incident below, but first I provide some background explaining how this is not the first time Hoft has promoted white supremacist websites.

It is absolutely despicable that Jim Hoft, even after being warned repeatedly by others (including conservative bloggers) continues to promote racist, anti-semitic, and white supremacist websites from his blog. Maybe one incident like this could be seen as a simple mistake, but this is a clear pattern of behavior on Hoft's part that demonstrates that he is either doing this intentionally or simply does not care. Hoft needs to remove his links to racist sites and videos immediately, and apologize for promoting such filth.

And in the meantime, the St. Louis Tea Party, if it really wants to claim to be diverse and open-minded, should kick Hoft out of their leadership and repudiate his abominable behavior.

Jim Hoft AGAIN gets busted for linking to racist websites

Apparently, Hoft has had a history of racist links on his blog:

Jim Hoft, also known as Gateway Pundit, has amazingly descended to a new, despicable low. After trumping up the school bus beatings in Belleville as "vicious racist attacks" (even though students, the mayor, and prosecutors said the attack was not racially motivated), he now links to a youtube channel from a white supremacist group with the video title, "2nd White kid attacked by blacks on school bus, racial slur used": (note: old link here)

St Louis Pushes Back: during the midst of the Belleville bus beating, Hoft links to race-baiting video

Media Matters had this story on Jim Hoft, who influences how the right behaves.

Jim Hoft: Dumbest Man on the Internet?

September 21, 2010 2:44 pm ET by Ben Dimiero

With a few exceptions, the upper echelon of the conservative blogosphere is a mess.

Breitbart's "Big" websites traffic in misleading non-scandals and have published people like 9-11 truther Michael Moriarty, racist penis-enlarger/vagina-tightener Kevin Pezzi, and former SNL actress/spouter-of-incomprehensible nonsense Victoria Jackson. NewsBusters and The Media Research Center spend a lot of time finding the liberal bias in television shows that don't treat their gay characters as ostracized sub-humans.

But despite all this stiff competition, Jim Hoft (aka Gateway Pundit) stands out as uniquely incompetent. Hoft runs with (or spawns) almost every inane story that bubbles up in the conservative blogosphere, has proven that he has absolutely no vetting process for the sources he cites, and apparently has a hard time with basic reading comprehension.

Hoft -- who has modeled for a John Deere catalogue and "played a cop on 'Unsolved Mysteries' twice" -- has "never had any training in politics or journalism," but now has the "#8 ranked political blog in the United States" that is "frequently mentioned on top national news shows."

Indeed, in spite of the fact that Hoft embarrasses himself on a near-daily basis and has shown time and again that he is either willfully dishonest or staggeringly inept, he has managed to carve out a role as one of the most-read, most respected writers in the conservative blogosphere. And his influence extends beyond the blogs. Hoft's stories are regularly featured on Fox News' Fox Nation website, and he has been cited as a source on-air by Fox News on multiple occasions.

Hoft's ongoing position of influence in the conservative media is evidence that the entire movement is intellectually bankrupt.

Jim Hoft, aka Gateway Pundit: America's dumbest blogger or insane whacko, or both?

Disgraceful Gateway Pundit Attacks Melanie Shouse

I try to avoid gratuitous name-calling, but I really don't know what to say about someone this sick. Right-wing blogger and St. Louis tea party leader Jim Hoft, aka Gateway Pundit, today attacked Melanie Shouse, a progressive activist who died last week from breast cancer because she couldn't afford preventative care. Hoft wrote the following about Melanie:

It’s just too bad this woman didn’t call St. Anthony’s Hospital in St. Louis. They offer free breast exams to women who are in need of assistance. I suppose that’s Bush’s fault, too.

There really is nothing they won’t do or say to get this nationalized health care bill rammed through Congress.

People like Hoft are out there every day working to get rich off spouting the insurance company talking points, and they will win if we aren't out there fighting twice as hard.

Sicko Hoft attacks Progressive activist Melanie Shouse's death.

Next one from Newshounds.us, in which Fixed KKK Nation titles the story as "White Kid beaten for slavery." The comments over there at that sewer make even Stormfront look like peaceful comments-- and I'm not kidding. It also claims "All Opinions Welcome." In reality, though, it means all Right-wing opinions.

The Fox "News" hate site, otherwise known as Fox Nation, does love its incendiary headlines which serve to further divide an already divided America. Those who post headlines on Fox Nation know that this "nation" is an apartheid state in which the residents are proud, white Christians who hate anybody who isn’t. Yesterday, they posted a headline sure to get those Islamophobic juices flowing. And today, they have a headline sure to get the white sheets of our the closets of Fox Nation residents. The headline reads: "White Kid Beaten Up For Slavery." The actual article which is linked from Fox Nation reads: "Pair Charged With Hate Crime In Beating Of West Seattle Teen." While there was obviously enough evidence with which to charge a hate crime, until the case is litigated, the actions of the assailants are considered "alleged" – a word missing from the Fox Nation headline which could have been written "White Kid Allegedly Beaten Up For Slavery" or "White Kid Beaten Up For Slavery?" But who cares about such details when you need to get some nice conservative white racism going. Funny, when hate crimes are committed against minorities or gays, Fox Nation doesn’t seem to notice. This case is heinous; but for Fox Nation to use it to race bait is equally heinous. At Fox Nation, ain’t no party like a racist party! Praise the Lord!!!!

Newshounds catches Fixed Nation's race-baiting headline

Jim Hoft read it on the internet, so it has to be true!

Deranged blogger Jim Hoft has carved a comfortable niche for himself in the fevered right-wing blogosphere by marrying his reflexive anti-Obama attitude with aggressive, seemingly deliberate ignorance. To that end, he's managed to craft some wild arguments against the president that, if they weren't so woefully stupid, might actually be considered inventive.

This morning, he attacked President Obama for, of all things, taking communion at an Episcopal church this past weekend. Hoft claimed this was in violation of church rules, citing one of his readers:

Of course, the fact that the whole family received Communion shows complete disregard for the Anglican Church rules.

Reader Gini writes:

I'm an Anglican and am enraged Barack Obama and his family received without being confirmed. This is completely against church rules.

Since when did rules mean anything to this bunch in Washington?

At first glance, this looks pretty ironclad. After all, what better source could Hoft hope for than someone who wrote something on the internet?

Jim Hoft read it on the internet, so it has to be true! WRONG!

Racist Source on Conservative Blog: Coincidence or Custom?

That's the question being asked after St. Louis blogger Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit posted a video on his blog yesterday taken from the website DiversityIsCrap.com.

Here are a few of the recent headlines at DiversityIsCrap:

Niglet smokes pot

So glad to be born white

Muh son be a hero

Stupid n!gger gets owned by ice-cream truck

Okay, we'll take his word at that. Meanwhile, though, blogger Adam Shriver at St. Louis Activist Hub says he has proof that Hoft has gotten news from racist websites on a few occasions. One of those was last September when a fellow conservative blogger scolded Hoft for trolling for news on the website of the racist site, Council of Conservative Citizens.

RFT's Chad Garrison has this profile for Jim Hoft: Race-baiter

Jim Hoft and Dana Loesch, aided by the STL Teabagger Hate Cabal, lied about "Union Thugs beating up Gladney." Well, it was Gladney that threw the 1st punch.

Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft and right-wing radio host Dana Loesch are both upset that the NAACP didn't believe their conspiracy theories regarding the altercation between Elston McCowan and Kenneth Gladney, and are now accusing the NAACP of being "racist" and claiming that NAACP representatives said that Kenneth Gladney "wasn't black enough." Both Hoft and Loesch suggest that the NAACP literally used that expression. Here's Hoft's headline:

Hoft and Loesch race-bait on the NCAAP scandal

Jim "Gateway Pundit" Hoft is leading the charge of the oh-so-offended tea partiers who are hurt that anyone would suggest that their bringing a coffin to Russ Carnahan's house was in any way inappropriate. So check out the headline Hoft used about the rally the day before the coffin incident:

KKK Hoft gets giddy about booting and torching Carnahan

Another reason why neither Hoft, Loesch, nor anyone in the STL Teabagger Hate Cabal should be trusted for anything:

The St. Louis Tea Party, Andrew Breitbart's website Big Government, and Fox News have been claiming for almost a year now that tea party merchandise seller Kenneth Gladney was called "the 'n' word" prior to an altercation at a town hall meeting last August. They used this allegation to claim that various liberals are racist and that the case should have been classified as a hate crime (based on their dubious claims that Reverand Elston McCowan attacked Gladney first). Dana Loesch continued this trend yesterday, but amazingly undermined the claims they'd been making for the past 11 months, apparently without even recognizing that she did so!

Yesterday, Loesch wrote a blog post titled, "Elston McCowan, NAACP, Others Laugh at Calling Kenneth Gladney the N Word." This is the video she used to try to back up her claim (interesting note: despite the fact that Loesch claims to be massively influential on the internet, only 328 people viewed her video at the time of me writing this):

Dana Loesch falsely claims that Elston McCowan laughed while Gladney got the n-bomb hurled at him

More on Jim Hoft's idiocy and race-baiting...

mma tag 1116

No, A DOJ Official With Podesta Ties Isn’t “Overseeing” The FBI’s Email Review

Blog ››› November 1, 2016 12:24 PM EDT ››› MATT GERTZ

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Right-wing media outlets are falsely claiming that a Justice Department official tied to John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair, is “overseeing” the FBI’s review of emails that may be tied to the investigation into her use of a private server as secretary of state. Their claims are based solely on the fact that the official sent a letter to Congress about the review. In fact, the official in question leads the FBI’s Office of Legislative Affairs, and in that capacity he is responsible for communications with Congress, not active investigations.

The story appears to originate with Gateway Pundit author Jim Hoft, who is notoriously stupid but nonetheless provides a ready pipeline to other conservative outlets. Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) poured cold water on the theory during an interview, pointing out that the official in question “is not a decision-maker, he is a messenger.”

FBI Director James Comey released a letter to congressional leaders on October 28 stating that the FBI had “learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the” probe into Clinton’s private server and was reviewing them to “assess their importance to our investigation.” On October 29, several Democratic senators sent a letter to Comey and to Attorney General Loretta Lynch asking them to promptly provide “more detailed information.”

On October 31, Peter J. Kadzik, assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, responded to those senators on Lynch’s behalf, writing that the Justice Department will “continue to work closely with the FBI and together, dedicate all necessary resources and take appropriate steps as expeditiously as possible.”

That evening, Hoft authored a post headlined, “IT’S RIGGED => Podesta DOJ Pal Peter Kadzik Is Heading Hillary Email Probe,” contrasting the October 31 letter with mentions of Kadzik in the emails hacked from Podesta, allegedly on behalf of the Russian government. He concluded, “We all know how this will end. Hillary will walk. It’s rigged.”

In fact, responding to congressional inquiries -- and not overseeing investigations -- is Kadzik’s job. He leads the Justice Department’s Office of Legislative Affairs, which “advises and assists Department leadership on a wide variety of congressional matters; advocates for the Department’s legislative priorities; and responds to congressional inquiries and oversight requests” and helps prepare department witnesses for congressional testimony.

Nonetheless, several other conservative outlets picked up the story, similarly claiming that Kadzik was “overseeing” the investigation and thus its results could not be trusted.

The story quickly spread to Fox News, where Gowdy, one of the leading congressional investigators of Clinton, shot it down. On Fox & Friends, co-host Steve Doocy commented that he “was noticing on some of the blogs this morning” that Kadzik has ties to Podesta and asked Gowdy if he was concerned. Gowdy replied that he didn’t think it was relevant because “Peter Kadzik doesn’t make these decisions; they are made at the top of the DOJ.” He added, “Peter Kadzik is not a decision-maker, he is a messenger.”

Doocy has repeatedly highlighted fabricated stories based on Hoft’s “reporting.” Fox News has a documented pattern of offering news reports based on Internet rumors that turn out to be false. In January 2007, after Doocy retracted his false assertion that then-Sen. Barack Obama "was educated in a madrassa," then-Fox News vice president for news John Moody, reportedly said in a memo to Fox News staff: "For the record: seeing an item on a website does not mean it is right. Nor does it mean it is ready for air on FNC. The urgent queue is our way of communicating information that is air-worthy. Please adhere to this."

Fox Business Gets Fooled Again By Gateway Pundit's Email Conspiracy Theory

Host Stuart Varney Falsely Claims Out-Of-Context Email Proves Clinton Campaign Is “Encouraging” Voter Fraud

Blog ››› October 20, 2016 2:14 PM EDT ››› CRAIG HARRINGTON

Fox Business host Stuart Varney promoted the baseless conspiracy theory that Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta tacitly endorsed mass voter fraud based on a misreading of the contents of stolen emails released by WikiLeaks. Varney’s story comes straight from the discredited right-wing blog The Gateway Pundit, and it marks the second time in as many weeks that the Fox host has fallen for such an obviously fabricated story on air.

In an attempt to deflect criticism of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s suggestion during the third presidential debate that he might not accept the results of the general election, Varney falsely accused Podesta of arguing in an email that “if you’ve got a [driver’s] license, you should vote … whether you’re a legal citizen or not.” Varney and guest Andrew Napolitano went on to suggest that the availability of driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants in California and some other states would create an environment ripe for mass voter fraud:

STUART VARNEY (HOST): Now listen to this. Maybe Trump's got a point. A WikiLeaks email from Clinton campaign manager [John] Podesta shows that if you’ve got a license, you should vote. That’s what Podesta thinks, whether you're a legal citizen or not. Here is exactly what he wrote: “On the picture ID, the one thing I have thought of in that space is that if you show up on Election Day with a driver's license with a picture, attest that you are a citizen, you have a right to vote in Federal elections.” … You’ve got to stand up and attest that you're citizen when you're not so you’ve got to lie. He’s encouraging this.

Once again, Varney is pushing a conspiracy theory from hapless right-wing blogger Jim Hoft based on an intentionally misleading interpretation of emails released by WikiLeaks.

On October 19, Hoft published a blog claiming “Podesta Says It’s OK for Illegals to Vote With Driver’s License…” in which he highlighted the exact quote cited by Varney and singled out California and other states for providing driver’s licenses to “illegal aliens.” The entire October 20 segment on Varney & Co. is based on this single blog, and Varney’s argument during the segment is pulled directly from Hoft.

Varney could have followed the link back to the original WikiLeaks source and viewed a days-long email exchange from January 28, 2015, through February 4, 2015, between individuals who would soon join Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign. At no point during the email exchange, which has not been authenticated, does any participant so much as mention the word “immigrant,” much less undocumented ones. The email in question is about how responsive voters are to easing voter registration restrictions -- such as by adopting a policy of automatic voter registration when you receive a driver’s license or other state ID -- and the author simply concludes -- correctly -- that “you have a right to vote in Federal elections” if you “show up on Election Day with a drivers license ... [and] attest that you are a citizen”:

It would still be a felony for a noncitizen to vote in a federal election, regardless of whether that person has a valid driver’s license. Trump supporters have been trying and failing to turn voter fraud into a core issue of the campaign, but the problem simply does not exist at any meaningful level. Fox News even admitted as much earlier the same day with an on-screen chyron reading “Experts Say Voter Fraud Is Rare.”

Varney’s face plant on the voter fraud issue marks the second time in as many weeks that he has fallen for an laughable Gateway Pundit conspiracy on air. Last week, the Fox Business host bizarrely claimed that an unsolicited racist email sent to -- not from -- John Podesta somehow proved that Hillary Clinton was a racist.

Varney should be more careful when regurgitating talking points pulled from fringe blogs like The Gateway Pundit, particularly when their conclusions are based on documents that the U.S. intelligence community stated on October 7 were stolen via Russian state-sponsored hacking in an effort to “interfere with the U.S. election process.”

Media Falsely Equate Trump’s Billion-Dollar Tax Avoidance Scheme With Clinton’s Taxes

Research ››› October 3, 2016 11:24 AM EDT ››› ALEX KAPLAN

Media figures are inaccurately equating Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a common tax deduction on her 2015 tax return to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s $916 million declared loss in 1995, which, The New York Times reported, he could have used to virtually wipe out his federal income tax obligations over the past two decades. Several media outlets have falsely claimed Clinton “did the same thing” as Trump when, in fact, Clinton’s 2015 tax return shows that she could take only a $3,000 deduction for her reported $700,000 loss, and her campaign reports that she has paid between a 25 and 38 percent income tax rate since 2001.

Right-Wing Media Insist Clinton’s Pneumonia Diagnosis Is A “Cover For Some More Serious Condition”

Research ››› September 14, 2016 12:12 PM EDT ››› NICK FERNANDEZ

Right-wing media are claiming the statement from Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign that she was diagnosed with pneumonia is actually “a cover for some more serious condition,” and that Clinton falling ill at a 9/11 memorial event “had virtually nothing to do with her having pneumonia.” Actual medical experts in the media have explained that “Clinton's wobbly incident Sunday is a near-textbook case of what can happen with ‘walking pneumonia.’”

Hannity Cites Breitbart, Jim Hoft, And Trump's Facebook Likes To Spread Hope That Trump Will Win In Landslide

Video ››› August 9, 2016 5:02 PM EDT ››› MEDIA MATTERS STAFF

Trump Blames Clinton For Execution Of Iranian Scientist After The Right-Wing Lie Was Debunked

Research ››› August 9, 2016 12:50 PM EDT ››› NINA MAST

Echoing a myth peddled by right-wing media, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump claimed that there was a link between the execution of Shahram Amiri, a nuclear scientist in Iran, and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s private email server, which contained a couple emails that appear to discuss Amiri’s case. But there is no evidence either that Clinton’s server was hacked, which would have been necessary for Iran to see the emails, or that the email discussion of Amiri had any connection to his eventual death.

Jim Hoft Also Uses Picture Of Cleveland's NBA Title Parade To Brag About The Size Of A Trump Rally

Yesterday Breitbart Issued A Correction After Making The Same Mistake With A Different Photo

Blog ››› August 4, 2016 4:40 PM EDT ››› MATT GERTZ

Here’s conservative blogger Jim Hoft’s report on the “MASSIVE LINE” outside today’s Donald Trump rally in Maine:

Hoft

Here’s Cleveland.com’s report on the championship parade following the Cleveland Cavaliers’ NBA Finals victory:

Cavs

Yesterday Breitbart.com attempted to pass off a different photo of the Cavs championship parade as an image of a Trump rally, subsequently blaming the error on credulously taking the image from social media without confirming it was actually of the rally.

(h/t Charles Johnson)

UPDATE: Following the publication of this post, Hoft updated his report, replacing the image from the Cavs parade.

Right-Wing Media Lash Out At Mothers Of The Movement For Speaking At Democratic Convention

Research ››› July 26, 2016 10:11 PM EDT ››› NICK FERNANDEZ

Right-wing media labeled the second night of the Democratic National Convention as an “anti-law enforcement rally” because a group of seven mothers, known as the Mothers of the Movement, were invited to speak about losing their children to gun violence or excessive use of force by police. While right-wing media figures have said that the Democratic Party “shows no respect for law enforcement,” the Pittsburgh Police Chief spoke prior to the mother's’ plea to “seek common ground” between law enforcement and communities, while one of the mothers lauded police, saying, “The majority of police officers are good people doing a good job.”

Right-Wing Media Attack Obama’s Eulogy For Fallen Dallas Police Officers As A “Middle Finger To Cops”

Research ››› July 12, 2016 5:06 PM EDT ››› BRENDAN KARET

Appearing alongside former president George W. Bush in Dallas, Texas, President Obama eulogized police officers targeted in a “hate crime” last week during a Black Lives Matter march. Right-wing media figures immediately lashed out, calling Obama’s speech “bullshit,” labeled Obama the “divider-in-chief,” and claimed his statements “gave a middle finger to the cops.”

Right-Wing Media Adopt Trump’s “Pocahontas” Attacks On Elizabeth Warren

Research ››› June 30, 2016 2:10 PM EDT ››› ALEX KAPLAN

Right-wing media figures are joining presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in using the name “Pocahontas” as an attack against Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). The line of attack was popularized by Boston right-wing radio host and Trump surrogate Howie Carr.

“A Republican Munich”: Conservative Media React To Cruz-Kasich Alliance To Stop Trump

Research ››› April 25, 2016 3:28 PM EDT ››› BOBBY LEWIS

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Republican presidential candidates Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) announced a plan to mutually shift resources in upcoming contests to increase the odds of denying front-runner Donald Trump a majority of delegates before the GOP convention. Some conservative media figures have criticized the candidates' decision, calling it “unreal” and "the equivalent of a Republican Munich."

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"Travesty": Here Are The Conservative Media Figures Freaking Out Over Harriet Tubman Being On The $20 Bill

Research ››› April 21, 2016 1:04 PM EDT ››› DAYANITA RAMESH & BOBBY LEWIS

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Several conservative media figures criticized the U.S. Treasury Department’s announcement that Harriet Tubman would replace Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill, calling the change “dumb" and a “travesty.”

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Right-Wing Media Can't Believe Hillary Clinton Has Hot Sauce In Her Bag

Research ››› April 19, 2016 12:50 PM EDT ››› BRENNAN SUEN

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Right-wing media figures attacked Hillary Clinton for saying that she always carries hot sauce with her during an interview with a New York hip-hop radio show, attacking her for “pandering” and “casual racism.” But Salon reports that Clinton “has been talking about carrying hot sauce since 2008,” and various outlets over the years have reported that Clinton “packed pepper sauce” in her bag and had “a collection of more than 100 hot sauces” when she was first lady.

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Right-Wing Media Lose It After Obama Dances The Tango

Research ››› March 24, 2016 1:42 PM EDT ››› CRISTIANO LIMA & BOBBY LEWIS

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Right-wing commentators ripped President Obama for dancing the tango at a state dinner in Argentina a day after the terrorist attacks in Brussels, Belgium, criticizing him for "dancing the night away" "while Brussels burns." Meanwhile, journalists and analysists slammed conservative media figures' "easy attacks," noting that right-wing media would have criticized Obama "either way," regardless of whether he continued on or cut his trip short following the Brussels attacks.

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Conservative Media Get Into "Formation" To Attack Beyonce's Super Bowl Performance

Research ››› February 8, 2016 1:25 PM EST ››› BRENNAN SUEN

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Right-wing media attacked Beyoncé's Super Bowl halftime performance of her new song which reportedly features "implicit commentary on police brutality, Hurricane Katrina and black financial power." Conservative figures called the performance "anti-cop," criticized Beyoncé for bringing race "into the halftime show," and attacked the women performers for being "dressed like prostitutes."

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Jim Hoft

The article A Blogger Teleconference with Natan Sharansky said

Earlier today a teleconference was set up by the Heritage Foundation with famed Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky and several conservative bloggers. I was very fortunate to sit in on the call with the author of the Bush Doctrine, and The Case for Democracy, Natan Sharansky…

Here are a few of the remarks that I was able to get down during the talk. I will update this as I listen to the recording of the event:

Sharansky: Dissidents must be your partners. The Free World must support the dissidents. The world is much different today than back when there was a Soviet Union. How different things would have been if there had been an internet back then. Today, dissidents can get their message out much more easily via the internet.

The US is being blackmailed by nuclear weapons development by the Iranian regime. There are trade unions and student unions that are very powerful in Iran. We must support them.

Jim Hoft is the author of this article and author of Gateway Pundit, one of the leading conservative blogs on the internet today and which currently draws over a quarter of a million readers each month. He has led the pack on many news stories and has been the guest of numerous radio talk shows and panel discussions on current events.Gateway Pundit is often linked by internet giants and has been mentioned in the Washington Post, New York Sun, and the British dailyTelegraph.

Jim earned a BS in Biology at Loras College. He is professionally one of the few in his field certified to train High Performance Team Building inWorld Class Organizations. He has researched microbes at the source of the Mississippi River in Itasca, Minnesota.

He also has modeling and acting accomplishments to his credit. He starred in numerous national commercials, has made appearances in nationally syndicated television shows and has been pictured in various publications from Caterpillar’s Catalog to The St. Louis Post Dispatch. He’s made brief appearances in film.

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hundreds you never hearsd of

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