poso 2

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DID NOT SPOT HIM IN WH ANTIFA MTG AT 1ST; LATER NOTICED HE IS EVERYWHERE?

see main

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SEE GOP STEAL ELECTION NORTON PULTE

SEE CRM FASCISM?

SEE PRESS SUPPRESS 5 MOJO PROJECTION

see STOP THE STEAL WILL CHAMBERLAIN HU EVENTS BS

SEE BANNON WAR ROOM

ISLAMOPHOBE ~ ILHAN THUS AL PHOBES? ~ DRAG

xian

SEE JDV UNHUMANS BK 2024

see kirk

SEE ALT RT EUR

SEE RT ~ UKRAINE WAR

HEGSETH FLYNN DON JR

kill judge = fascism

see disinfo coach walz deepfake pedo BS

see kirk conf boost jnz freedumb

paleo-catholic? rosary kirk conf 6 24

DIRTY TRICKS ROE LAW CLERK LEAK?

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in several doku jan 6? q post truth ? max

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mma

Jack Posobiec: “They're taking white areas, and they're importing Muslims and Somalians and Africans into them”

09/02/26

-=-=

RWW

Jack Posobiec gets brutally fact-checked for trying to rewrite the history of his promotion of the "Pizzagate" conspiracy theory.

Post

Nathan Livingstone (MilkBarTV)

@TheMilkBarTV

🚨EXPOSING @JackPosobiec FLAT-OUT LYING on @piersmorgan's show about his role in Pizzagate. This is one of the BIGGEST LIES I've ever seen on live television or in the media. @WajahatAli @briantylercohen

REF

06/14/2018

Jared Holt

Jack Posobiec, now a contributor at One America News, played a central role in promoting the so-called “Pizzagate” hoax that resulted in a man entering a Washington pizza restaurant and firing a gun as part of a supposed rescue mission of children whom he had been convinced were hidden beneath the building. Now, Posobiec is trying to rewrite history.

Pizzagate was a hoax that captured the imaginations of right-wing conspiracy mongers online toward at the end of the 2016 election.

Proprietors of Pizzagate cited a hodgepodge of hacked John Podesta emails, screenshots of the restaurant’s menu, Instagram posts by the owner, and other random bits to build up the laughably untrue claim that Hillary Clinton and top members of the DNC were sex-trafficking children via an elaborate tunnel system beneath Washington. The conspiracy theory was spread by figures like self-described “New Right” pundit Mike Cernovich, Infowars’ Alex Jones, pedophilia-obsessed conspiracy theorist Liz Crokin, far-right YouTuber Brittany Pettibone, Posobiec and various anonymous users inhabiting the culverts on 4Chan and 8Chan.

In the last couple of weeks, Posobiec has been claiming with increased frequency that he actually “debunked” Pizzagate. He’s now declaring that Pizzagate was a hoax (which is obviously correct) and has accused former Fox News host Megyn Kelly of lying about his role in spreading the conspiracy during a Fox News segment. Posobiec has made his debunking claims for months, but something seems to have inspired him to restate his claims in recent weeks. These recent reiterations have earned him the ire of pundits like Crokin, who still believe the hoax.

Let’s take a look back at what actually happened.

At the height of Pizzagate alarmism, Posobiec went so far as to actually visit Comet Ping Pong, where he was ejected from the establishment for creating a security risk. Later, after the incident with the gunman, Posobiec told The Washington Post he had paid his visit to the establishment because he thought he could “just show it was a regular pizza place.” But watching Posobiec’s stream from the night tells a very different story.

(Screenshot / Periscope)

During the live stream of Posobiec’s visit to the restaurant, he tells viewers that his accompanying friend had “already dialed nine-one” so that they could contact police if the visit went awry and assured viewers not to worry about his safety because he had “backup.”

“We’re going to go in and we’re going to infiltrate Comet Pizza,” Posobiec said.

At one point in the video, Posobiec tells viewers that he’s worried that he and his friend have been “burned” and that an employee may have tried to view his phone screen. Shortly after, Posobiec was escorted out of the restaurant by Washington police. Posobiec alleged that the police had been called on him because the restaurant manager “clearly had something to hide” and called on right-wing smear merchant James O’Keefe: “We need you in here.”

“We saw a secret back room. There were little kids going in and out of this back room, and this is a bar. Since when are kids allowed to be in a bar in the first place?” Posobiec said, apparently having never been to a restaurant where alcohol is served before. “They have a big secret to hide.”

He also told viewers that his visit had convinced him that there may be tunnels beneath the restaurant being used for nefarious actions because the owner allegedly had a walkie-talkie, as is common in restaurants.

“You know why people use walkie-talkies. In the Navy, we used to use walkie-talkies a lot over cell phones. You know why? Because walkie-talkies can go through different levels in the ship. So if he’s communicating with somebody, like, in a tunnel or in a basement or in another place in the area that would be the perfect way to communicate with each other,” Posobiec said.

After he left Comet Ping Pong, Posobiec went a few doors down to Besta pizza, which was also wrangled into the Pizzagate hoax at the time. He ordered pizza and immediately upon leaving, he began ranting about “all the clues” he saw inside the restaurant. Those “clues” included an inspirational poster, some double-pane glass, and the fact that the restaurant had security cameras.

“The pizza itself is legit,” Posobiec said. “What’s going on in the back is the issue.”

Shortly after his visit to the pizza restaurant, Posobiec went on Infowars.

“From the first moment we stepped in, the people sort of had that super-extra happy smile. And I don’t mean there was a nice greeter who was there. I mean it was, ‘This is your table. This is going to be a great meal. You’re going to have a good time,’” Posobiec told Infowars, changing his voice to impersonate the employee he was referencing in an eerie tone.

Posobiec alleged that employees at the restaurant didn’t understand his request to use the foosball table in the rear of the restaurant and said the table “clearly hadn’t been used in a very long time.” Posobiec went on to describe “little kids just randomly sort of walking around” and alleged that there was “demonic artwork” hanging on the walls of the restaurant.

[VID]...

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NYT

Jack Posobiec, who helped spread a conspiracy theory about Democrats running a satanic child abuse ring, was invited by the Republican National Committee this month to speak to a group of volunteers about how to monitor elections in Michigan.Credit...Rebecca Noble for The New York Times

Alexandra Berzon

By Alexandra Berzon

Sept. 26, 2024

See more of our coverage in your search results.

Add The New York Times on Google

A few years ago, Jack Posobiec was a fringe figure and a right-wing agitator best known for helping spread “Pizzagate,” a conspiracy theory about Democrats running a satanic child abuse ring underneath a Washington pizza parlor.

This month, he was invited by the Republican National Committee to speak to a group of volunteers about how to monitor elections in Michigan.

The invitation was one sign of how the party uses figures and fictions that were once considered out of bounds to energize its activists. The counsel that Mr. Posobiec delivered was another.

He blasted elections in the Democratic stronghold of Philadelphia, for example, joking that officials in Venezuela learned how to conduct their elections, widely seen as corrupt, by visiting the city and studying how it is done, according to a recording of the Sept. 4 meeting obtained by The New York Times.

The key to elections, he said, is that “it doesn’t matter who votes. It matters who counts the votes.”

Both Republican and Democratic groups have long dispatched such monitors to polling places, typically with instructions to report problems with equipment, long lines or any other issues. Democrats generally emphasize issues related to restrictions on voting and Republicans look out for voter fraud....

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bannon mma 7 26

June 30, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

STEVE BANNON (HOST): SAVE America Act — a lot of people are saying, hey, do we have time to implement it? Are we going to have lawsuits? But President Trump is driving forward. We're a huge proponent of that.

We also know that Bill Pulte is at DNI, and that John Solomon of Real America's Voice is leading a task force on declassification. And yesterday, Pulte hired, from the RNC, as his chief of staff, one of the top election fraud people in all of the RNC to be his chief of staff. So he's telling you where he's — signaling where he's going on this.

My understanding — I don't have any access to this classified information — but my understanding is that there is going to be real revelations about the stealing of the 2020 election.-

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[### Pulte picks RNC's former election integrity director for his ...

Democracy Docket

https://www.democracydocket.com › News](https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/pulte-picks-rncs-former-election-integrity-director-for-his-national-intelligence-agencys-chief-of-staff/)

4 days ago — Acting national intelligence director Bill Pulte picked Christina Norton, known for running the GOP's 2024 poll watcher program, as his ...

Acting national intelligence director Bill Pulte has picked Christina Norton, a GOP lawyer known for running the GOP’s controversial 2024 poll watcher operation, as his chief of staff, reports The New York Times. Norton also was Pulte’s chief of staff at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which he still leads.

When the Republican National Committee (RNC) called for an army of 100,000 poll watchers in 2024 – in alignment with the Trump campaign’s prejudicial declarations of voter fraud – Norton was tapped to serve as its election integrity director. In that role, she oversaw the planning for the RNC’s massive poll watcher program, which drew on a slew of election conspiracists and deniers of the 2020 election results to train volunteers.

Pulte’s hiring of Norton fuels voting rights advocates’ concerns that he’ll be using the national intelligence office to fulfill President Donald Trump’s agenda to subvert this year’s midterms, by amplifying and prioritizing wild goose chases for voter fraud.

One clear example of how Norton approached her role as the RNC’s chief poll watcher and voter fraud investigator can be found in an April 2024 meeting among rightwing activists she attended, where she laid out plans for monitoring voters in that year’s elections.

The RNC’s poll watcher activities had previously been curtailed from 1982 to 2018 due to its intimidation tactics against Black and Latino voters in the early 80s. Under a consent decree, the RNC was only able to carry out “ballot security” programs under court approval and supervision during that time period. But when the decree was lifted, the RNC went all out in revamping its poll watcher missions in 2020 and 2024, much of it in cahoots with the Trump campaign.

For Norton in 2024, that meant working with scores of grassroots far-right and MAGA activists, many of whom were still peddling the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Some of those activists were at the April 2024 meeting with Norton, and continued these “stolen election” narratives as incentivization for that year’s poll watching strategies.

Among the speakers at that meeting:

Steve Stern and Raj Doraisamy, the meeting’s organizers, both rightwing activists who have close ties to the “Pillow Guy” Mike Lindell, who’s since had to shell out millions of dollars from lawsuits for falsely claiming that voting machines were hacked and fraudulent votes were cast in the 2020 election.

Seth Keshel, a retired U.S. Army intelligence officer who claimed that he counted 150,000 fraudulent votes in the 2020 election from North Carolina, and made similar allegations of “big-time” fraud in Madison and Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Arizona.

Linda Szynkowicz, founder of the conspiratorial FightVoterFraud.org site, who’s claimed without evidence that she’s spotted thousands of felony-grade election crimes.

Jay Valentine, an amateur cybersecurity activist who worked with Trump’s former lawyer Sidney Powell to overturn 2020’s election results.

Marly Hornik, founder of New York Citizens Audit, whose claim to fame was saying he discovered millions of fraudulent voter registrations in New York, but was ultimately served a cease and desist letter from the attorney general for confronting “voters across the state at their homes” after falsely claiming to represent the Board of Elections.

As the Nebraska Examiner reported, Norton neither disputed nor objected to the claims made at the meeting.

“If reports are true that Bill Pulte, whose installation as acting D.N.I. already raises serious legal questions, is bringing a former senior R.N.C. official who cavorted with election deniers and conspiracy theories into O.D.N.I. as his chief of staff, Americans have every reason to fear that this administration is once again eroding the wall between our intelligence agencies and domestic elections,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), vice chairman of the Senate Intel Committee, in a statement to the Times.

Perhaps the most notorious recruit to the RNC’s 2024 poll watching apparatus was Jack Posobiec, the person responsible for the “Pizzagate” conspiracy that Democrats were behind a diabolical pedophilia ring run out of a D.C. pizza shop.

The RNC invited Posobiec to train a group of poll watcher volunteers in Michigan in September 2024. There, he shared voter fraud myths and told the trainees, “it doesn’t matter who votes. It matters who counts the votes.”

It was an escalation of a similar statement that Trump made in 2024 when he announced his own campaign’s robust poll watcher operation: “Having the right people to count the ballots is just as important as turning out voters on Election Day.”

[### Bill Pulte Picks G.O.P. Election Operative for Spy Agency Job

The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com › U.S. › Politics](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/26/us/politics/pulte-spy-agency-christina-norton.html)

5 days ago — Christina Norton is the new chief of staff at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, former officials said.

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an 4 26

MAGA influencers are battling with each other over foreign donations from those who support the Iran war.

and Will Sommer took a dive into the influencer culture of the right.

"There is rampant suspicion that there is a DOJ investigation into conservative influencers who may be paid by foreign sources to both oppose and/or support the Iran war," Stein explained. "And all of these conservative influencers are salivating over the prospects that their ideological foes within the conservative movement, not like liberals within the conservative movement, may soon be arrested."

Sommer thinks that this investigation isn't likely to exist.

All of it stems from a tweet from someone calling themselves "Zero Hour" that Sommer said is a "shady character" he's dealt with in the past. When the account posted it, the right-wing pounced.

"They imagined their foes, whether it be, you know, pro-Israel, pro-Iran war against Iran, war against Israel. They imagine them in shackles," Sommer said.

The Justice Department hasn't given a statement confirming or denying the existence of a probe.

Still, it prompted Sommer to crack a joke about whether "CatTurd" would be arrested.

What Stein found amusing was that conservatives were excited that others on their team might be arrested as opposed to someone on the left being targeted.

"We're past the point where they want to lock up Hillary Clinton, they now want to see their own MAGA influencers locked up over this war," said Stein.

Sommer said it's a sign about just "how bad things have gotten in the MAGA civil war."

Jack Posobiec posted this week on X, "Influencers who take foreign money and don't disclose it should be deported to the country they took the money from."

"So, I mean, these guys are, they're so excited for what, again, to be clear, is the non-existent pundit purge," mocked Sommer.

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3 26 CAVED WHEN BUSTED ON PIX TO BJ?

AN 3 26

New video from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's Epstein deposition hearing shows her mocking MAGA Rep. Lauren Boebert to her face for asking a question about a "totally made up" conspiracy theory.

Clinton was questioned in a closed-door hearing in upstate New York last week about her potential connections to the deceased sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein, maintaining her stance that she had never met the man before, and had at best maintained a casual acquaintance with his co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell. Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, also gave a closed-door testimony the following day.

On Monday, clips from Clinton's deposition began to circulate online, showing Boebert's line of questioning about the "Pizzagate" conspiracy theory, and the former first lady's withering reaction. One particular clip, four minutes in length, was shared to X by New York Sun reporter Matt Rice.

"Pizzagate" originated amid Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, after conspiracy theorists became convinced that references to "pizza" in leaked emails from her campaign chair, Jon Podesta, were coded references. The spread of the theory led one believer to enter Comet Ping Pong, a Washington, D.C., pizzeria, with a loaded gun in search of a basement he thought was used to hide victims, though the property ended up having no basement to begin with.

Despite this conspiracy theory being widely debunked as a complete fabrication, Boebert nonetheless questioned Clinton last week as to whether or not she had seen anything in the newly released Epstein files related to it.

"Have you reviewed any 2025-2026 Epstein files that were released that you believe reference or relate to those specific 2016 claims regarding the Podesta emails, Comet Ping Pong, pizza used as code possibly?" Boebert asked.

After questioning about the nature of Boebert's question and the "wacky Pizzagate scandal" from the former secretary's legal team, Clinton responded: "Pizzagate was totally made up. It was an outrageous allegation that ended up hurting a number of people, that caused a deranged young man to show up with his assault rifle and shoot up a local pizzeria. I can't believe you're even referencing it."

Boebert pressed further with an awkwardly phrased follow-up question about any Epstein investigations post-2019 intersecting with "Pizzagate-style theories about Democrat figures," to which Clinton said, "I have no way of answering [that]." The congresswoman asked another question about Clinton clarifying any content from the Epstein files that may have been misinterpreted in a way that would revive the Pizzagate claims. She insisted that the line of questioning was "reasonable" as Clinton's legal team objected.

Throughout Boebert's series of questioning, Clinton repeatedly grinned and shook her head. Near the end of the video shared online, she appeared to mock Boebert's question.

"I mean really, I expected a lot of interesting questions today, but Pizzagate was not on my list," Clinton said.

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The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder

2.01M subscribers

47,700 views Streamed live on Feb 26, 2026 The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder

FUN HALF: https://youtube.com/live/MJip3WVxqDM?... 2/26/26 - Emma Vigeland welcomes Daniel Boguslaw, investigative reporter at the Intercept, and later DSA Co-chair Ashik Siddique (he/him) and DSA Co-chair Megan Romer (she/her). They are the two elected leaders of the organization for 2025-2027 Check out Daniel's work for the ‪@TheInterceptFLM‬ : https://theintercept.com/staff/daniel... Check out the DSA's website: https://www.dsausa.org/

Greg Gutfeld says Ilhan Omar has 'no right' to that level of rage in the US after SOTU outburst

// bs

The Gateway Pundit

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com › 2026 › 02 › greg-gutfeld-rips-ilhan-omar-her-behavior-during

Greg Gutfeld Rips Ilhan Omar Over Her Behavior During Trump's SOTU ...

2 days agoScreencap of Twitter/X video. During The Five on FOX News today, host Greg Gutfeld tore into Rep. Ilhan Omar over her unhinged behavior during Trump's State of the Union address last night. He began the segment by talking about all of the disgusting behavior of Democrats but eventually zeroed in on Omar, saying 'She Repulses me.' Gutfeld pointed out that Omar is lucky to be in America at ...

YouTube

rww Sean Feucht Says Democrats' Reaction During SOTU Was A 'Demonic Manifestation' | People For

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rww

02/09/2026

Peter Montgomery

The morning after TPUSA’s highly hyped and widely panned alternative to the official Super Bowl halftime celebration, the MAGA group’s political action committee sent supporters a fundraising email with an alarmist message: “The left is activating their terror cells.”

“The radical Left is more fired up than I have ever seen them!” writes the email signer Jack Posobiec, a conspiracy theorist and MAGA activist.

Posobiec warns darkly, “And if they win, I promise they will vent their rage on any conservative that they find.”

The email includes no evidence to back up the “terror cells” warning. Instead, it warns that the “radical left” is “chasing early votes” and “pouring money into ground operations in every battleground state that matters.” Sounds like politics.

“They’re rallying their supporters with lie after lie,” Posobiec writes, which more accurately describes MAGA movement leaders.

The closest Posobiec comes to backing up the “terror cells” claim is when he writes, “They’re mobilizing an Antifa army against ICE operations in Minnesota and across the country.” But Americans have seen who is terrorizing people in Minnesota and elsewhere; they know it’s ICE and Border Patrol agents who have seemingly been given free rein to brutalize peaceful protesters and legal observers without any fear that they will be held accountable. The cruelty has turned more Americans against Trump’s mass-deportation project.

Posobiec’s email asks for contributions to support TPUSA’s plans to deploy “ballot chasers”—activists who contact ideologically aligned voters to ensure that they cast a ballot—to critical swing states. “Turning Point PAC is building the largest ballot-chasing operation in U.S. history,” the email claims. “It will determine not only the midterms but the Presidency in 2028.”

Like TPUSA’s halftime show, Posobiec’s email invokes Charlie Kirk, the late TPUSA founder who was murdered last year. He writes, “with Charlie gone, it’s on you and me to carry that legacy forward.”

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MMA

Right-wing media figures are furious at activists for using whistles during ICE activity

Written by Payton Armstrong

Published 02/03/26

Right-wing media figures are lashing out at community members in Minnesota for using whistles to alert others of federal immigration enforcement in the area, asserting that whistles should be “considered a violent weapon” and that their use constitutes “interference” with immigration enforcement operations or even “assault.”

Activists and residents have explained that whistles are “a way to quickly draw witnesses and cameras when enforcement activity happens in neighborhoods.” Bystander video, which has sometimes contradicted official Department of Homeland Security statements, has become critical in multiple recent incidents like the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, whom DHS officials initially baselessly accused of being domestic terrorists.

### Bystanders using whistles have become ubiquitous with immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis — in part as “a way to quickly draw witnesses and cameras”

ICE operations in Minneapolis have transformed everyday life for residents with the killing of two U.S. citizens, the detainment of thousands of migrants and community members, and reports of widespread use of force and chemical irritants like pepper balls and tear gas on crowds.NBC News reported that “since December, the surge of federal immigration personnel to Minnesota led to the apprehensions of more than 3,000 migrants in what the Department of Homeland Security has called ‘the largest immigration enforcement operation ever.’” During that time, two U.S. citizens — Alex Pretti and Renee Good — were shot and killed by masked federal agents just weeks apart; at least four children were apprehended by ICE, two while they were on their way to school; and federal agents have “regularly deploy[ed] chemical irritants to deter observers and protesters.” NBC News, [1/27/26; MPR News, 1/28/26; CNN, 1/20/26]

- The Minnesota Star Tribune reported that “the sight and sound of whistles have become common around the Twin Cities amid the ongoing immigration operation and organized resistance.”CBS News reported that “organizers and volunteers say the whistles are meant to be an attention grabber and a way to quickly draw witnesses and cameras when enforcement activity happens in neighborhoods.” Community members and local businesses, including a toy store and a bar, have reportedly given away thousands. The Minnesota Star Tribune, [1/20/26; CBS News, 1/14/26; MinnPost, 12/15/25]

- Stella Carlson, who recorded critical video of agents shooting and killing Pretti, told CNN that she decided to come to the scene after hearing whistles while driving to work.Carlson’s video contradicted initial DHS statements that Pretti “brandished” a gun at agents, and according to CNN, “Carlson’s video, and the ensuing outrage surrounding Pretti’s killing, placed the Trump administration under immense pressure that eventually led to the White House pulling Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol official who had led the surge in Minneapolis and several other American cities, out of Minnesota.” Carlson explained to CNN anchor Anderson Cooper why she personally carries a whistle, saying: “When we walk around with the whistles around our neck, it's not that we have — like we know we can't do much. But what we do know is that we can let our community at large know when we're walking around, like, I see you. And if you're stuck in your apartment, I want you to see me. I'm another person walking around who is here to protect you as best I can with my whistle and my phone.” CNN, [1/28/26, 1/25/26]

- :{:{Attorney Tracy Roy told The Minnesota Star Tribune that while physically intervening with ICE activity is illegal, “bystanders certainly can make noise, blow whistles and alert presence.” The Minnesota Star Tribune, [1/20/26]}:
- }:
### Right-wing media figures claimed whistles “should be considered a violent weapon” and that their use amounts to “interference” or possibly “assault”

Right-wing podcaster Megyn Kelly claimed that people blowing whistles constituted “interference” and “contributed to the chaotic atmosphere that ultimately led Alex Pretti to die.” Kelly said: “We don't know if Alex Pretti was sent to that area specifically by these anti-ICE agitators or whether he was officially part of the group. But some on that street were because they had the telltale signal of whistleblowing, which is their favorite thing. And by the way, that needs to stop. Now, some are saying that's fine. That actually is interference. You — if you came out on your front lawn and just blew a coach's whistle at the top of your lungs all day, you would be cited by the police under the local noise ordinances. It would be a disturbance of the peace. That's what these people are doing. And no doubt they contributed to the chaotic atmosphere that ultimately led Alex Pretti to die.” SiriusXM, *The Megyn Kelly Show*, [1/26/26]

- :{:{Right-wing streamer Steven Crowder said that women on the scene of Pretti’s killing had “arguably commit[ed] assault against the officers with whistles in the ears.”Crowder: “Those women absolutely went out of their way to cross the street and arguably commit assault against the officers with whistles in the ears.” Rumble,:(style="background-color:#ffbb16ff"):}: *Louder with Crowder*, [1/26/26]}:

- Right-wing influencer Mike Cernovich said that whistles used by activists “should be considered a violent weapon.”Cernovich reportedly posted on social media: “From smoke alarms to those hearing loss causing machines that terrorists use against ICE. Tbh those things should be considered a violent weapon. They damage hearing for life.” The Independent, [1/26/26]

- Conservative radio host Buck Sexton reportedly replied to Cernovich’s post and wrote, “All true.” The Independent, [1/26/26]

- Director of the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation, Lora Ries, also reportedly replied to Cernovich’s post and said that whistles “are NOT speech.”The Independent, [1/26/26]

- White nationalist streamer Nick Fuentes said protesters “blowing whistles” creates a “confusing, dangerous environment when you can't hear, when you can't see.” Fuentes: “You're asking ICE officers to go and fight these animals and potentially die, potentially get shot in the face. They're being put in an impossible situation. They go out there, they're being chased, they're being harassed, they're being overwhelmed. Protesters are blowing whistles. It's a confusing, dangerous environment when you can't hear, when you can't see.” Rumble, *America First*, [1/27/26; Media Matters, 12/19/25]

- The host of the right-wing Spanish language programMucho Que Decirsaid that “blowing whistles” constitutes “being an obstructionist.” Discussing the killing of Alex Pretti, the host said, “It is presumed that he was monitoring ICE duties and then saw some illegal immigrants, wanted to warn them by blowing whistles, being an obstructionist as usual. And had a close encounter with ICE agents, they knocked him down and broke his rib, but not content with that, he continued on the rampage. In other words, this man was not just a pedestrian filming what was going on in Minneapolis." La Nueva Poderosa, *Mucho Que Decir*, [1/27/26]

- The Washington Times editorial board criticized “antifa-style agitators” blowing whistles “to obstruct immigration enforcement,” saying that “paid provocateurs are tracking ICE operations and deliberately interfering.” The Washington Times, [1/26/26]

- Right-wing influencer Jack Posobiec lamented that “agitators” are “blowing the whistles.”Posobiec’s guest, Andrew Branca, suggested federal agents were justified in shooting Pretti, saying that “the law of self-defense doesn't require perfect decision-making,” and agents had to make decisions in a “very stressful, life-threatening, compressed timeframe.” Posobiec replied: “In reality, in this situation, what these activists have done — and by the way, what these agitators are doing on purpose and deliberately. They're blowing the whistles. They're getting in the street. They're getting in the way.” Real America’s Voice, *Human Events Daily*, [1/26/26]

### The right-wing media figures who have justified Alex Pretti's killing by Trump’s DHS

:{01/28/26

### Right-wing media figures are claiming, once again, that anti-ICE protesters are paid agitators

:{01/29/26

### MAGA media demand Trump put down the Minnesota “revolution”

01/30/26

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mma

MAGA media interviews suggest Trump’s denaturalization push is driven by pure Islamophobia

Recent guests on Steve Bannon and Jack Posobiec’s podcasts aren’t hiding who they want to target

Written by John Knefel

Research contributions from Sophie Lawton

Published 12/18/25

Two recent clips from high-profile MAGA media podcasters suggest that a new effort by President Donald Trump to ramp up denaturalizations is driven largely by anti-Muslim bigotry.

According to The New York Times, the Trump administration is setting a goal of bringing 100-200 denaturalization cases per month in fiscal year 2026, up from just over 120 cases in total brought between 2017 and the present.

In segments on War Room, hosted by former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, and Human Events Daily, hosted by Pizzagate promoter Jack Posobiec, guests with close ties to the White House made it clear that they would want Trump’s denaturalization ramp-up to target Muslims specifically.

On December 15, Posobiec interviewed the Article III Project’s Will Chamberlain about immigration in general. Article III is headed by Mike Davis, a close ally of Trump’s who presents himself as the administration’s outside enforcer.

“Islam is not compatible with Western civilization, and mass Muslim migration is not compatible with Western societies, and it’s time to say this experiment has run its course and it needs to stop,” Chamberlain said.

Chamberlain added that “we're not going to, you know, denaturalize unless we have legal reason to do so” but that “we want there to be net-negative Muslim migration to the United States.”

Chamberlain’s legalistic caveat aside, achieving “net-negative Muslim migration” would likely require finding a “legal reason” to bring many more denaturalization cases. Chamberlain, for example, called for journalist Mehdi Hasan to be denaturalized and deported in response to Hasan posting “Abolish ICE” on social media.

Video file

Video

Citation

From the December 15, 2025, edition of Real America's Voice's Human Events Daily

Days earlier, Bannon interviewed Wade Miller of the Center for Renewing America, a MAGA-affiliated think tank. CRA was founded by Russ Vought, a Christian nationalist currently reprising his role as the head of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget.

“I'm not saying that there's no such thing as a nice and decent Muslim — those exist in our country,” Miller said. “But nowhere in the world do those people manifest themselves in majorities. And there's a reason for that, and at the center of it is radical Islam.”

Miller added, “We want to get ahead of this before it becomes the problem that it is in Europe and start denaturalizing, start moving, taking away people's legal status for immigration fraud, whatever we need to do.”

“Well, now that we're past the screening and that, when you talk about denaturalization, what then is to be done?” Bannon prompted.

“If someone raised their hands and took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and became a citizen, and now they're out there advocating for sharia courts and the undermining of our entire constitutional order, then those should be grounds to denaturalize,” Miller responded.

Video file

Video

Citation

From the December 11, 2025, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

As Media Matters reported in March, right-wing media figures were already waging a campaign to denaturalize and deport their political opponents, many of whom are Muslim. That effort has only increased over the course of the year, and whatever taboos may have previously constrained open Islamophobia in conservative media seem to have all but been destroyed. As Chamberlain’s comments make clear, his aim is “net-negative Muslim migration,” part of a larger right-wing media embrace of “remigration,” a term for ethnic cleansing.

MMA 12 25

Select a sycophant

Jack Posobiec: “Not surprised Trump said what he said”

MAGA streamer Jack Posobiec — whose 2024 book describes leftists as “unhumans” and was blurbed by Vice President JD Vance — was among those on the right who initially sought to use the Reiners’ deaths to seize the moral high ground.

“You won’t see people on the right celebrating the horrific murder of Rob Reiner and his wife,” Posobiec bragged on Sunday night, as news of their deaths circulated. “Compare to the Left’s reaction to Charlie Kirk’s murder,” he said, referencing random people who had their lives turned upside down for their social media reactions to that tragedy.

But it’s dangerous to claim moral authority for your side when your standard-bearer is Trump. After the president weighed in, Posobiec pivoted, suggesting that it is appropriate to post mean things about someone if you had strong political differences.

“Rob Reiner called for Trump to be jailed over lies,” Posobiec wrote. “Not surprised Trump said what he said.”

X post

Posobiec subsequently mocked “people telling on themselves for crying over a mean Trump tweet,” finding Trump’s response acceptable because “the Left wants us all dead.”

Laura Loomer: “Trump is right.” Reiner is a “loser.”

Laura Loomer, a fanatically loyal Trumpist with deep ties to the administration who is trying to foment an anti-Muslim crackdown, responded to Trump’s post by claiming that “Trump is right” because “Rob Reiner had a level of TDS that likely exuded a level of craziness around those he spent time with.”

X post

She also cited a fake post from Reiner, whom she described as a “loser,” and declared, “I stand with President Trump.”

X post

And she lashed out at the “simps” and “fake grifters” who are “calling Trump out for speaking truth about Rob Reiner.”

X post

Kurt Schlicter: Critics are “little bitches”

Kurt Schlichter, the TownHall.com columnist and frequent guest host for Fox contributor Hugh Hewitt’s Salem Radio Network show, is perhaps best-known for his fantasies about a potential race war and other glorifications of political violence against the left. He repeatedly ranted on Monday about conservative pundits who criticized Trump over the Reiner remarks.

“This Trump tweet about the guy who spent a decade slandering him in the most despicable ways possible provides the perfect opportunity for that kind of weak, feminine pseudo-conservative to do what they love best - join the left in whining like little bitches about how actual conservatives are so...so...soo...oh well I never!” he commented.

X post

After conservative pundit Erick Erickson commented that “the whole point should be that we are not them,” Schlichter responded that the right shouldn’t try to act like “good people” because the movement’s ends justify being “a bad person in the eyes of those too weak to stand and fight.”

X post

“Every tyranny in history embraced this,” Erickson responded.

Greg Gutfeld: “We don’t have to like it. I just look at [Trump’s] deeds.”

When Democratic co-host Harold Ford Jr. mentioned Trump’s post on Monday’s edition of The Five and said that he hoped the president “corrects himself,” fellow co-host and notorious lacker-of-principles Greg Gutfeld rose to the challenge of explaining to viewers why what Trump says doesn’t matter.

“You don't have to like the things that he says all the time,” Gutfeld said. “It is why in my filter, Trump is always words versus deeds. I don't have to like what he says. In fact, I can hate what he says. But I can also think, in his brain, he is going, uh, this guy compared me to Hitler, he put a target on my back, I don't like him. And it’s like, well — if it were me I’d go, like, but I’m sorry he’s dead. But he can't let that go.”

“We don't have to like it,” he concluded. “I just look at the deeds.”

Greg Kelly: “President Trump levels with us. He is not a phony”

Newsmax host Greg Kelly, who has argued that Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) “should be in jail” and that Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell “just might be innocent,” justified Trump’s Reiner comments on his Monday night broadcast. ...

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[### I Asked the Pentagon About Pete Hegseth's Mentor. Then ...

Mother Jones

https://www.motherjones.com › politics › 2025/12 › eri...](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/12/eric-geressy-goodreads-pentagon-dod-pete-hegseth-jack-posobiec-threat/)

4 days ago — Six weeks ago, Jack Posobiec asked me to comment on whether I have a “creepy fetish for Asian women.” That was one of several false and wildly ...See more

Six weeks ago, Jack Posobiec asked me to comment on whether I have a “creepy fetish for Asian women.”

That was one of several false and wildly personal allegations that the far-right pundit and newly minted member of the Pentagon press corps said that he planned to include in “a story that I’m writing about you.”

I immediately understood his October 28 email to be a threat, though it was not made explicit. The day before, I had sent the Pentagon press office a series of questions concerning Eric Geressy, a senior Pentagon adviser to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Geressy, who served with Hegseth during a tour in Iraq in the mid-2000s, is part of the Pentagon effort to instill a “warrior ethos” within the US military. He now leads a team reviewing the role of women in the armed forces.

Calling Geressy “my toughest critic and my best mentor,” Hegseth in March presented him with the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army’s second-highest award for valor, for Geressy’s conduct following an ambush in Baghdad in 2007.

Posobiec’s email arrived the day after my inquiries…This was either an incredible coincidence or a deliberate message: Publish your article and get smeared.

I had discovered that Geressy’s email address was linked to a public Goodreads page with a “currently reading” list that included various books featuring stories about “Asian wife sharing.” These pornographic works, with titles such as “Asian Wife Went With Her Dad’s Friend: A Cuckold Story,” appeared on the list alongside two books by Hegseth and a handful of military histories. They contain detailed descriptions of cuckolding, group sex, and scenes involving “ladyboys”—a term used to refer to Thai transgender women. The page, active since 2021, was taken down the day after I contacted the Pentagon and Geressy about it.

I also asked about a 1997 domestic violence allegation against Geressy, about his dating habits, and past relationships with foreign women. [chinese national?]I inquired if the Pentagon had assessed those relationships as part of Geressy’s security clearance process, and, more broadly, if his personal life might create concerns about his susceptibility to foreign influence operations.

The Pentagon repeatedly asked for more time to address those questions. Eventually chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell responded, in part: “Geressy has served for 38 years in the government, has been vetted numerous times by the relevant agencies, and has never posed a security risk or engaged in improper behavior as this piece tries to suggest. Mother Jones has stooped to a new low with this shoddy hit piece and should be ashamed of itself.”

Posobiec’s email arrived the day after my initial inquiries. The false claims he asked about, particularly the Asian fetish thing, seemed to mirror my questions. Posobiec, who in 2016 promoted the bogus Pizzagate conspiracy theory, gave me a deadline, 5 p.m. on October 29, that was the same as the one I had given the Pentagon press office. A Pentagon spokesperson and Posobiec both denied coordination. Geressy declined to comment. But considering the questions, timing, and Posobiec’s links to Defense Department officials, the situation seemed clear. This was either an incredible coincidence or a deliberate message: Publish your article and get smeared.

Posobiec’s email claimed I have “a history of objectifying women,” and that I had engaged in some kind of misconduct. The email also included questions about my marriage.

Posobiec’s questions suggested one of his “two sources” may have been a real woman with whom I did have a brief relationship nearly a decade ago. Contrary to the email’s depiction, that relationship was perfectly amicable at the time. But it was part of some personal messiness, especially around the end of my first marriage, that is embarrassing.

My first instinct was to laugh this off. Who cares what the Pizzagate guy writes? But getting lied about by someone with 3 million X followers is not that funny. Comet Ping Pong never housed a Democratic pedophilia ring in its basement. But that didn’t make it less dangerous when the restaurant was targeted by QAnon crazies, including a guy who fired an AR-15 into a room that had just been full of kids.

I have done reporting that angered other well-known figures on the right—Roger Stone, Miles Guo, Steve Bannon—and that drew some doxxing and half-assed personal attacks from their allies. But I am not famous. Who cares about me?

The threatened audience for the smear, clearly, was my peers—and my wife. It seemed meant to scare me into spiking my own story. That is not journalism, but an attack on journalism.

This apparent threat became more explicit as the possible publication date we had given the Pentagon approached. In tweets, Posobiec asked his followers if he should publish a story about mistreatment of women by a “DC-area liberal reporter.” After our possible publication date passed, though, he went quiet.

That left my editors and me with a problem. Here was what we believed to be an attempt to strong-arm Mother Jones, and perhaps an expansion of the administration’s war on the press. This was news. But the development also complicated an already tricky story. And if we delayed publication, or decided the story was not important enough to run, we risked leaving the impression that we, and I, had been intimidated into silence.

We knew that we would not drop the article because of Posobiec’s ploy, nor rush into running it before we were ready. Instead, we did what reporters are supposed to do when confronted with a journalism dilemma: more journalism.

My emails to the Pentagon and Geressy were part of an effort to check the information we had gathered. We wanted their side of the story. My questions went largely unanswered, but I kept asking. I talked to more people. And I worked to verify the information we had.

We had linked the Goodreads account to Geressy based on various pieces of identifying information, including an email address he had used. The account was listed under the username Eric J—Geressy’s middle name is Joseph. At one point, the page noted that Eric J lived in a specific Florida town, which matched Geressy’s known residence. Also, some of the non-erotic books displayed on the account were seemingly of interest to him; they included books, like Hegseth’s The War on Warriors, that mention Geressy’s military service. These titles appeared on the page between 2021 and July of this year.

Screenshot of the Goodreads page linked to Geressy’s email address. The page was deleted after we asked him and the Pentagon about it.

The same email address was also linked to other apps, including Yelp and MyFitnessPal, that appeared to be Geressy’s, along with a MySpace page that includes what looks like a photograph of him.

Geressy declined to comment, and did not confirm he had a Goodreads account. In theory that made it possible, if highly unlikely, that someone could have used his email account, obtained through a hack or other means, to set up the Goodreads account. So we tried to rule out that possibility.

I spoke to Nathaniel Fried, the CEO of OSINT Industries. That’s a British organization whose platform matches personal information such as emails and phone numbers to online accounts; we had relied on this platform to connect Geressy’s email address to the Goodreads account. Fried said that while OSINT can’t tell you for sure who signed up, “it’s 100 percent that that email has an account.” In other words, either Geressy or someone using his email and personal information created the account.

I also asked Amazon, which owns Goodreads, about the account. After much back and forth, the company said it did not currently have a record of an account linked to Geressy, or the email address he appears to have used. But they also said that they do not retain identifying information for deleted Goodreads accounts. Since the account linked to Geressy had been deleted weeks before, right after I reached out to the Pentagon and Geressy for comment, this statement gave us little new information. Overall, Amazon’s carefully parsed response did nothing to refute the connection.

“It’s all about whether you are susceptible to a foreign service getting any leverage against you. It may not be disqualifying, but it should be looked at.”

Still, none of that fully bore on the main consideration. That is, whether personal reading tastes, past relationships, or apparent dating habits are worth reporting on. After extensive discussion, we decided that in this case, they are.

For one thing, former national security officials told us that for Pentagon personnel in particular, relationships with foreign partners are a major concern.

Geressy lived in 2016 with a woman who evidence suggests may be a Chinese national. That woman started a limited liability company during that time with a name that references Chinese investment. It was registered at Geressy’s home address, then dissolved a few months later. (I am omitting some specifics to avoid including identifying information.) The Pentagon said that Geressy has never been deemed a security risk. But it did not provide verifiable answers to questions about whether that relationship and company were examined as part of Geressy’s security clearance review. Neither did Geressy.

Geressy has had what appears to be a stormy personal life that has included three marriages. In 1997, a jury acquitted him of a domestic violence charge after an accusation by his then-wife, according to court records.

Email addresses Geressy used, and other identifying information, including his first name and biographical information, also appeared in three data breaches, between 2011 and 2016, of adult websites geared toward finding sexual partners, according to databases that include the hacked data. Those sites are Fling, AdultFriendFinder, which then called itself “the World’s Largest Sex & Swinger Community,” and Ashley Madison, which billed itself as “the most famous name in infidelity.”

The presence of Geressy’s email and other information in these data breaches does not confirm he used these sites, according to cyber researchers.

But as John Sipher, a former senior CIA officer, told Mother Jones, in normal circumstances, a government official who might be involved with such websites and who had romantic relationships with foreigners would draw scrutiny. “It’s all about whether you are susceptible to a foreign service getting any leverage against you,” Sipher said. “It may not be disqualifying, but it should be looked at.”

And there is a second point. Geressy is a top official in a Defense Department that has booted trans people from the military based on President Trump’s executive order that argues that “adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.” Geressy is not responsible for trans policy, but he is part of a Pentagon leadership that concerns itself with subordinates’ private lives.

Trump’s Pentagon wants reporters to be not just docile recipients of the administration’s preferred narratives but active propagandists. That is a direct attack on the free press. It is also an insidious danger.

In The War on Warriors, one of the books on the Goodreads page linked to Geressy, Hegesth cited his mentor to support the position that women should not serve in combat roles. “From my perspective,” Hegseth quoted Geressy as saying, circa 2007, “overwhelmingly most females want nothing to do with combat arms.” According to Hegseth, Geressy had argued that the Army had unfairly awarded medals to some women who had served in combat. “If SGM Geressy was a transvestite—or gay, or black, or a woman,” Hegseth wrote, “he would have three Distinguished Service Crosses and be on the front of a Wheaties box.”

The Pentagon is already beset by scandals in which top officials, most notably Hegseth himself, have been accused of conduct that falls short of the standards it demands of other Defense Department officials and service members. Critics have argued that for lower-ranking personnel, actions like Hegseth sharing military plans outside of approved channels, or the adultery he during confirmation hearings, would result in firing. The racy selections on the Goodreads account linked to Geressy’s email may be comparatively minor. But that a public page listing such titles existed until we flagged it adds to the impression that the department’s leadership is not only hypocritical, but inept.

Hegseth has reacted furiously to reporting on some of his missteps. He has raged over coverage of his sharing of plans for bombing targets in Yemen with a Signal group that included the editor of the Atlantic. (The department’s inspector general reported that Hegseth’s actions could have put US troops at risk.) He fired aides accused of leaking news of a plan to give Elon Musk a top-secret briefing on US war plans versus China. Posobiec’s email came as the Pentagon took an increasingly hostile stance toward the media.

Kingsley Wilson, a former conservative influencer who is the department’s press secretary, told me that she did not speak to Posobiec about my story and did not believe Parnell did either. Posobiec also denied coordinating with the Pentagon. Geressy did not respond to a question about it.

But it came amid broader pushback to our reporting. “This is a garbage story made up of false allegations, decades-old claims that proved untrue, and disgusting innuendo aimed at smearing a man who was awarded the Army’s second-highest military honor for extraordinary heroism in combat,” Parnell said.

That response is consistent with the combative press relations posture of the second Trump administration. Shortly before, when a reporter asked the White House press secretary to identify who had suggested Trump meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest, she responded: “Your mom did.”

Similar truculence drives the Defense Department’s recent decision to force outlets that assign reporters to the Pentagon to agree to a policy that bars reporters from revealing news the department does not authorize. Most news organizations refused. (The New York Times recently sued the Pentagon, arguing that the policy violates the First Amendment.) Posobiec is among a group of pro-Trump influencers who accepted the restrictive terms. The result is that the new press corps the Pentagon grants access to is largely composed of far-right activists.

The Pentagon press shop maintains close ties to its newly constituted press corps. Wilson, the department’s press secretary, occasionally appears on a program Posobiec hosts. In an October episode, she thanked him for agreeing to the department’s restrictions. “Now we get to have incredible journalists like yourself who are going to be here in the Pentagon reporting on what the Department of War is doing every single day,” she said.

On Wednesday night, after weeks of silence, I heard from Posobiec again. He said he was “finalizing my story,” and wanted to know if me, my wife, “or your in-laws” wished to comment. His message arrived an hour and forty minutes after I wrote to Geressy, posing some last questions and telling him I was “finalizing this story.”

Trump’s Pentagon wants reporters to be not just docile recipients of the administration’s preferred narratives but active propagandists. That is a direct attack on the free press. It is also an insidious danger. It threatens to make us bad at our jobs. It can be harder work to treat people whom we cover critically like complete human beings, people who deserve empathy and a real chance to explain themselves. If the department yanks credentials for tough reporting, if a press secretary just attacks a story without engaging with questions, and if inquiries draw personal attacks, why give spokespeople, or the officials they work for, any opportunity to respond at all?

The answer, I think, is that in journalism, like everywhere else, we should treat people the way we want to be treated. This story, with its weird personal twist, drove home that necessity. By proposing to smear me, Posobiec inadvertently provided a reminder of how responsible reporters ought to act.

I have worked to be fair—and honest. This attempt won’t appease the Pentagon or the people who threatened me. And the choice here, between appearing to be coerced into silence or maybe getting slandered, lacks an option that doesn’t feel shitty.

But what I can control are the standards I aim for. Those are ultimately up to me. But they reflect the values of Mother Jones, and the influence of other journalists, one of whom is my wife. She makes the judgment I’ll live with.

[### The Brand-New Pentagon Press Corps Is Gaga for Hegseth

The Intercept

https://theintercept.com › 2025/12/13 › hegseth-new-pe...](https://theintercept.com/2025/12/13/hegseth-new-pentagon-press-reporters/)

2 days ago — After nearly all legacy news organizations declined to sign on to Hegseth's rules, the new Pentagon press corps is all his cheerleaders.

[### Hegseth team invites far-right activist Jack Posobiec on ...

The Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com › ... › Military](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/13/pete-hegseth-jack-posobiec/)

Feb 13, 2025 — Trump administration officials at the Pentagon invited a far-right activist, Jack Posobiec, to participate in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's first trip ...See more

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an 11 25

Far-right influencers are looking to Miami as a venue to pursue "long-promised charges of a 'grand conspiracy'" against President Donald Trump’s perceived adversaries, according to a New York Times report.

The influencers have even found a federal prosecutor there— Jason A. Reding Quiñones, Trump-appointed United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, who was sworn into office in August 2025 and is currently a central figure in a high-profile investigation into a 2017 intelligence community assessment regarding Russian election interference.

As for their alleged 'grand conspiracy,' the Times explains that its theory is "still unsupported by the evidence."

"A cabal of Democrats and 'deep-state' operatives, possibly led by former President Barack Obama, has worked to destroy Mr. Trump in a yearslong plot spanning the inquiry into his 2016 campaign to the charges he faced after leaving office," the Times explains.

Last week, however, Reding Quiñones issued over two dozen subpoenas, including to officials who took part in the inquiry into ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter, the Times writes.

Among the recipients include familiar Trump foils: James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence; Peter Strzok, a former F.B.I. counterintelligence agent who helped run the Russia investigation; and Lisa Page, a former lawyer at the bureau.

The Florida investigation currently focuses on a "January 2017 intelligence community assessment about Russian interference in the 2016 election, particularly the role played by John O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. director, in drafting the document," the Times says.

The Brennan investigation started "after criminal referrals to the Justice Department by top Trump intelligence officials," the Times writes, and was assigned to David Metcalf, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, "who was given special authority to scrutinize and possibly prosecute Mr. Brennan, according to four people with knowledge of his actions who requested anonymity to discuss an open matter."

Metcalf held senior Justice Department positions during the first Trump administration.

The Brennan case, however, was transfered from Metcalf to Reding Quiñones, "as part of a decision to greatly expand the scope of the Brennan investigation into other, unspecified activities, according to two people with knowledge of the situation," the Times explains.

The Florida subpoenas, the Times explains, "seek documents or communications related to the intelligence community assessment from July 1, 2016, through Feb. 28, 2017, according to people familiar with them. It commands the recipients to provide them to prosecutors in Miami by Nov. 20."

Despite the dubious nature of these investigations, the Times says, they do have one thing on its side.

"Reding Quiñones, a military veteran, has pursued his mandate to hunt down Mr. Trump’s foes with a gung-ho attitude that has endeared him to the president and the small but influential cadre of loyalists pushing hardest for prosecutions," notes the Times.

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BLOOMB

DOJ Miami Office Readies Conspiracy Probe Into Trump Enemies (2)

Nov. 7, 2025

Jason A. Reding Quiñones, US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, speaks during a press conference on August 25, 2025 in New York City.

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The South Florida US attorney’s office is recruiting prosecutors and restructuring its chain of command in preparation for a grand jury investigation expected to target former Justice Department officials and others involved in cases against President Donald Trump.

Under the leadership of a Trump-loyalist US attorney, Jason Reding Quiñones, the Miami-based office has been inviting current staff and outside lawyers to join the new investigative team to be housed within its national security unit, said four people familiar with the situation.

The exact scope of the grand jury effort—which one of the individuals described as “special counsel oversight”—remains unclear.

A federal judge recently empaneled a new grand jury to convene Jan. 12 in Fort Pierce, Fla. That prompted close Trump allies to strongly indicate this will be the venue to review what they allege is a broad Democratic conspiracy to thwart Trump, including Russian collusion claims and indictments over Mar-a-Lago documents and election interference.

Scott Strauss, a law school classmate of Reding Quiñones who worked with him as a South Florida federal prosecutor, is playing a potentially significant role in the plans, said the people, who spoke anonymously to avoid reprisal.

Less than two years into the job, Strauss was pushed out of the US attorney’s office for trying to launch baseless 2020 voting fraud conspiracy investigations, the individuals added. He proceeded to help lead Florida Gov. Ron Desantis’ election crimes office in 2022.

People close to the office are waiting to learn if Strauss will return to head up the grand jury project, or if a respected career prosecutor currently running the national security section will remain in charge of it. Strauss recently asked at least one attorney from outside the office to join the South Florida grand jury team, three people familiar with the matter said.

A DOJ spokesperson declined to comment.

An email to Strauss’ currently listed work account bounced back, suggesting he’s switched jobs. Strauss declined to comment via text message, including on whether he’s in the process of returning to DOJ.

Two of the office’s recently-hired line prosecutors abruptly resigned under duress after being asked this week to join the grand jury investigation, said three individuals.

They exited following a tense meeting in which superiors accused them of leaking information about their new assignment to the media or discussing it with colleagues.

MAGA Pressure

The national security unit has long been organized as a section within the office’s criminal division, but Reding Quiñones this week informed staff that he stripped the criminal chief’s authority by ordering the national security group to start reporting directly to the US attorney’s executive office, according to a Nov. 3 email obtained by Bloomberg Law.

That announcement came 14 hours after prominent MAGA influencer Jack Posobiec denounced the criminal chief, Peter Forand, on X for donating $2,300 to the 2024 Kamala Harris presidential campaign and other Democratic causes.

Forand will “be in charge of” of the newly empaneled grand juries “to investigate Crossfire Hurricane and the Mar-a-Lago raid conspiracy,” Posobiec posted. “Can Forand be trusted to fairly investigate the Biden regime and Jack Smith if he’s friends with them and donates thousands of dollars to them?”

About two hours after Reding Quiñones emailed out the new leadership structure, Posobiec referenced his earlier Forand criticism in a new post to his 3.2 million followers: “UPDATE: Hearing good things on this.”

Forand, who former colleagues say has operated as a nonpartisan prosecutor willing to implement any administration’s objectives, had previously been removed from an office directly outside of Reding Quiñones’ executive suite to a different part of the building, three people said.

That office space is now occupied by a newly hired chief of staff to the US attorney—an unusual position under any top prosecutor. That chief of staff, Jim Poland, is an FBI agent on detail, who’s overseeing the office’s “non-litigation and administrative functions,” Reding Quiñones wrote to staff Nov. 3.

As his team lays the groundwork for the January grand jury, Reding Quiñones has been taking extra precautions in warning staff about keeping office business confidential.

Late last month, Reding Quiñones messaged all employees—flagged with a red high-priority notice—to remind them about DOJ rules forbidding unauthorized communications with the press, according to a copy of the note obtained by Bloomberg Law.

The two resigning assistant US attorneys—one a registered Republican and the other a military veteran—were both considered promising prosecutors inside the office, said three people.

Trump Adviser

The Miami office’s preparations come as Mike Davis, an influential Trump legal adviser, has called for his friend, Reding Quiñones, to investigate what he’s termed “lawfare Democrats” under a Reconstruction-era “conspiracy against rights” statute designed to combat the Ku Klux Klan.

“For the last three-and-a-half years since the Mar-a-Lago raid I have very publicly called for a grand jury in Fort Pierce,” Davis told Bloomberg Law on Thursday. He added, “I hope my very good friend Jason Reding Quiñones” will hold them accountable for the “Russian collusion hoax” and the “Mar-a-Lago raid.”

Reding Quiñones was sworn into office in August, after serving as a state trial court judge in Miami-Dade County.

He’s pushed the South Florida district—one of the largest and most historically significant US attorney’s offices in the country—closer to the president’s agenda. His mission statement includes the phrase “restore impartial justice.”

In an Oct. 29 Truth Social post, Trump singled out former officials such as Special Counsel Jack Smith and several members of his team, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and FBI Director Chris Wray as people who are “a disgrace to our Nation” and “should be investigated, immediately.”

MSNBC reported Thursday that Reding Quiñones’ office is also readying grand jury subpoenas for an investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan related to the 2017 intelligence assessment about Russian election interference.

Fort Pierce, which is more than a two hour drive north of Miami, offers a majority conservative jury pool and a small courthouse with only one district court judge. That jurist, Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon, issued several ruling favorable to the then-former president while presiding over his classified documents case.

(Updated with reporting on two prosecutor resignations.)

To contact the reporter on this story: Ben Penn in Washington at bpenn@bloomberglaw.com

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Seth Stern at sstern@bloomberglaw.com; Rob Tricchinelli at rtricchinelli@bloombergindustry.com

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ABC

A key Trump ally says a federal grand jury has been empaneled in Florida that will begin meeting in January to investigate what he calls a decade-long conspiracy against President Donald Trump.

In a series of interviews with conservative podcasters over the last week, conservative attorney Mike Davis -- a close friend and informal adviser to Attorney General Pam Bondi and other top Trump administration officials -- has claimed that the grand jury will consider whether to bring criminal charges against top Democratic figures that Davis claims have colluded over the last decade to impede Trump, beginning with the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election through the criminal cases against the president.

The Federalist Society's Mike Davis speaks with Missouri Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt at the CPAC DC conference at the Gaylord National Resort in Oxon Hill, MD on Thursday, 20, 2025. (

"I've been publicly calling for this for three years. I'm going to make damn sure that these lawfare Democrats go to prison during the four years of President Trump's second term," _{{Davis told}_}_{ }_conservative commentator Benny Johnson on Friday.

### Attorneys for former special counsel Jack Smith dispute 'inaccurate' claims he tapped senators' phones

While Davis does not hold a government position, _{{court documents}_}_{ }_confirm that a federal judge last month ordered a grand jury to be empaneled in Fort Pierce, Florida, beginning in January at the request of the Trump administration.

A representative of the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the purpose of the grand jury.

A conservative lawyer who helped shepherd Trump's nominees through the Supreme Court confirmation process, Davis now runs the Article III Project, an organization that describes itself as devoted to helping "fight leftist lawfare to defend the rule of law."

Trump has recently called for the prosecution of some of the same officials accused by Davis of using lawfare to target him.

"They cheated and rigged the 2020 Presidential Election," Trump wrote on social media Saturday. "These Radical Left Lunatics should be prosecuted for their illegal and highly unethical behavior!"

Trump has not yet commented on Davis' remarks on the conservative podcasts.

In an interview on "The Charlie Kirk Show," Davis said his "buddy" Jason Quiñones -- the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida -- moved to empanel the grand jury after Davis "pushed very hard" to investigate what he says is a conspiracy against Trump.

Davis has suggested that top officials, including former Attorney General Merrick Garland, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, FBI Director Chris Wray and Special Counsel Jack Smith should be compelled to testify before the grand jury to answer questions about what Davis says is the politicized use of the legal system.

Quiñones and representatives from the Southern District of Florida did not immediately respond to ABC News' requests for comment.

Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Jason A. Reding Quinones speaks during a press conference at the U.S. Attorney's Office on August 25, 2025 in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough in New York City.

Davis has argued that the former Biden administration officials and others violated a section of federal law, known as 18 U.S.C. § 241, by conspiring to interfere with federally protected rights.

### House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan calls on Jack Smith to testify over Trump investigations

Created in response to a surge in violence during the Reconstruction period after the Civil War, the law has historically been used to protect the civil rights of Black Americans, though prosecutors have expanded it to apply to broader election-related and police-misconduct offenses.

Notably, Trump was accused of violating the statute after he allegedly sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election, though the case was dismissed after he won the 2024 election.

Davis claims that a wide array of actions -- including the FBI's investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election and the Jan. 6 insurrection -- were coordinated efforts by Democrats to impede and ultimately imprison Trump.

Davis also argues the criminal and civil cases against Trump, purported issues with Trump's Secret Service protection ahead of two assassination attempts last year and the efforts to remove Trump from the ballot in 2024 could also be violations of federal law.

"They took the country to the break. They tried to bankrupt Trump for non-fraud. They tried to throw him in prison four times for non-crimes. They tried to take him off the ballot in Colorado and made it elsewhere unconstitutionally. They tried to take off his head when Joe Biden underfunded Trump's Secret Service protection, said he was the biggest threat to democracy and to put a bull's eye on Trump," Davis said on Friday on the Johnson podcast.

With some Republican senators now raising concerns over the scope of the federal investigation of the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election -- including the subpoenaing of phone records of multiple senators -- Davis has argued he has enough support to carry out a sweeping investigation.

[:{The Alto Lee Adams Sr. United States Courthouse where U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon scheduled former President Donald Trump's trial to begin Aug. 14 in her courtroom on June 20, 2023 in Fort Pierce, Florida.

"There's now a special grand jury that Jason [Quiñones] just motioned the court and the Southern District of Florida to open in Fort Pierce. That's going to be empaneled in January. I think that sounds like a great place to open up this grand jury on Crossfire Hurricane and against these lawfare Democrats," Davis said Friday.

The setting for the grand jury in Fort Pierce's federal courthouse is a familiar one for Trump and his allies -- it's the same courthouse where he attended multiple hearings in his criminal case for allegedly retaining classified documents and obstructing justice. Davis claims the classified documents case,which was dismissed by a federal judge before the 2024 election, is part of the conspiracy against Trump as well.

"As I promised and as I will deliver, justice is definitely coming," Davis said Friday on Johnson's podcast.

---

AN 10 25

When Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth demanded journalists agree not to report anything without formal authorization from the Defense Department, he sent a mass evacuation of legitimate media from the press corps.

What’s left, writes Slate reporter Molly Olmstead, is … really something.

“The Pentagon has remade its press corps, and we’re starting to get an understanding of which people now are allowed access to the halls of power,” said Olmstead, who included a list of the “top hits” that Hegseth’s considers “valid journalism of interest to the public.”

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell “peddled his 2020 election conspiracy theories through a number of avenues, including his video streaming site,” wrote Olmstead. “As a result, LindellTV has been subject to the same defamation lawsuits that Lindell himself courted, but it carries on with a host of right-wing shows, including the signature Mike Lindell Show.”

LindellTV’s reporters frequently pester Democrats with MAGA lies dressed up as legitimate questions, prompting Nancy Pelosi to publicly snap at them for churning nonsense and MSNBC hosts to blast them for spreading lies to a LindellTV audience that is “too stupid to know the truth.”

IFrame Content

And when their reporters are not spouting lies, Olmstead says they’re fawning over President Donald Trump’s “fitness plan” and asking press secretary Karoline Leavitt when Trump plans to go public with it.

Another sycophantic organization still hanging around is The One America News network, which Olmstead describes as “about as extreme as it gets without tipping fully into Alex Jones lizard-people territory.”

“It has promoted hydroxychloroquine as a ‘miracle cure’ for COVID; spread ominous conspiracy theories about George Soros; speculated that Michael Cohen, not Donald Trump, had an affair with Stormy Daniels; and declared that Roy Moore was innocent and actually wonhis election,” said Olmstead. “It has also hired Matt Gaetz as a host.”

“Human Events” is another example of the lingering press corps flotsam, said Olmstead.

“This is the latest home for Jack Posobiec, a content creator so inflammatory that being seen as cozy with him — as Hegseth was, in inviting Posobiec on an overseas trip — can lead to major scandal,” said Olmstead. “Posobiec, who has connections to various hate groups, is known primarily as the man behind Pizzagate. … He remains extreme: “Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely,” he said at last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference.

The Navy revoked Posobiec’s security clearance as a U.S. naval intelligence officer on reserve, after his involvements with the Unite the Right white supremacist rally.

The list continues with spurious far-right networks like the National Pulse, whose leader was so inflammatory that Australia’s Labor Party asked to ban him from the country, Olmstead reports. Another is The Epoch Times, which Olmstead points out has been charged with money laundering and is “a dedicated promoter of right-wing conspiracy theories, going so far as to create a network of YouTube channels amplifying hoaxes and election misinformation.

The list goes on, and Olmstead said all will “inevitably benefit from a veneer of legitimacy from the credentialing and from the ‘scoops’ they’re given.”

Read the Slate report at this link.

---

NO LNX

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/trump-antifa-portland-pam-bondi-posobiec-b2842048.html

Trump just hosted an ‘Antifa roundtable’ at the White House. It was so much worse than you’re imagining

Holly Baxter reports on a meeting that, at one point, appeared to position people protesting against Nazis in the Weimar Republic as the bad guys, and at another saw the president declare, ‘We got rid of freedom of speech’

:{:{Thursday 09 October 2025}:

255

Comments

Trump says ‘we took the freedom of speech away’ with flag-burning order

...

Wake up, babe, new civil liberties infringement propaganda just dropped! Today’s instalment of America’s ongoing descent into farce brings us a White House press release about “Antifa terror” and a presidential roundtable devoted entirely to the group that famously isn’t a real entity.

Around noon, a press release appeared on the official White House website, quoting numerous anonymous Portland residents, including a “man,” a “woman,” and a “business owner,” all of whom absolutely want the National Guard to storm their city. “I kind of support it 110%” is an actual quote.

But that was just the appetizer. At 3 p.m., the televised meeting began. And boy, was there a lot of meat.

Held at the table of “independent journalists” (far-right activists) and moderated by Donald Trump, it opened with a statement by the president that “paid anarchists” want to “destroy our country,” followed by bizarre, conspiracy-laden claims that anti-Trump protesters have signs made of expensive paper “with beautiful wooden handles” that therefore must have been printed in the basements of secretive organizations, and that “we have a lot of records already, a lot of surprises, a lot of bad surprises” in store for the people who align themselves with anti-fascism.

And by the way, he noted, “we got rid of free speech” because flag-burning is bad.

President Donald Trump, in one of many animated moments during a roundtable on Antifa he hosted with right-wing influencers in the White House on October 8

open image in gallery

President Donald Trump, in one of many animated moments during a roundtable on Antifa he hosted with right-wing influencers in the White House on October 8 (Reuters)

Attorney General Pam Bondi jumped in to underline the message: “We’re not going to stop at just arresting people in the street.” No, they’re going to “take down the organization brick by brick” and “destroy the organization from top to bottom.”

In chimed Kristi Noem, everyone’s favorite puppy killer: Antifa wants to “destroy the American people and their way of life” and is a group that has “infiltrated our entire country,” from “city to city,” cried the Homeland chief. Never mind that the anti-fascist protesters in Portland, Chicago and other Democratic cities are pretty much all homegrown Americans.

No, insisted ICE Barbie — they are invaders. They are traitors. They are “just as dangerous” as MS-13, Isis and Hamas. Her priority is “making sure they never see the light again.” This, by the way, is the woman who grandstanded about “staring down” Antifa when footage showed it was actually a couple of photographers and a guy in a chicken suit.

The quotes came thick and fast from the others around the table. At one point, someone casually addressed an imaginary Antifa member, saying: “You will be crushed by the Constitution.” Just as the Founding Fathers intended, no doubt.

The frenzied energy in the room was palpable even through a screen. Influencer Brandi Kruse did a monologue about how she used to “suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome” and how, since she changed sides, “I’m happier, I’m more healthy, I think I’m even a bit more attractive.”

:{:{Not to be outdone, in came Jack Posobiec, one of the right’s weirdest hangers-on, who is perhaps most famous for the time he spread the “Pizzagate” theory and then got removed from the pizzeria in question by police for filming a child’s birthday party.}:

Running with the major theme of the hour — that Antifa is definitely, certainly, really real despite all evidence to the contrary, and that everybody needs to stop saying it’s not real — Posobiec made a startling claim: Antifa is so clearly real that it “has been going on for almost 100 years ... going back to the Weimar Republic in Germany.”}:

And look, yes, it is absolutely true that there were anti-fascist protesters in the Weimar Republic. If you’ll remember, those were the people taking issue with the early versions of the Nazis. But it’s sort of difficult to position yourself as the good guys if you’re aligning yourself with the Nazis in your historical analogy. I’m just saying that, if I was Posobiec’s publicity guy, I might ask him to drop that soundbite from future public appearances.

The State Dining Room at the White House played host to a bizarre discussion about a group that doesn’t formally exist

open image in gallery

The State Dining Room at the White House played host to a bizarre discussion about a group that doesn’t formally exist (AFP via Getty)

I think we all know what’s going on here. But let’s begin with the fundamentals: Antifa isn’t real — at least, not in the way one convenes a roundtable. It has no central command structure, no coherent leadership, no membership rolls, no headquarters. It is a loose ideological umbrella — a term that is sometimes used by disparate activists and local groups, but much more frequently by the far right than by the supposed lefties who are part of it.

Obviously, the fact that there’s no proof anyone even really identifies as Antifa didn’t stop the White House from designating the “group” a terrorist organization a couple of weeks ago.

Research shows that genuine political violence remains overwhelmingly driven by far-right actors, not nebulous “Antifa” networks. But this, truly, is where MAGA has arrived at: a place so far removed from observable reality that it now holds official government functions with imaginary enemies. Once, conservatism prided itself on being “the party of realism.” Today’s version treats politics as fan fiction, complete with invented villains and lore.

Such productive unreality takes the energy that could be spent on governing or solving problems and redirects it into myth-making. Instead of talking about wages, housing or climate disasters, we’ll talk about black-clad anarchists who can’t be fact-checked because they’re mostly not real. And then we’ll use their alleged existence to justify sending masked men with rifles into cities that, it just so happens, didn’t vote for us. You could almost admire the absurdity if it wasn’t attached to actual state power.

The constant threats at this roundtable aimed at “people with money” who are supposedly “funding” Antifa are the real point. And, like a lot of the White House’s output at the moment, it is intended to intimidate as many people as possible into silence.

In their little room with their teeny little microphones, a bunch of very important people in heavy makeup entered into a collective delusion today. They’re desperate for everybody else to join them. But there are some facts that just won’t un-fact. And for those of us who fancy ourselves OK with words, let’s remember that, no matter how much you twist it, being anti-anti-fascism means being fascist, even — especially — in the Weimar Republic. That’s just elementary logic.

More aboutAntifaNational GuardJack PosobiecWhite HouseDonald Trump

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MEDIAITE

Journalist Katie Daviscourt appeared on Fox News with a black eye on Wednesday after she was assaulted by a masked “Antifa-affiliated protester” in Portland.

“Wow, that is quite a shiner. Are you all right?” asked Fox News host Jesse Watters.

“Oh yeah, I definitely have a black eye,” she replied. “That’s what it’s been like covering Portland for the past four months. Complete lawlessness.”

Daviscourt told Watters there were now “several blocks” in Portland which were “completely controlled by Antifa-affiliated protesters who harass, assault, and threaten anyone who they perceive to be a threat to their cause, including journalists, local residents, and ICE agents,” with local police refusing to maintain law and order in the area.

“The Trump administration is absolutely correct in deploying federal troops here because Portland Police has completely abandoned this zone. They refuse to go in and everyone that shows up is on their own,” she said:

Last night, I got assaulted and I immediately ran to a Portland Police officer, hunted down the suspect, chased her through the streets and said, “This is my assault suspect, can you guys finally do something?” and I had eyes on her for about 35 minutes– Portland Police refused to come in and make an arrest and I had three officers just standing there, watching me try to hunt down the suspect. And imagine my anger when I go online, after doing all that about an hour ago, and I see Portland Police put out a BOLO asking for the public’s help in identifying my assault suspect. So that is what it’s like on the ground here in Portland, and it’s time for a federal crackdown. The Trump administration needs to start treating Antifa like ISIS, the terrorists that they are, and put an end to them here for good.

During a separate interview with Real America’s Voice host Jack Posobiec, Daviscourt explained that she was hit with a large flag pole in the face by her attacker.

“This Antifa-affiliated subject just started approaching me and waving a flag pole in my face, and then I kind of turn around and that’s when she swung it like a baseball bat and directly hit my eye,” Daviscourt recalled.

Posobiec responded, “So she was trying to blind you. She was actually trying to blind you, and you know, a flag pole like that to the ocular socket, I mean, your brain is right there. There are serious– very, very serious injuries that could happen, and look, I’m sitting here in the Charlie Kirk studio. We all know how serious these things can get.”

IFrame Content

Portland Police put out a press release asking for help identifying the suspect in Daviscourt’s assault on Wednesday.

However, the police department denied Daviscourt’s claim that they refused to assist following the incident.

Portland Police claimed that upon being flagged down by Daviscourt, one of its Dialogue Liaison Officers “followed the suspect north on South Moody Avenue while calling in additional police resources.”

“The Dialogue Officer attempted to talk to the suspect to hear her side of the story. She would not stop, so the DLO told her she was being detained. She refused the lawful police order to stop and she fled,” the police department said in its press release. “At 8:59 p.m., patrol officers met the victim and began an investigation. They documented the incident and the case is now assigned to a detective in the Major Crimes Unit.”

The state of Oregon filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump on Sunday after the president announced he would send the National Guard to Portland to ensure public safety amid violent protests.

“At the request of Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, I am directing Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists,” Trump declared. “I am also authorizing Full Force, if necessary.”

Watch above via Fox News.

---

MMA

### Newsmax host says a minister shot in the head with a pepper ball by ICE is “actually an antifa member masquerading as a pastor”

10/10/25

NOTE CRM POD BROS MANTrA INSURRECTION

### Right-wing media say Portland is a war zone under siege. On-the-ground coverage paints a different picture.

10/10/25

Right-wing media say Portland is a war zone under siege. On-the-ground coverage paints a different picture.

Local coverage has highlighted the peaceful nature of protests and the violent response of federal agents

Written by Noah Dowe & Pete Tsipis

Research contributions from Casey Wexler & Media Matters Staff

Published10/10/25

Updated10/10/25

Right-wing media claim that Portland’s protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement show a city “under siege” or “conquered by antifa,” but on-the-ground coverage, by both national media outlets and local media outlets, has revealed the opposite.

Multiple local broadcast outlets report that protests are relatively small and peaceful, with many demonstrators “in pajamas, sharing pastries, throwing a frisbee, and playing board games."

The Wall Street Journal reported that “a sergeant from the Portland Police Bureau filed his daily observations of the demonstrations outside an ICE facility. 'Saw 8 people out front and couldn’t even get one of them to flip me the bird,' he wrote. 'Very low energy.'”

In direct contrast to coverage from right-wing media, Portland residents and officials have emphasized that it's actually federal agents who have been engaging in “violent tactics” against protesters, including “shoving peaceful veterans and elderly people to the ground” and employing point-blank attacks with pepper spray and mace.

Protests in Portland were described as “low energy” until Trump and right-wing media started claiming otherwise

- Protests in Portland, ongoing for at least four months, have centered on an ICE facility in the southern part of the city. As reported by The Oregonian, protesters have “numbered in the few dozens on most nights and their activity has largely been confined to a two-block radius of the building’s front driveway.” Oregon Live, [10/4/25]

- :{:{Trump announced on September 27 that he would send “all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland,” which he described as “under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.” Truth Social, [9/27/25]}:

- Trump’s move was seemingly encouraged by a month of dystopian coverage of Portland from right-wing media, which described the city as “under siege” and suggested it resembles “the French Revolution all over again.” Fox host Jesse Watters said that “every weekend is war” in Portland and suggested protesters “look pretty militaristic.” Media Matters, [9/29/25]

- According to The New York Times, federal officials described protests outside the Portland ICE facility as “low energy” until Trump’s post, after which “demonstrations had grown more intense … with more arrests and larger crowds than in preceding weeks.” According to the Times, reports from the Federal Protective Service in the days before the president’s post “offered no indication of a dangerous escalation of tensions, or unusual levels of protest activity that would prompt the level of alarm expressed by Mr. Trump.” The New York Times, [10/8/25]

- The Wall Street Journal wrote: “Daily reports from Portland police in the month leading up to Trump’s decision, on Sept. 27, to send federal troops into the city paint a different picture than public statements by Trump and others in his administration.” The Journal further reported: “On Sept. 5, President Trump described ongoing protests in Portland as 'unbelievable' and 'the destruction of the city.' Later that day, a sergeant from the Portland Police Bureau filed his daily observations of the demonstrations outside an ICE facility. 'Saw 8 people out front and couldn’t even get one of them to flip me the bird,' he wrote. 'Very low energy.'” The Journal also noted: “The White House has said the ICE facility is 'under siege.' Newly released police reports filed in federal court describe how the protests that began in June were dwindling before Trump’s order.” The Wall Street Journal, [10/9/25]

## On-the-ground news coverage highlighted that the vast majority of protests are relatively small and peaceful

- KGW reporter Evan Watson reported that the area just three blocks away from the ICE facility is “full of people enjoying picnics in the park, out here walking their dogs,” and “enjoying this nice summer evening.” Watson stated, “Every person we talked to on Tuesday laughed at the idea that Portland, and more specifically, this area near their homes and workplaces, needs federal troops.” KGW, *KGW News at 6*, [10/7/25]

- KATU reporter Jennifer Singh interviewed a protester outside the ICE facility who said Portland is not a war zone and fears that troops “will bring more violence,” not less. Singh added that the protests “have remained peaceful.” KATU, *KATU News at 6*, [10/5/25]

- KOIN reporter Ariel Salk opened a segment by showing the area outside the ICE building where there were “only a couple dozen people” protesting, including “people barbecuing, listening to music.” In contrast, Salk described federal agents “hurling can after can of tear gas” at demonstrators over the weekend, adding that the “smoke really engulfed this whole neighborhood.” KOIN, *KOIN 6 News at 6*, [10/6/25]

- Reporting outside the ICE facility, KPTV’s Makenna Marks said there were no “physical altercations or arrests” on Sunday and noted that many protesters were “in pajamas, sharing pastries, throwing a frisbee, and playing board games.” Marks also interviewed a number of residents who said the city “is not war-torn” and argued “the thing that’s harming us is the escalation tactics that Trump’s trying to use to create a narrative that Portland is this boogeyman that requires further militarization.” One resident told Marks, “If the narrative is Portland is a war zone, let’s actually take a look at who’s making it a war zone.” KPTV, *5 O’Clock News*, [10/5/25]

- :{:{CNN's Shimon Prokupecz reported on the ground from Portland: “The entire protest zone is less than a block long. ... The rest of Portland is not in chaos.” CNN, [10/8/25]}:
- }:
## Local coverage has also emphasized the excessive force used by federal agents on protesters

- KOIN’s Ariel Salk reported that people on the roof of the ICE facility mocked demonstrators and federal agents arrested multiple protesters while “using several rounds of multicolored tear gas against the crowd.” The correspondent interviewed a protester who said they had elderly people with them and were not expecting the tear gas. KOIN, *KOIN 6 News at 5*, [10/4/25]

- Salk later reported that she “personally saw a sniper rifle laser on a woman out here trying to drive into her apartment.” KOIN, *KOIN 6 News at 5*, [10/5/25]

- Salk reported on the impacts that the federal response is having on a low-income housing building across the street from the ICE facility, including residents enduring “tear gas spilling into their homes.” A representative from the building told the journalist, “The violent tactics that federal agents are using, including tear gas and pepper balls, are really impacting residents’ quality of life.” The journalist also noted that many residents are veterans who “are experiencing PTSD because of this tear gas, flash bangs, and helicopters that we’ve been seeing and hearing in the skies night after night.” KOIN, *KOIN 6 News at 5*, [10/6/25]

- KOIN reporter Ariel Iacobazzi said that Portland officials are accusing federal agents of “shoving peaceful veterans and elderly people to the ground, using impact munitions on peaceful crowds, and spraying pepper spray directly into protesters’ faces.” The segment then showed videos of protesters being pepper-sprayed point-blank by agents. KOIN, *KOIN 6 News at 11*, [10/6/25]

- KGW anchor David Molko highlighted claims of excessive force by federal agents, including “the use of pepper spray and impact munitions, things like rubber bullets, on an otherwise peaceful crowd.” The report included footage of a man who had pepper spray directed into the air intake of his inflatable frog costume by federal agents. KGW, *KGW News at 11*, [10/6/25]

- KPTV reporter Spencer Schacht spoke with a woman who was maced point-blank by a federal agent “with no warning, no warning at all.” The protester, Leilani Payne, called it a “violent attack” and is currently pursuing a use of force lawsuit against the federal agents. KPTV, *6 O’Clock News*, [10/6/25]

## Right-wing media coverage has painted a drastically different picture of Portland demonstrations, calling the city a “war zone” that is “under siege by antifa”

- The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles said, “You can see the pictures of Portland in just the last month or two — it looks like a war zone.” He added that Portland officials are “not protecting one another; you’re letting criminals roam your streets and maraud and kill.” The Daily Wire, *The Michael Knowles Show*, [9/29/25]

- Fox host Jesse Watters said that the National Guard is “on the way to do the job Portland police won't do” and claimed that “Portland has been under siege by antifa for four months.” Watters added, “A Portland police rep posted a picture of a sunrise with the caption, ‘“War-ravaged” Portland full of “domestic terrorists.”’ Well, the sun rises in Gaza, too. I don’t want to live there.” Fox News, *Jesse Watters Primetime*, [10/1/25]

- The Five co-host Kayleigh McEnany attempted to justify the deployment of the National Guard in Portland by declaring there is “a pretty clear rebellion against" the government. McEnany cited supposed acts of violence committed against ICE agents, and she additionally argued that Trump is on “strong legal footing” because “you can federalize the Guard if there's a rebellion.” Fox News, *The Five*, [10/6/25]

- Newsmax host Rob Finnerty said Portland protests had “morphed into an insurrection.” Finnerty said: “This invasion of the weird is very bizarre,” adding, “Notice the foreign flags and strange tribal chants happening — again — in Oregon.” Newsmax, *Finnerty*, [10/2/25]

- OnWar Room, right-wing influencer Jack Posobiec said, “Portland as a city is now in open insurrection against the federal government.” Posobiec argued, “This is an actual insurrection scenario whereby in you have local officials that are completely defying the unmitigated right, the unlimited right of the federal government to enforce immigration laws.” He also posted on social media that the city “has fallen to Antifa.” Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [10/6/25; Twitter/X, 10/6/25]

- Daily Wire host Matt Walsh called Portland a “war zone” and said it’s “in a state of open insurrection.” “It's total chaos,” he said. “It's in a state of open insurrection. ICE agents are being attacked. Portland is trying to subvert the authority of the federal government, defy the laws of the land.” Daily Wire, *The Matt Walsh Show*, [10/7/25]

- Right-wing YouTuber Benny Johnson claimed Portland “has been conquered by antifa.” He added, “This is a fallen city.” YouTube, *The Benny Show*, [10/8/25]

*Update (10/10/25):This piece has been updated with additional information.

---

10 25 PROLY HAVE EARLIER? Jack Posobiec - Wikipedia

Jack Michael Posobiec III (/pəˈsoʊbɪk/ pə-SOH-bik; born December 14, 1984)^[1][2] is an American alt-right^[3] political activist, television correspondent,^[4] conspiracy theorist,^[5] and former United States Navy intelligence officer.^[6]

:{:{Posobiec is known for his pro-Donald Trump comments on Twitter, and has used white supremacist and antisemitic symbols and talking points, including the white genocide conspiracy theory.^[11] He has promoted fake news, including the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy theory claiming high-ranking Democratic Party officials were involved in a child sex ring.^[12][13]}:

He was also a promoter of the Stop the Steal movement.^[2] From 2018 to 2021, Posobiec was employed by One America News Network (OANN), a far-right cable channel, as a political correspondent and on-air presenter.^[4] He left OANN in May 2021 to begin hosting a show for the conservative student organization Turning Point USA, and to join conservative news site Human Events as a senior editor.^[14]}:

Early life and education

Posobiec was born and raised in Norristown, Pennsylvania, to a family of Polish descent.^[15] His parents were both Democrats.^[16] He attended Kennedy–Kenrick Catholic High School^[16] and went to college at Temple University.^[16] While at Temple, he became the chairman of the Temple University College Republicans and started a chapter of Students for Academic Freedom, an organization run by the David Horowitz Freedom Center.^[16] He also participated in a summer internship for U.S. Senator Rick Santorum and volunteered for U.S. Representative Curt Weldon's unsuccessful reelection campaign in 2006.^[16] He graduated from Temple in 2006^[17] with a double major in political science and broadcast journalism.^[18]

Career

After graduation, Posobiec worked for the United States Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, China.^[16] He played a minor role in the film The Forbidden Kingdom, which was released in 2008.^[15] He later worked for WPHT, a conservative talk radio station, and then for the campaign of Steve Johnson in the 2010 Pennsylvania lieutenant gubernatorial election. Posobiec served several years in the United States Navy Reserve from 2010 to 2017, reaching the rank of lieutenant junior grade. He was deployed for ten months at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base from September 2012, and worked at the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), where he later worked again as a civilian.^[15][19]

During the 2016 election, Posobiec was a special projects director of Citizens for Trump, a pro-Trump organization^[20] but not an official group.^[21] In March 2017, Posobiec resigned from his full-time civilian position at ONI, saying that his support for Trump led to a "toxic work environment". As of August 2017, his security clearance was suspended^[19] and was under review.^[22]

Political activities

Posobiec describes himself as a "Republican political operative".^[23] During the 2016 election, Posobiec was a special projects director of the political organization Citizens for Trump.^[20] Semafor found he was by far the most influential voice with dozens of Republican strategists going into the 2024 campaign season.^[24]

He said in 2017 that his work was "reality journalism—part investigative, part activist, part commentary",^[25][26] and that "I'm willing to break the fourth wall. I'm willing to walk into an anti-Trump march and start chanting anti-Clinton stuff—to make something happen, and then cover what happens."^[18] Will Sommer, then an editor at The Hill, said in 2017 that Posobiec "make[s] stuff up, relentlessly", and that "there's no one at that level."^[27]

On June 16, 2017, Posobiec disrupted a Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar that depicted the title character as a Trump-like figure. Posobiec was prompted by Mike Cernovich, another alt-right conspiracy theorist, who had offered a $1,000 prize for anyone who interrupted a performance.^[28] "You are all Goebbels, you are all Nazis like Joseph Goebbels", he shouted at the audience in a video he posted on Twitter.^[19] Posobiec was escorted from the event along with another protester, Laura Loomer, who was arrested for disorderly conduct after refusing to leave the stage.^[23]

Posobiec has supported other conservative political figures with similar tactics. He promoted e-mails and files leaked to 4chan of Emmanuel Macron shortly before the French presidential election in 2017.^[20] In a video shot for Rebel Media, he promoted the candidacy of Marine Le Pen of the National Front.^[29] Posobiec celebrated the Macron leak at a party hosted by Milo Yiannopoulos. In October 2017, Posobiec and Cernovich formed a super PAC called #Rev18 and announced its support for Josh Mandel in the 2018 U.S. Senate election in Ohio.^[30] In July 2017, Posobiec handed out flyers thanking Democratic senators for "protecting our quality violent porn content", including "ritual Satanic porn videos". The flyers were distributed outside the U.S. Senate at a demonstration in support of net neutrality.^[31]

Posobiec organized a "Rally Against Political Violence" in Washington, D.C., on June 25, 2017, to condemn the shooting of Steve Scalise. Richard Spencer, another alt-right figure who organized a separate, competing rally at the same time, ridiculed Posobiec's event and called it "pathetic".^[32] In November 2017, Posobiec encouraged his Twitter followers to target a woman at her workplace after she came forward with allegations that Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore had attempted to have sex with her when she was 14 years old.^[33][34] In Pennsylvania's 18th congressional district special election in March 2018, Posobiec supported Democrat Conor Lamb over Republican Rick Saccone. Posobiec described Lamb as a "Pro-Trump Dem veteran".^[35]

In June 2020, in Washington, D.C.'s Lincoln Park, Posobiec was shoved and chased for several minutes by a dozen protesters at the Emancipation Memorial. The protesters called Posobiec, who was filming speakers, a Nazi and forced him from the park. Police arrived in a van and, after trying to quell the disturbance, helped Posobiec into the van before driving away. Posobiec tweeted later that he was "totally fine" but "filing an assault report with DC police".^[36][37]

In 2022, Posobiec wrote on Twitter "86 46", apparently referring to the president at the time, Joe Biden; in 2025, after James Comey published a photo of seashells in the pattern of "86 47", Posobiec accused Comey of urging "assassins to target our president [Donald Trump] and kill him", as Posobiec demanded Comey be arrested.^[38]

On February 22, 2024, Posobiec, speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, welcomed the "end of democracy," before adding that "we are here to overthrow it completely." Praising the January 6 United States Capitol attack, he then endeavored to "get rid of it and replace it with this right here"—holding his fist in the air. Clips of his remarks were widely shared on social media.^[39]

In August 2024, opinion journalist Michelle Goldberg criticized Posobiec for co-authoring a book titled Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them), which argues that leftists are not entitled to be considered human, and that democratic means for destroying the American political left are no longer viable.^[40][a]

In September 2024, Posobiec was hired by the Republican National Committee to train volunteer election monitors in Michigan and Wisconsin. At the Michigan event, he described them as the "final line of defense against the encroaching Marxism."^[42]

In February 2025, Posobiec participated in Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's visit to Ukraine and said he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during the visit. He was also invited to participate in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's overseas trip abroad to Germany, Belgium and Poland as a media representative.^[43]

Ties to far-right extremists

Posobiec's social media and political activities are linked to neo-Nazi and white supremacist movements. He has published multiple posts containing the white supremacist code "1488", or the Fourteen Words, and supports the use of the slogan.^{[9][10][44][45}] The 88 stands for HH, or Heil Hitler.^[46][47] In October 2016, Posobiec posted a tweet that included triple parentheses, an antisemitic symbol.^[8] In response to a 2017 Anti-Defamation League report on the alt-right, which included Posobiec, he tweeted a selfie of his visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial in Poland: "The @ADL_National would be wise to remember what happened the last time people made lists of undesirables".^[44]

In April 2017, Posobiec promoted on Twitter an event staged by Obóz Narodowo-Radykalny (ONR), a Polish neo-fascist movement that bombed Jewish homes in the 1930s.^[48][49] Posobiec later deleted his tweet promoting the event.^[49]

In August 2017, following the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that led to violent clashes between white nationalists and counter-protesters, Posobiec said that the rally had become "massive propaganda" for the left and that the mainstream media was "fanning the flames of this violence." He said that Trump should have disavowed Black Lives Matter. Posobiec later tweeted that he had consistently disavowed white nationalism and violence.^[23] He also tweeted that he was "done with trolling" and that it was "time to do the right thing." Posobiec has frequently tweeted about the white genocide conspiracy theory.^[7][50]

In November 2018, Posobiec participated in a march on Warsaw together with ONR, Canadian white nationalist Stefan Molyneux and other far-right groups.^[51][48]

On June 9, 2022, the Southern Poverty Law Center listed Posobiec as an extremist, citing his links to hate groups such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, as well as his links to white nationalists, neo-Nazis, anti-government extremists, and the Polish far-right.^[2][52]

Media work

Between September 2016 and March 2017, Posobiec described himself as having previously worked for CBS News in his Twitter profile. CBS News told the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2020 that he had never worked for them.^[45]

Between early April and May 2017, Posobiec was employed by Rebel News, a far-right^[60] Canada-based website, as its Washington bureau chief,^[20] and was granted press access to the White House in April 2017. According to Philadelphia magazine, Posobiec "seem[ed] to have been charged in the press briefing room with haranguing legitimate journalists and running out the clock on press conferences with inane softball questions and Dear Leader obsequiousness" during his short time in the White House press pool.^[16]

In May 2017, Posobiec hired neo-Nazi brothers Jeffrey and Edward Clark to help create a documentary about the murder of Seth Rich for Rebel News. Jeffrey Clark was arrested by the FBI on gun charges after saying that the Jewish victims of the October 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting "deserved exactly what happened to them and so much worse".^[61] Posobiec later said that he had never heard of Jeffrey Clark and had never made a documentary about Seth Rich, even though HuffPost published photographs of Posobiec and the Clarks working together.^[62][63] He left Rebel News after allegedly plagiarizing a video script from white supremacist Jason Kessler.^[64][65]

From 2018 to 2021, One America News Network (OANN), a far-right TV network known for promoting conspiracy theories, employed Posobiec as a political correspondent and on-air presenter.^[14] In September 2018, he presented the pro-Hitler online poster known as Microchip on the network without indicating that person's affiliations, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC said the two men had worked together in spreading disinformation for several years, including the false claims propagated in Pizzagate". Microchip also praised Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi group responsible for multiple murders.^[66]

Posobiec left OANN in May 2021 to begin hosting a show for the conservative student organization Turning Point USA, and to join Human Events as a senior editor.^[14] He has worked as a contributor for Newsweek.^[67][68]

Conspiracy theories, falsehoods, and unsubstantiated claims

Posobiec has promoted many falsehoods,^[27] leading to Philadelphia calling him the "King of Fake News" in 2017.^[16] He was one of the most prominent promoters on social media of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which falsely claimed that high-ranking officials were involved in a child-sex ring centered at a Washington, D.C., pizzeria.^[16][12] He live-streamed an investigation of the pizzeria and was asked to leave after attempting to broadcast a child's birthday party being held in a back room.^[69] Posobiec later said he had always thought the Pizzagate theory was "stupid" and had filmed his visit to debunk it.^[16]

Posobiec attempted to discredit anti-Trump protesters in November 2016 by planting a sign at a protest reading "Rape Melania".^[70][71][72] Posobiec denied his involvement to BuzzFeed News, but the same phone number was used in his contact with the website and the text messages he reportedly sent.^[73] He said he had been questioned about it by the Secret Service.^[16] Posobiec organized the DeploraBall, an event held on January 19, 2017, to celebrate Trump's inauguration.^[74]

In December 2016, Posobiec claimed without evidence that Disney had re-written scenes in the Star Wars movie Rogue One to add "Anti Trump scenes calling him a racist", and called for a boycott of the Star Wars franchise. Disney denied the allegations.^[75]

Posobiec falsely said that former FBI director James Comey, at a United States Senate hearing on May 17, 2017, "said under oath that Trump did not ask him to halt any investigation". The claim was later repeated by conservative personalities and media outlets, including Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and the InfoWars website.^[26] Posobiec promoted the discredited conspiracy theory that Seth Rich had leaked e-mails from the Democratic National Committee to WikiLeaks.^[20] Posobiec promoted a hoax that CNN had published and then deleted an article defending Bill Maher's use of a racial slur.^[76]

In June 2017, shortly after Republican congressman Steve Scalise was shot and injured during a baseball practice, along with four others, Posobiec tweeted that it was a terrorist attack and blamed comments from liberal anti-Trump individuals. Later, he falsely tweeted that former United States Attorney General Loretta Lynch had called for "blood in the streets" the previous March^[77] and that Bernie Sanders had ordered his followers to "take down" Trump.^[78]

In December 2017, Posobiec, along with Cernovich, The Gateway Pundit, and InfoWars, promoted a false theory that a passenger train derailment near Dupont, Washington, was linked to the Antifa anti-fascism movement.^[79]

In October 2019, after Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a White House national security official and decorated Iraq war veteran, testified in Congress about President Trump requesting that the Ukrainian President investigate his political rival Joe Biden, Posobiec falsely claimed that Vindman had been advising the Ukrainian government on ways to prevent Trump from implementing his foreign policy goals.^[80]

In June 2020, during the protests against racism and police brutality in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, Posobiec falsely claimed that there were pipe bombs planted at the Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., and that "federal assets [were] in pursuit". There were no pipe bombs nor was there any evidence that any "federal assets" investigated. The claim was, however, picked up by The Gateway Pundit and retweeted by over 29,000 users on Twitter.^[81]

In April 2021, the SPLC reported that between November 2019 and August 2020, Posobiec had tweeted 28 links to SouthFront, a website linked to Russian intelligence. In return, SouthFront promoted Posobiec as well, and cited his tweets in their posts.^[49]

Following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Posobiec promoted the Ukraine bioweapons conspiracy theory and downplayed the Bucha massacre.^[2]

In February 2023, Posobiec tweeted a deepfake video depicting President Joe Biden announcing a military draft in response to a purported national security crisis. Posobiec tweeted false Biden quotes from the fake video, before calling it "a sneak preview of things to come". He later appeared in the video to acknowledge it was a "precreation...of what could happen."^[82]

In May 2024, after Donald Trump was convicted on all 34 charges of falsifying records in his hush money trial, Posobiec called on supporters to "[t]ake the path of the hunter, and with one singular voice, we are going to make them the prey." Additionally, he argued:

What happened to Donald Trump yesterday wasn't just a miscarriage of justice. It wasn't just a Stalinist show trial. It was an act of war. The unhumans want you dead. They want your way of life dead. They want to see your children lobotomized and converted to their mindless, lawless, and godless ways.^[83][84]

Posobiec has been linked as the person behind End Wokeness, a Twitter account which promoted the Springfield pet-eating hoax in September 2024.^[85] In October 2023, during the Gaza war, End Wokeness promoted a false claim that Palestinian journalist Saleh Aljafarawi was a "Hamas crisis actor".^[86]

In October 2024, Posobiec posted a meme on his Instagram profile claiming that the January 6 House Select Committee had destroyed all the evidence it compiled against Donald Trump.^[87] In reality, the evidence is publicly available;^[88] the assertion was fact-checked and found to be false.^[89] In the same month, Posobiec boosted a false sexual assault claim against Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz that originated from Russian propaganda network Storm-1516.^[90]

Personal life

From 2012 to 2016, Posobiec ran a blog and podcast about Game of Thrones called AngryGoTFan.^[15] In November 2017, Posobiec married a social media influencer born in Belarus.^[16][91] He told BuzzFeed News that he met his wife in 2015.^[92] He is Catholic.^[93]

In October 2025, Posobiec was reported to have voted in Pennsylvania in elections from 2004 to 2024 using his parents' address despite living in Maryland since 2017.^[94]

Published works

Citizens for Trump: The Inside Story of the People's Movement to Take Back America (2017) ISBN 978-1-5469-3653-4^[95]
4D Warfare: A Doctrine for a New Generation of Politics (Castalia House, 2018) ISBN 978-952-7065-65-5^[96]
The Antifa: Stories from Inside the Black Bloc (Calamo Press, 2021) ISBN 978-0-9997059-7-1^[97]
Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them) with Joshua Lisec, and foreword by Stephen K. Bannon. (War Room Books, 2024) ISBN 978-1-64821-085-3

Notes

"The old rules are over. The old order is over. Accusations are evidence. Activism means bigotry and hate. Criminals are allowed to roam free... For nearly 250 years, far-left uprisings have followed the same battle plans—from the first call for change to last innocent executed, from denial a revolution is even happening to declaration of the new order... We must stop what is coming... Our study of history has brought us to this conclusion: Democracy has never worked to protect innocents from the unhumans."^[41]

References

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Jack Posobiec’s Rise Tied to White Supremacist Movement

no lnx see hatewatch

Jack Posobiec’s Rise Tied to White Supremacist Movement

July 8, 2020

Michael Edison Hayden

In this article

(Click to toggle dialog with page links)

Jack Posobiec, a correspondent for One America News Network (OANN) whose work has been embraced by President Trump, collaborated for years with white supremacists, neo-fascists and antisemites, a Hatewatch investigation has determined.

Posobiec’s ties to far-right extremists travel beyond borders into Europe. His connections to white supremacy are too numerous to compile into one article, so Hatewatch is running a series of stories on the correspondent’s ties to the movement and promotion of it. This first story in the series lays out how Posobiec rose from being a pseudonymous Game of Thrones blogger to linking up with such white supremacists as Richard Spencer and a neo-Nazi who endorsed terrorism while using the online handle @PureWhiteEvil.

Posobiec, 34, described himself in his Twitter bio as being “fmr CBS News” during chapters of his life detailed in this story. CBS News told Hatewatch he never worked for them. At the time Posobiec introduced himself to the public on Twitter as “fmr CBS News,” he promoted now-infamous disinformation campaigns such as “Pizzagate.” He built up a larger audience during this time, gaining over 9,000 followers per month from September 2016 to March 2017.

Posobiec used Twitter to target Jewish journalists with antisemitic hate. His targets included CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, whose Polish family survived the Holocaust during World War II. Posobiec also targeted a group of journalists reporting on a press conference hosted by Peter Thiel. Three Jewish rights groups – the Anti-Defamation League, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Bend the Arc: Jewish Action – described Posobiec’s behavior as antisemitic or condemned OANN’s relationship to him after Hatewatch reached out for comment on this investigation. The full statements of those groups as well as additional evidence of Posobiec’s antisemitic remarks can be found here.

May 2, 2020, Trump tweet

President Trump tweeted about Posobiec on May 2.

On May 2, President Donald Trump praised Posobiec in a tweet: “That’s right Jack. Keep up the good work!” Trump was referring to the OANN anchor boasting on Twitter that the President reads his feed. It was not the first time Trump promoted Posobiec to his millions of followers. He also did so on Aug. 14, 2017, two days after the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. In the tweet Trump boosted, Posobiec commented on violent crime commonly associated with Black suspects, comparing it to a white supremacist murdering an antiracist demonstrator at the Charlottesville event. Trump also posted a self-promotional video to Twitter on May 16, where he was depicted as being surrounded by his allies while he gives a speech from the movie “Independence Day.” Posobiec’s face was included in the video alongside Vice President Mike Pence.

Posobiec is on pace to reach one million Twitter followers by the end of the year. He has nearly as many as the official account for OANN itself. Posobiec’s following and Trump’s endorsements help make him arguably the most recognizable person linked to OANN’s brand. Critics of President Trump have questioned his repeated praise of OANN, due to allegations that the station has low editorial standards and plays the role of a “propaganda outlet” for his administration. Posobiec, in particular, produces a prodigious amount of online propaganda celebrating Trump. Most recently, he appeared at Trump’s rally in Tulsa on June 20 and Trump’s speech in front of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota on July 3, hyping those events through Twitter.

Aug. 14, 2017, Trump tweet

President Trump retweeted Posobiec’s commentary about the Charlottesville rally on Aug. 14, 2017.

“They treat me very nicely,” Trump said of OANN at a March 19 press briefing.

Hatewatch reached out twice to the White House about Trump’s praise of Posobiec but did not receive a reply. OANN responded to Hatewatch’s request for comment on this investigation by calling it dangerous.

“Your claims based on a guilt by association fallacy is nothing short of reckless, dangerous, and improper – a typical smear tactic,” Robert Herring, OANN’s CEO, wrote to Hatewatch in an email in response to inquiries about Posobiec’s ties to white supremacists.

:{:{Posobiec responded by text to Hatewatch on April 20. He claimed that some of Hatewatch’s findings were “disinformation,” and said he reported Hatewatch to the FBI. (Posobiec has repeatedly derided the FBI on Twitter and called for their defunding on June 6.) Within a day of Hatewatch making contact with Posobiec, the correspondent, along with far-right social media personality Mike Cernovich, an associate of Posobiec’s and a fellow participant in the infamous “Pizzagate” disinformation campaign, published over a dozen tweets purporting to link Southern Poverty Law Center and one of its employees to violence and the desire to instigate murder. }:

Posobiec then anchored a segment on OANN that sought to tie the SPLC to a 2012 shooting incident at the headquarters of the anti-LGBTQ hate group Family Research Council. The SPLC denounced political violence in a statement at that time. Posobiec did not reach out for comment for his OANN segment about the SPLC.}:

“You’re intending to use disinformation to incite a mass shooting against my wife and child,” Posobiec wrote to Hatewatch by text on April 20.

Posobiec has deleted some of the Twitter posts Hatewatch describes in this series. He has also claimed his old posts were faked in order to make him look bad. For example, on May 22, around the time Hatewatch reached out to Posobiec’s associates for comment on this investigation, he tweeted out, “Fake [direct messages], tweets, texts etc[.] – all hallmarks of [a social justice warrior] hate mob[.] They still have ones of me floating around they made in 2017[.]”

Hatewatch linked to archived evidence of Posobiec’s social media history wherever possible throughout this investigation. Internet archiving authenticates the existence of the source material. It creates a simulacrum of a webpage or post through the use of web crawlers. Archiving has been deemed admissible as evidence in a U.S. court of law.

From ‘Game of Thrones’ to targeting Jews with hate

Posobiec’s road to becoming a right-wing social media personality started at a time when he was also a reserve intelligence officer, a position he held with the Navy from 2012 to 2018, according to military records reviewed by Hatewatch. Posobiec was stationed for a little under a year starting in September 2012 in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He told a podcast in April that he was “assigned to the interrogation cell” at that facility. A former active duty naval intelligence officer, who asked not to be named, analyzed Posobiec’s military service record for Hatewatch. That person said the OANN anchor was “unlikely in the extreme to have ever done any intelligence gathering of any national level importance.” The Navy provided his records but otherwise declined to comment.

Posobiec posted to Twitter under the pseudonym @AngryGOTFan from May 2012 to the afternoon of Aug. 29, 2016, when he changed the handle to @JackPosobiec, Hatewatch determined through an open source investigation of his account. He also ran a “Game of Thrones”-themed blog called angrygotfan.com. (While Hatewatch conducted this investigation, which included reaching out to associates of Posobiec about @AngryGOTFan, he added a line in his Twitter bio, “wrote @AngryGOTFan.”) Posobiec’s @AngryGOTFan Twitter account published hate and attracted the interest of far-right extremists.

A tweet published Oct. 19, 2015

A tweet published Oct. 19, 2015.

Holocaust-denying far-right publisher Chuck Johnson embedded an @AngryGOTFan tweet in a post he published for his now-defunct GotNews website on Oct. 20, 2015. Johnson gathered commentary in that post from “Star Wars” fans who expressed anger about the series casting non-white actors and women to play heroes in “Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens.” Posobiec, as @AngryGOTFan, was included.

“THE #BOYCOTTSTARWARSVII PEOPLE HAVE A POINT #PROBLEMATIC,” Posobiec wrote through his @AngryGOTFan persona on Oct. 19, 2015. The post showed side-by-side images of the heroes and villains in that film, highlighting the actors of color and female actors as “GOOD GUYS” and the all-white, all-male slate of actors as “BAD GUYS.”

A tweet published July 27, 2016

A tweet published July 27, 2016.

Posobiec published the tweet targeting Wolf Blitzer with antisemitism from behind his pseudonymous @AngryGOTFan account on July 27, 2016. He employed the so-called echoes meme around Blitzer’s first name, wherein a social media user adds three sets of parentheses around the name of a Jewish person to single them out with mockery. The meme originated on Mike Peinovich’s white supremacist podcast network The Right Stuff, and was employed by internet-based antisemities around the time of the 2016 election.

Posobiec also published a tweet in which he targeted Game of Thrones’ show runners with antisemitic hate.

“(((CROOKED BENIOFF LOW ENERGY WEISS AND LYIN BRYAN))),” Posobiec tweeted from the pseudonymous account on June 27, 2016, singling the men out as being Jewish.

A tweet published July 25, 2016

A tweet published July 25, 2016.

Posobiec’s @AngryGOTFan persona became increasingly political in the months before he began using his own name, according to archives. @AngryGOTFan published a tweet praising Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 25, 2016. The tweet featured a photoshopped meme of Trump riding a lion and Putin riding a bear. It referenced the leaked Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails. Russian intelligence agents are alleged to have illegally obtained those emails.

“MAGISTER DONALD RIDES WITH LORD PUTIN #DNCLEAKS,” @AngryGOTFan wrote on July 25, 2016.

White supremacists gather outside the 2016 Republican National Convention

Posobiec connected with far-right figures including white nationalist figurehead Richard Spencer at the scene of the 2016 Republican National Convention (RNC), according to statements Spencer made and a photo Spencer published to Twitter. Former Breitbart and GotNews editor Katie McHugh backed up Spencer’s account. McHugh told Hatewatch she was there on the day Spencer said the two men met.

Posobiec attended the RNC in July 2016 while working for Citizens for Trump, a 501(c)(4) organization with ties to longtime political operative Roger Stone. The Game of Thrones blogger self-produced an obscure podcast under his own name in the summer of 2016 with show titles like “Tutorial: How to Rig an Election.” He used it to talk about his relationship to Citizens for Trump, to Stone and his experience at the RNC. Citizens for Trump hosted an event outside the RNC on July 18, 2016, which was initially sponsored by a website called Eternal Sentry, according to news reports from that time. Citizens for Trump dropped Eternal Sentry as a sponsor after Media Matters reported that website depicted Jews as an enemy race of whites in propaganda videos. Eternal Sentry also pushed racist conspiracies about “white genocide.” It was not the first time Citizens for Trump drew criticism for promoting racism.

Stone, who Posobiec frequently praises, was convicted of felony charges related to the Mueller investigation. He has also made racist statements. He publicly described black journalist Roland Martin as a “stupid negro” and a “fat negro,” during the runup to the 2016 election, and was banned from appearing on CNN and MSNBC for those remarks, as well as others in a similar vein. Video footage taken July 19, 2016, the second day of the RNC, demonstrates Posobiec’s apparent closeness to Stone at that time. Stone gave a talk at a Barnes and Noble that day. In the footage, Posobiec can be seen standing behind the veteran political operative.

White nationalist Richard Spencer claimed that during the RNC in Cleveland, Posobiec introduced himself as an associate of Stone. Posobiec also called himself a white nationalist sympathizer, according to Spencer. Spencer published a picture appearing to show the two men together at a bar to corroborate his claim.

A tweet published Sept. 9, 2016

A tweet published Sept. 9, 2016.

“Here’s a photo of me and @JackPosobiec in Cleveland at bar during the RNC,” Spencer published on June 18, 2017, across a series of different tweets, explaining what he described as a falling out between the men that followed. “[I] had never heard of Jack [Posobiec] before. He introduced himself as a Roger Stone associate and we talked for a while. Jack praised me and other Alt-Right leaders for the work we did helping Trump. He presented himself as a supporter.”

Spencer described the incident in greater detail in an interview with Laura Sennett of the antiracist group One People’s Project in 2017. During the interview, which was recorded on video, Spencer said the event where he first met Posobiec was “semi-private.” He said it was staged at a “Scottish themed Hooters bar.” The Tilted Kilt was open in Cleveland during the 2016 RNC, but it closed two years later.

“This guy came up to me who I had never met before and he introduced himself, you know, as Jack, Jack Posobiec,” Spencer recalled to Sennett in the interview. “He introduced himself as, ‘I work for Roger Stone, I’m Roger Stone’s man.’”

Spencer said in the interview that Posobiec told him he was “tightly connected” to the Trump campaign. He presented himself as being “two degrees of separation from Trump himself, that kind of thing,” Spencer said. Spencer told Sennett that the more he saw of Posobiec over time, the less he trusted his motives. He described him as coming across as a mysterious, “behind-the-scenes operator.”

“He’s a weird guy. He has that dead-eyed look to him,” Spencer told Sennett. “He’s seems to be a little… creepy, sociopathic.”

Katie McHugh told Hatewatch she also attended the event at the Tilted Kilt. She described the bar to Hatewatch as a bar where female servers were “wearing kilts and had their white linen shirts tied into a bikini top.” McHugh said Posobiec’s friend Mike Cernovich hosted the gathering and invited her. McHugh told Hatewatch that Spencer’s memory of Posobiec being “dead-eyed” made sense. “Whenever I met [Jack Posobiec], it felt like there was no there there,” she said.

McHugh, who has since renounced racism, once belonged to a scene composed of white nationalists and anti-immigration activists. She told Hatewatch that several people in that scene were invited to the event at the Tilted Kilt. Kevin DeAnna, a white supremacist author who has written thousands of posts for VDARE and American Renaissance, attended it, she said. McHugh was dating DeAnna at that time. She said she traveled with him to the bar. Nathan Damigo was also there, according to McHugh. Damigo is the founder of the white nationalist group Identity Evropa. Peter Brimelow and his wife Lydia Brimelow of the white nationalist non-profit VDARE also went, according to McHugh. So did male supremacist Daryush “Roosh” Valizadeh, she said. The Brimelows and Valizadeh did not respond to a request for comment. Hatewatch was unable to find up-to-date contact information for Damigo or Deanna. A GotNews post published in August 2016 also describes Cernovich, Brimelow and Spencer gathering in Cleveland for the 2016 RNC.

Hatewatch reached out to Cernovich for comment about McHugh and Spencer’s claims on May 14. Cernovich did not respond. He later tweeted three times about SPLC in under 24 hours, accusing the organization in one post of inspiring a “mass shooting of Christians.”

Hatewatch found a livestream Cernovich recorded, in which he urged people who were in the “alt-right” to support Spencer’s organization National Policy Institute (NPI). Cernovich staged the livestream in September 2016, a month and a half after the Tilted Kilt event.

“If you’re in the alt-right, I hope you’re giving money to NPI,” Cernovich said of Spencer’s group during his livestream. “Alt-Right” refers to the white supremacist-friendly online movement that buoyed Trump’s rise during the 2016 election. On July 11, Cernovich tweeted that he banned Spencer from attending his events sometime in 2017.

Posobiec promoted Richard Spencer event at the Willard Hotel

On Sept. 7, 2016, Posobiec posted on Twitter about his desire to attend an event hosted by white nationalist Richard Spencer to the over 10,000 followers he had accrued as a pseudonymous “Game of Thrones” fan. The Spencer event also featured speeches by VDARE’s Peter Brimelow and Jared Taylor of the white nationalist group American Renaissance. It was initially scheduled to be held at the National Press Club. When the venue pulled out, Spencer held it at the Willard Hotel. Posobiec ultimately attended it there on Sept. 9, 2016.

“Excellent turn out at Alt Right press conference,” Posobiec wrote in one tweet alongside an image of Spencer speaking to what appears to be a modest crowd. “Peter Brimelow of @VDARE #AltRightConference,” Posobiec wrote in another tweet that featured a picture of Brimelow speaking to attendees of the event.

A New York magazine reporter embedded one of Posobiec’s tweets from that day in an article. Taylor of American Renaissance said in his speech that white and Asian people are genetically predisposed to be more intelligent than black and Hispanic people, the New York article noted.

“The media can’t get enough of @RichardBSpencer,” Posobiec tweeted on Sept. 9, 2016, alongside a picture of the white nationalist speaking to the media.

Posobiec contacted Richard Spencer after museum stunt

Richard Spencer, who did not respond to a request for comment from Hatewatch about Posobiec, published to Twitter in February 2019 screenshots of what he claimed were text messages Posobiec sent him. Hatewatch authenticated the messages through a third party who is in contact with Spencer but asked not to be named in this story. Hatewatch also matched timestamps of the messages Spencer published with the timing of events as they happened in order to further corroborate them. Posobiec sent the messages to Spencer in the two months after Posobiec first stepped out from behind his @AngryGotFan persona, timestamps show.

Posobiec contacted Spencer on Sept. 25, 2016, one day after he staged a racist, one-man, anti-Hillary Clinton demonstration outside of the opening ceremony for the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Outside of the first opening of that museum on Sept. 24, 2016, a then-unknown Posobiec appeared at the National Mall wearing a mask, blonde wig and an orange jumpsuit. He carried a sign that read “BLACKS ARE SUPERPREDATORS -H,” misquoting a statement made by Hillary Clinton. The event was memorialized by the far-right blog Gateway Pundit. Police detained Posobiec during his stunt, the blog noted.

Posobiec started a conversation with Spencer on Sept. 25, 2016 at 8:58 p.m., according to the screenshots. He shared three pictures of a black officer appearing to detain him and sit him down on a curb, the text messages show. Posobiec also sent Spencer the Gateway Pundit post.

Posobiec: It begins

Spencer: Very interesting.

Spencer: The crackdown might be too late and it’s counter-productive

Posobiec: Judicial Watch tells me they think 100% it’s bc I was a white protester and black cop. DC political demonstration laws are extremely lenient

Spencer: Doesn’t surprise me at all

Posobiec: Reminded me of the fatties in Covington’s novels

Spencer: Lol. I haven’t read a lot of Convington tbh

The “Covington” Posobiec referenced here is Harold Covington. Covington was a white supremacist who died in 2018. Toward the end of a long career in the white power movement, Covington started writing racist science fiction. Hatewatch found references to the “Fatties” Posobiec mentioned to Spencer in an internet archive of Covington’s book “Northwest Quintet.” “Fatties” was used a derogatory term for a federal anti-terrorist law enforcement group in the book. In the same text Posobiec referenced, a protagonist detailed his plan for eliminating minorities on land he believes should belong only to white, heterosexual, non-Jews:

…all non-whites and homosexuals [are] to leave the three basic Homeland states and anywhere else we’re operating. Henceforth all non-whites, especially Jews, are considered to be legitimate military targets and are to be destroyed on sight, in theory. In practice, your job will not be to run around slaughtering blacks and Mexicans en masse. Your task is to drive them out, if you see the difference. Dead or vamanos doesn’t matter, we want them gone.

Covington’s name popped up in the news in 2015 when he spoke admiringly of the white supremacist who killed nine people at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. It is worth noting that Posobiec selected a target for his protest that was important to the black community. Rep. John R. Lewis of Georgia and Rep. Mickey Leland of Texas first introduced legislation related to creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in 1988 and it faced staunch political opposition. “It is real. It is real,” Lewis said at the groundbreaking of the museum’s construction in 2012, after fighting over a quarter of a century to see it built.

Posobiec put the words “fmr CBS News” in his Twitter bio while promoting hate and disinformation

Around the time Posobiec promoted his stunt at the opening of National Museum of African American History and Culture, he put the words “fmr CBS News” in his Twitter bio. Posobiec made this claim on Twitter for about six months, archives show. During the “fmr CBS News” period, which lasted from September 2016 to the middle of March 2017, Posobiec interacted with far-right extremists and also promoted politically charged disinformation.

A representative for CBS News told Hatewatch that Posobiec never worked for them. Posobiec is from the Philadelphia area, so Hatewatch also reached out to CBS’ local television affiliate in that city. The news director for CBS’s Philadelphia affiliate told Hatewatch Posobiec never worked there. Posobiec currently resides in Washington, D.C. Hatewatch reached out to a reporter from the Washington CBS affiliate, but that person said Posobiec was never a colleague. Hatewatch also reached out to Cassandra Fairbanks and Will Chamberlain, two of his friends. They both told Hatewatch by text message they were unaware of Posobiec working for any major outlet for journalism before landing a job with OANN.

Hatewatch obtained a copy of what appears to be Posobiec’s resume. The resume matched Posobiec’s verifiable history, including his university and military experience. It made no mention of CBS News. The apparent resume does list Posobiec working at the conservative talk radio station WPHT in Philadelphia as a “Promotions Assistant” from December 2005 to February 2007, a time when he would have still been studying as an undergrad at Temple University. Michael Smerconish, a TV and radio host who worked for WPHT then, described Posobiec as a “short term radio intern” in an email with Hatewatch and a person for whom he has “zero recollection.”

During the time he kept the words “fmr CBS News” in his Twitter bio, Posobiec recorded and disseminated to his followers a livestream of a speech by billionaire Peter Thiel from the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 31, 2016. Thiel, who some have argued is a critic of democracy, gave the speech to explain why he chose to support Donald Trump in the 2016 election. Posobiec targeted the reporters who were with him in the crowd with antisemitic hate.

A tweet published Oct. 31, 2016.

“Surrounded by (((them))) at Peter Thiel press conference,” Posobiec posted to Twitter with a selfie.

Thiel also appears to have welcomed Posobiec into his apartment, as recently as September 2019. Posobiec appeared there for a fundraiser promoting the Senate run of anti-immigration candidate Kris Kobach. Thiel did not respond to a request for comment about Posobiec.

Posobiec also used Twitter to promote the now-infamous Pizzagate disinformation campaign while declaring on his Twitter bio, “fmr CBS News.” Far-right social media users, including Posobiec, Cernovich, and open white nationalists and neo-Nazis, promoted a lie suggesting that Democratic Party officials were running a child sex dungeon out of a Washington, D.C., restaurant called Comet Ping Pong Pizzeria. During Pizzagate, Posobiec published video footage of himself to Twitter in which he appeared to mimic conducting an investigation from inside of the pizzeria. He has since deleted the video, but it was saved.

A North Carolina man fired off an AR-15 rifle in Comet Ping Pong Pizzeria one month after Posobiec recorded that video. He cited Pizzagate as his motive. Edgar Maddison Welch, who traveled from Salisbury, North Carolina, to Washington, D,C., armed with three firearms, was sentenced to four years in prison in June 2017. Washingtonian magazine reported on May 11 that trolls continue to harass James Alefantis, the owner of that pizzeria, and his staff, nearly four years after Posobiec and other far-right Twitter users promoted lies about them.

“#PizzaGate may be bigger than we suspected,” Posobiec tweeted on Nov. 21, 2016, just days before the shooting.

Pro-Bannon protest featured Jack Posobiec, Richard Spencer and neo-Nazis

From April to June 2017, Posobiec produced far-right propaganda for a Canadian website called The Rebel Media, which has since rebranded as “Rebel News.” Posobiec’s bio for The Rebel Media described him as a “recovering political operative” and “a proud member of #SlavRight.” Posobiec used the hashtag #SlavRight on Twitter as an apparent play on the white supremacist-friendly hashtag #AltRight. “Slav” is short for the word Slavic, connoting a heritage in eastern Europe. In addition to Posobiec and his wife, Hatewatch found Richard Spencer, Spencer’s ex-wife and a pseudonymous Twitter user advocating for “Right Wing Death Squads” also using the #SlavRight hashtag.

Posobiec mingled with a cast of open white nationalists and neo-Nazis while recording a segment for The Rebel Media on the afternoon of April 15, 2017. Both he and they protested against growing pressure to remove Steve Bannon from his post as White House chief strategist. (Bannon resigned four months later during the immediate backlash of the Unite the Right rally.) Hatewatch reviewed multiple videos taken from Posobiec’s appearance on April 15, 2017, outside the White House, archived social media posts, leaked chats from the gaming app Discord, and spoke to four different people who attended it to determine that Posobiec played a pivotal role in executing it.

Video captured by antiracist activist Daryle Lamont Jenkins of One People’s Project shows Posobiec saying, “We want to keep Steve Bannon in office,” in front of a man waving a green “Kekistan” flag. The flag, fashioned after the WWII-era “Reichskriegsflagge,” or Nazi battle flag, was popularized by people who used antisemitic forums on imageboard sites such as 4chan and 8chan. Hatewatch uploaded a side-by-side image of the two flags here in this link to illustrate their similarities. Jenkins’ video also shows Richard Spencer and one of his allies, Greg Conte, protesting side-by-side with Posobiec. Elliott Kline and Patrick Casey of Identity Evropa (now the American Identity Movement) also attended the demonstration.

Posobiec’s friend Will Chamberlain of the publication Human Events attended the event. In a conversation with Hatewatch, Chamberlain claimed that Spencer “co-opted” Posobiec’s idea for a protest in support of Bannon.

“It wasn’t even really organized,” Chamberlain said in a phone conversation with Hatewatch. “Jack just literally posted to Twitter for people to show up at the White House. [Spencer] co-opted the event with a bullhorn … it wasn’t like a coordinated thing … it was Richard Spencer imposing himself.”

TEN_GOP tweet

A tweet published by the Russian-operated account @TEN_GOP on April 13, 2017. It promoted an event that was also pushed by Posobiec.

Hatewatch found archived evidence corroborating Chamberlain’s account of Posobiec promoting the event on Twitter, but his was not the only handle to do so. @TEN_GOP, a pro-Trump sock puppet account operated by Russia and named in the Mueller investigation, also promoted the event. @TEN_GOP frequently boosted Posobiec’s messaging before Twitter removed it. Cassandra Fairbanks, formerly of the Kremlin-backed news agency Sputnik, also boosted the pro-Bannon rally. At the time of the event, she promoted the protest on a blog called Big League Politics.

Regarding Chamberlain’s recollection of Spencer imposing himself on Posobiec, Jenkins of One People’s Project remembered it differently.

“I saw it as a joint thing with Posobiec and Spencer,” Jenkins recalled. “Spencer came with the [neo-Nazi] Clark brothers and Eli Mosley [Elliott Kline of Identity Evropa], [Greg] Conte was also there.”

Sennett, also of One People’s Project, captured video of an exchange between Posobiec and Spencer. Spencer later told Sennett that he could not recall how the event was formed.

“Solidarity – for Steve Bannon,” Posobiec says to Spencer in the video Sennett took.

“Absolutely,” Spencer replies.

Extremist group claimed to be in private contact with Posobiec at time of pro-Bannon protest, leaked chats show

Leaked Discord chats captured by the journalist collective Unicorn Riot show one member of the extreme far-right collective “Anti-Com,” promoting Posobiec’s now-deleted tweets advertising the pro-Bannon protest event to that group, while other members claim to be coordinating with him in its planning.

Anti-Com was a loosely organized group whose membership crossed over at that time with Atomwaffen Division, ProPublica reported in 2017. Atomwaffen Division is a neo-Nazi outfit which has been linked to a string of murders and terror plots. “Doglad,” the pseudonymous Anti-Com member who promoted Posobiec’s tweets about the April 15, 2017, protest event in their Discord chats, also gave voice to conspiratorial, antisemitic views. The poster claimed in his chats to live in “the swamp,” referring to Washington, D.C. and said he once met Brexit leader Nigel Farage at the Trump Hotel. Posobiec also met Farage at the Trump Hotel. He and his wife met him on Feb. 26, 2017, according to archives.

“Not a drill,” Doglad wrote to other Anti-Com members about Posobiec’s tweet on April 13, 2017. “If you’re in the DC metro area please [attend.]”

Doglad posted another now-deleted Posobiec tweet into the Anti-Com Discord channel on April 14, 2017. He claimed that Anti-Com was involved in the actual planning of the Posobiec-backed protest.

“IMPORTANT: #KeepBannon rally tomorrow,” Doglad wrote. “This event now even has our name attached so it is imperative we get boots on the ground. If you can’t go, spam it everywhere online[.]”

Anti-Com discussed being in contact with Posobiec as early as April 4, 2017, according to archives preserved by Unicorn Riot. Below is a transcript of the Anti-Com chat on April 4, 2017, from 4:55 EDT to 5:39 EDT. The timestamps in the chat employ a 24-hour clock and the users’ names are pseudonymous:

Lord Joe, 16:55: We got called out by an 80k+ Twitter account

Webdevanon, 16:55: wew lad

Webdevanon, 16:55: post it

ChippedStones, 16:55: @LordJoe who?

Lord Joe, 16:55: on a positive note never the lest

Webdevanon, 16:55: f— yes

Lord Joe, 16:55: [Posobiec tweet]

Webdevanon, 16:59: nice

ChippedStones, 17:01: Ayy

ChippedStones, 17:01: Dats pretty giud

ChippedStones, 17:01: He’s part of rebel media too

ChippedStones, 17:01: That’s a large YouTube channel

LordJoe, 17:10: oh and he messaged me back

LordJoe, 17:10: teeheehee

Bard, 17:14: [Meme that reads “Proud to be a c—”]

LordJoe, 17:30: I love my town

LordJoe, 17:31: [Article with headline “Man in Drunk Lives Matter shirt charged with drunken driving”]

James_Coney – LA, 17:33: @LordJoe that’s like if a headline read man in black lives matter shirt charged with killing a nr

GoGo, 17:35: I just heard someone in the hallway say “hippity hoppity get off my property”

GoGo, 17:36: *they’re here

Lord Joe, 17:37: Also talking to Jack Posobiec about anticom

Lord Joe, 17:37: @James_Coney – LA

GoGo, 17:39: Does Jack wear hats?

GoGo, 17:39: Send him a hat

Lord Joe, 17:39: This is Jack btw [Posobiec’s Twitter Profile]

Tee CA, 17:42: Nice, posobiec has some sway in conservative circles. Might even get a shout out from Cernovich

Lord Joe, 17:43: and this is before April the 15th

ChippedStones, 17:46: SEND JACK HATS

Posobiec post

The group Anti-Com featured members who also belonged to violent neo-Nazi groups. Members of the group claimed to be in contact with Posobiec in a private chat.

Posobiec retweeted content from Anti-Com’s account after the event passed, archives show.

Posobiec interviewed the neo-Nazi Clark brothers at pro-Bannon protest

A gunman murdered 11 Jews at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh on Oct. 27, 2018, and the terror attack brought into focus two men who appeared at the pro-Bannon event alongside Posobiec in April 2017.

Edward Clark, 23, shot himself to death with a Beretta pistol on Theodore Roosevelt Island near Washington, D.C., on the same day that the Tree of Life terror attack took place. He belonged to the Anti-Com Discord server where pseudonymous users claimed to be in contact with Posobiec. He used the handle “Stormer DC” in it. Family members speculated he may have been plotting to shoot people on the day he died.

Police arrested Jeffrey Clark, 30, Edward’s brother, on weapons charges over a week after he praised the alleged Tree of Life terrorist as a “hero” on the white supremacist-friendly social media site Gab. The U.S. attorney’s office released a photograph of a black, windowless bedroom in the Clarks’ home with a noose hanging from the ceiling at the time of Jeffrey Clark’s arrest. On Gab, he used the handle @PureWhiteEvil. His pinned post on that website was a meme crafted to look like the first-person shooting game Doom but with the Charleston church shooter as the protagonist, gunning down black women in a black church.

The Clark brothers protested alongside Posobiec at the pro-Bannon event on April 15, 2017, standing behind him, videos show. Posobiec used them in a pro-Bannon propaganda video published by The Rebel Media. Posobiec interviewed Edward Clark about why he joined him at that event. His brother Jeffrey Clark is also in the shot.

“Why are you out here in the hot sun?” Posobiec asked Edward Clark. “What are you all about?”

“Well, I want to keep Steve Bannon because I’m against the airstrikes in Syria. Not because I’m against attacking other countries, I think we should be imperialist. But we should go down to the Panama Canal first,” Edward Clark says to Posobiec in the video.

Posobiec makes a joke about The Rebel Media being a Canadian company before redirecting the conversation to one about borders.

“Are you more interested in the borders of Syria or the borders of the United States?” Posobiec asks Clark.

“The borders of the United States,” Edward Clark says.

Posobiec turns to the crowd of people around him. The video shows members of Identity Evropa, a white nationalist group that has subsequently rebranded as American Identity Movement.

“And I think what I’ve heard from a lot of people today, and we have a diverse crowd out here, a lot of diverse opinions, a lot of diverse people, but I think that’s what’s really combining people, they’re saying why are we looking to fix problems in other people’s countries when we have problems at home, right?” Posobiec says.

“Yeah, exactly,” Edward Clark says.

Daryle Lamont Jenkins of One People’s Project confronted Jeffrey Clark that day when he appeared to be standing directly behind Posobiec. Jenkins asked Jeffrey Clark about a social media post in which he writes the word “nr” and fantasizes about murdering refugees. Posobiec can be seen drifting in and out of the frame as Jenkins, who is black, challenges Jeffrey Clark on his use of the racial slur.

In May 2017, Posobiec collaborated with the Clark brothers again in filming a Rebel Media segment on Democratic staffer Seth Rich’s murder, according to a report HuffPost published following Edward Clark’s suicide and Jeffrey Clark’s arrest. HuffPost published photos from a source that appear to show Edward and Jeffrey Clark following Posobiec through the Washington, D.C., neighborhood of Bloomingdale. Posobiec denied knowing the Clark brothers in a conversation with HuffPost. Sennett of One People’s Project told HuffPost she spoke with Jeffrey Clark about Posobiec. Jeffrey Clark said Posobiec was aware of his neo-Nazi beliefs, Sennett recalled. Sennett repeated her account of events in a conversation with Hatewatch.

Hatewatch attempted to contact Jeffrey Clark for this story but did not succeed in finding him.

White nationalist Jason Kessler accused Posobiec of plagiarism

Posobiec left The Rebel around May 28, 2017. His departure appears to have been first reported by “The Ralph Retort,” a YouTube show that interviews white nationalists and neo-Nazis. Ezra Levant, The Rebel Media’s founder, denied knowledge of Posobiec’s links to extremists in an email conversation with Hatewatch. Levant issued this denial to Hatewatch despite the fact that in June 2017, his company offered a public apology over allegations that Posobiec plagiarized content about “antifa” from Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler.

“Today we learned via social media that extended passages of this video by Jack Posobiec were copied word-for-word from original work produced by Jason Kessler, which can be seen here and here,” the company said in a statement then, adding links to YouTube videos that have since been removed.

Kessler was enmeshed in the world of organized hate before Posobiec was alleged to plagiarize his content. In the same month that The Rebel Media acknowledged Posobiec “copied word-for-word from original work produced by Jason Kessler,” Kessler argued on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that America would have been better off if the Confederacy had won the Civil War.

A tweet published June 26, 2017

A tweet published June 26, 2017.

Posobiec appeared to condone the white nationalist group Identity Evropa terrorizing a black civil rights advocate in a now-deleted tweet dated June 26, 2017, writing, “why shouldn’t white people also be allowed to speak at a racial seminar?” Posobiec’s tweet was written in response to a report in the Miami New Times that Identity Evropa disrupted a talk by black civil rights’ advocate Lutze Segu, “horrify[ing] participants.”

Posobiec becomes Trump’s voice in deflecting from Charlottesville violence

Less than two months after The Rebel issued an apology over Posobiec copying “word-for-word” material from Jason Kessler, Kessler’s white nationalist organizing led to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Beyond the murder of Heather Heyer, white supremacists marched with torches chanting “Jews will not replace us.” Footage from the event made the topic of rising white supremacy an international news story.

Posobiec sought to publicly distance himself from the ideology of white supremacy through tweets in the immediate aftermath of that violence, archives show. He publicly turned on Richard Spencer, calling him a “scumbag.” On the one-year anniversary of Unite the Right, Posobiec urged his followers to donate $8.12 (a reference to the date of the event) to a charity in the name of Heather Heyer, the antiracist demonstrator who was murdered there.

But in the days after the Charlottesville violence, as Trump struggled to control a wave of negative press, Posobiec also helped deflect blame away from white supremacy through tweets and public statements.

“Have you heard what the mainstream media is telling you guys that you are today? They’re out there calling you a bunch of Nazis, a bunch of racists,” Posobiec said at a pro-Trump event in Atlanta on the night Fields murdered Heyer, according to a video he posted to Twitter that has since been deleted. “They’re blaming our president for the violence that went on in Charlottesville.”

Posobiec told The Boston Globe that month that Trump’s retweet of him after Unite the Right was “almost like an endorsement.” He said, “it was almost like he was validating what we, the alt-media, are doing.”

The Navy revoked Posobiec’s security clearance after Unite the Right. Posobiec told NBC News that he believed the Navy did so because he had become “more outspoken on Twitter.” The U.S. military is currently grappling with an influx of white supremacists infiltrating their ranks. The same former active duty intelligence officer who analyzed Posobiec’s service record for Hatewatch described him as being “infamous and hated” among his peers.

On Aug. 24, 2017, a little over a week after Trump’s retweet, OANN hosted Posobiec as a guest to discuss the “deep state.” He described Bannon’s departure from the White House as being a “more of a strategic withdrawal.” He noted that Bannon was “putting together operations” outside of the White House that would benefit the Trump movement. OANN hired Posobiec less than a year later.

---

GGL 10 25

Right-wing media have long called for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, he's now considering it

Written by Gideon Taaffe & Sage Hodil

Research contributions from Reed McMaster, Jane Lee & Alex Kaplan

Published 10/09/25 MMA

President Donald Trump recently suggested he may be willing to invoke the Insurrection Act as protests continue in Chicago and Portland against Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity and deployment of National Guard troops.

Right-wing media figures have called on Trump to use the law — which allows the military to be used for domestic law enforcement activities — in response to various demonstrations since at least as far back as 2020.

Conservative media figures endorsed using the act to “put down” Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 and “restore order” to cities where demonstrations were occurring. Starting in June of this year, right-wing media renewed their support for the act's use over anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles, and as similar protests broke out in Chicago and Portland, calls to “invoke” the act in Democratic-run cities grew.

Trump once again says he might invoke the Insurrection Act in Democratic-run cities

- Protests in Chicago and Portland broke out as National Guard members were deployed to aid ICE officers.Authorities have used tear gas, pepper balls and more against protesters at ICE facilities in both cities. Several people were arrested in both cases, with some facing federal charges. PBS News, [10/6/25]

- On October 6, while talking to reporters about the legal issues with sending in the National Guard to cities around the country, Trump said he would consider invoking the Insurrection Act.He stated, “I’d do it if it was necessary. So far it hasn’t been necessary. But we have an Insurrection Act for a reason. … If people were being killed and courts were holding us up or governors or mayors were holding us up, sure, I'd do that.” He also said, “If you take a look at what’s been going on in Portland, it’s been going on for a long time, and that’s insurrection. I mean, that’s pure insurrection." NBC News, [10/6/25]

- The Insurrection Act allows the military to act as a police force and make arrests.Reuters explained: “The law enables troops to take part in domestic law enforcement activities like making arrests and performing searches, functions they are generally otherwise prohibited from engaging in. The Insurrection Act can be invoked when there are ‘unlawful obstructions, combinations or assemblages or rebellion’ against the U.S. government's authority. When the president deems those conditions have been met, the law gives the president the power to use the armed forces to take actions ‘to enforce those laws or suppress the rebellion.’” Reuters, [10/7/25]

- Trump deployed the National Guard and Marines during anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles earlier this year and called the protesters “insurrectionists,” saying, in response to a question about whether he would invoke the Insurrection Act, “Depends on whether or not there’s an insurrection.”Axios noted, “Without the Insurrection Act, the troops' mission is legally limited to protecting federal agents and property.” Axios, [6/10/25]

## Right-wing media figures are calling for Trump to use the Insurrection Act “more liberally” in Democratic-run cities, claiming protesters are “insurrecting”

- Fox News contributor Lisa Boothe claimed Trump “should look at using the Insurrection Act more liberally in cities like Chicago or in cities like Portland, Oregon.” Boothe also remarked that “Portland is a hellhole. … Homeless everywhere, it’s disgusting.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends Weekend*, [10/5/25]

- Right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson discussed his ride-along with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in Portland and stated, “I hope they invoke the Insurrection Act. I hope that's something that happens here because these people are clearly insurrecting.”Johnson also claimed that Portland “has been conquered by antifa.” Newsmax, *Finnerty*, [10/7/25]

- Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said Trump “should invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy military assets to protect life and limb and property.”Fitton reacted to protests in Chicago, writing, “This is an insurrection, and @GovPritzker is implicated.” Twitter/X, [10/4/25]

- On Steve Bannon’sWar Roompodcast, right-wing pundit Jack Posobiec said that “the president has black-letter law, Title X authority to be able to deploy the National Guard” to “suppress an insurrection or a rebellion.”Bannon also claimed California Gov. Gavin Newsom is a “neo-Confederate” and claimed Los Angeles is also in “open defiance of the federal government about immigration laws, Jack. I mean, this is going to come down [to] we control the country, they control these big metropolitan areas.” Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [10/6/25]

- Posobiec also posted, “If Trump were to invoke the insurrection act for reasons like the situation in Portland, Americans would support it.” Twitter/X, [10/6/25]

- In response to a report of a hit put out on a Border Patrol commander, right-wing podcaster Tim Pool posted, “Insurrection Act.”Twitter/X, [10/6/25]

- QAnon influencer Clandestine said of whether Trump should invoke the Insurrection Act: “I’d argue that we are already at that point, and this is soft disclosure of what is to come.” Telegram, [10/6/25; Anti-Defamation League, 4/5/22]

- Fox News contributor Paul Mauro claimed Trump is on “very, very safe ground” to enact the Insurrection Act.Mauro claimed that the Insurrection Act is “a carve-out to posse comitatus. You can use it to protect facilities and you can use it when federal law is being obstructed — that's the operative phrase right there. ICE is trying to enforce federal law. If they’re being obstructed, you can do this. What it means is he’s on very, very safe ground.” Fox News, *The Five*, [10/1/25]

- Fox Business correspondent Charles Gasparino said Trump would be “on pretty solid grounds” to invoke the Insurrection Act “if it is to protect the ICE facilities” from protesters.Gasparino added, “I would love to see federal troops in downtown Manhattan — I don’t care.” Fox News, *Fox News Sunday*, [9/29/25]

## In June, right-wing media similarly advocated for the Insurrection Act to crack down on anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles

- Fox News host Laura Ingraham argued it would be Trump’s “right” and “obligation” to invoke the Insurrection Act if he feels the U.S. “is being threatened from within.”She said, “Now Democrats are pretending to be outraged about the prospect of Trump invoking the Insurrection Act, which, of course, is his right. I’d say it's his obligation to do if — and it’s his call — if he feels the United States is being threatened from within by violent, seditionary forces.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [6/10/25]

- Infowars host Harrison Smith argued for utilizing the act during anti-ICE protests in LA, saying, “The Constitution actually provides for solutions to this. It is the Insurrection Act.” He stated, “The Constitution is being destroyed by these people making it unsafe, depriving the people of LA of the ability to live their lives and express themselves, pursue happiness, and all the other freedoms that we're supposed to enjoy are being destroyed by these people. The Constitution actually provides for solutions to this. It is the Insurrection Act. It is shutting down what’s going on with rapidity and aggressiveness to uphold the rights of the American people against this invading foreign force.” [Infowars, American Journal, 6/9/25]

- Students for Trump National Chairman Ryan Fournier posted, “TIME FOR THE INSURRECTION ACT!” in response to a post by Trump about LA.Twitter/X, [6/9/25]

- Conservative podcaster Vince Coglianese said the way to crack down on anti–ICE protests in Los Angeles is “the president wielding the Insurrection Act.”Coglianese: “It strikes me that if we're going to crack down on this using law enforcement, it's just going to have to be the president wielding the Insurrection Act. He's going to have to go in and save American cities from the leadership that's betraying them.” Rumble, *Vince*, [6/9/25; RadioLink, 4/17/25]

- Mackubin T. Owens wrote for Blaze Media that the Insurrection Act empowers the president “to act when mobs attack federal law” and the president “has the duty to restore order.”In a September opinion piece, Owens defended Trump's deployment of National Guard troops to LA, claiming he had the “duty -- and the power -- to act.” Blaze Media, [9/8/25]

## Right-wing media hosts and guests also advocated for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act to quell protests in 2020

- Ahead of the 2020 election, Fox host Mark Levin shared his hope Trump would win and then utilize the Insurrection Act to “put down” protests.On September 11, 2020, Levin speculated that if Trump wins “he will dust off the Insurrection Act” and “he will have to use it to put down the enemy. The enemy is antifa, the enemy is Black Lives Matter.” On September 15, 2020, Levin said protesters “need to be put down” and claimed, “It's not illegal, it's not unconstitutional, it's not unethical, it's not immoral for the President to use the Insurrection Act to put down insurrections.” On September 23, 2020, Levin stated, “I pray to God Donald Trump is reelected. And I pray to God that he uses the Insurrection Act and puts this down.” And on October 28, Levin said, “These lootings and riotings and arsons need to be put down. God willing the President will be re-elected, and he'll use the Insurrection Act to bring safety, and peace." Westwood One, *The Mark Levin Show*, [9/11/20, 9/15/20, 9/23/25, 10/28/20]

- Writing for the National Review, Fox News contributor Andrew McCarthy discussed the Insurrection Act — saying it “expressly” empowers the president “to suppress domestic violence” — and called on Trump to “restore order” to cities where Black Lives Matter protests were underway, “including by deployment of the military where that is necessary.”McCarthy dismissed concerns about federalism, writing: “Although the Constitution calls for a state to request federal assistance to combat domestic violence before the president acts, that condition is more apparent than real. … When it comes to violent uprisings, though, federalism concerns are beside the point. Washington has an express constitutional obligation to protect the people of the states, and the republican form of government, from attack.” National Review, [5/31/20]

- Conservative lawyer Jeffrey Clark said onWar Roomthat former Attorney General Bill Barr “participated in using the Insurrection Act” in 1992 in LA and asked, “Why wasn’t that same aggressiveness used against the riots that were used all across the country in the summer of 2020?”Real America's Voice, *War Room*, [7/3/23]

- Right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson urged Trump to “invoke the Insurrection Act immediately” during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.Twitter/X, [5/31/20]

- Daily Wire host Ben Shapiro suggested in 2020 that Trump should invoke the act if states failed to get protests under control.He said: “The Insurrection Act is generally invoked when local authorities are not doing their jobs and protecting the civil rights of their citizens. So the president does have the authority to do this sort of stuff. … And the president, by the way, didn’t say he was going to do it. He said if you don’t get your cities and states under control, then I will do it. And guess what? He should. He should. Because guess — because you're an American taxpaying citizen. You have civil rights. Your civil rights are being abridged and violated when you are locked in your home so rioters and looters can roam free.” The Daily Wire, *The Ben Shapiro Show*, [6/2/20]

- Blaze Media senior editor Daniel Horowitz wrote that “Trump should use the Insurrection Act” and “deadly force” against Black Lives Matter protesters.Blaze Media, [6/1/20]

- Ryan Fournier posted, “President Trump should invoke the Insurrection Act to stop the terrorism happening in Seattle.”Twitter/X, [6/11/20]

### As Trump sends the National Guard into US cities, right-wing media celebrate and call protests “an insurrection”

10/08/25 1:26 PM EDT

### Right-wing streamer calls for arrested protesters to be used for “compelled slave labor”

10/08/25 5:11 PM EDT

### On Newsmax, Benny Johnson claims Portland “has been conquered by antifa”

10/08/25

---

WAR ROOM SKYHORSE SIMON AND SCHUSTER?

Unhumans

Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them) is a 2024 American political and polemical book by Jack Posobiec and co-author Joshua Lisec which was a New York Times bestseller.^[1] It features a foreword by Steve Bannon and a blurb from JD Vance.

The core thesis of the book is that the American left intends to terrorize and subjugate the United States under a communist dictatorship.^[2][better ^source ^needed] In their telling, they are "unhumans."

For the last couple centuries, we’ve known them as communists. Socialists, with extra steps. And of course, leftists. Radicals and revolutionaries as well. A hundred years ago, Marxist Leninists, then more recently, Cultural Marxists. Even as, without irony and not as a joke, “progressives.” For the purposes of this book, we will call them the unhumans.^[3]

It has a foreword written by Steve Bannon.^[4]

In it the authors laud the contributions of Francisco Franco, Chiang Kai-shek, Augusto Pinochet, Joseph McCarthy, Julius Caesar, and Elon Musk to what they frame as an existential struggle against the dark forces of communism.^[4]

In the past, communists marched in the streets waving red flags. Today, they march through HR, college campuses, and courtrooms to wage lawfare against good, honest people. In Unhumans, Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec reveal their plans and show us what to do to fight back.

— JD Vance, cover blurb, Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them)*^[5]

The book was endorsed by JD Vance, who wrote a cover blurb for the book. The book features praise from public figures, including Tucker Carlson,^[a] Donald Trump Jr.,^[b] Michael Flynn,^[c] and Robert Stacy McCain.^[d][6][7][better ^source ^needed]

Reception

Reviewers have criticized the book. Michelle Goldberg decried the book as "fascist" and an "anti-democratic screed", notes that it lauds Franco and Pinochet, and claims that "The book argues that leftists don’t deserve the status of human beings – that they are, as the title says, unhumans – and that they are waging a shadow war against all that is good and decent, which will end in apocalyptic slaughter if they are not stopped".^[5]

David Corn also disliked the book, noting with disapprobation that it includes the American civil rights movement among unhuman plots, along with Black Lives Matter, and gives quotes from the book including "There is no way to reason with those who manipulate the have-nots en masse to loot and to shoot. They simply hate those who are good-looking and successful" and that these "ugly liars who hate and kill" are (in league with Big Tech) undertaking the "distinct revolutionary movement we are witnessing in the modern-day West". The book, according to Corn, describes the January 6 United States Capitol attack as a false-flag trap sprung as a "purge of Trump supporters... from public life", and also advises that law enforcement in red areas should target antifa, Black Lives Matter, and some NGOs, as "It is time to stop playing by rules they won’t".^[8]

David Gardner also criticized the book, citing passages such as "By becoming consumed by nihilism, unhumans oppose everything that makes up humanity. As they are opposed to humanity itself..." and "Our study of history has brought us to this conclusion: Democracy has never worked to protect innocents from the unhumans".^[9]

Nathan J. Robinson wrote "It is perhaps the most paranoid, hateful, and terrifying book I have ever picked up. (I say this as someone who has read *Mein Kampf*.)"^[10]

Notes

“[O]ne of the rare people worth listening to”.
"The far Left . . . have repeatedly shown that they will stop at nothing to achieve their totalitarian goals. They have torn down countless societies using a sophisticated playbook of propaganda . . . Unhumans reveals that playbook and teaches us how to deploy it immediately to save the West”.
“We are now living through an era of irregular warfare. This is a gray-zone communist revolution by new means. Unhumans exposes their battle plans”.
"Unhumans teaches that the events Americans are living through now are not without precedent. There is a pattern to these events—a 'gray-zone communist revolution'—and if we do not wish to repeat the pattern, we must act intelligently to stop the destructive plans of the 'unhumans'".

References

New York Times. "Hardcover Nonfiction". New York Times. Retrieved 17 July 2025.
Posobiec, Jack; Lisec, Joshua (9 July 2024). Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them) [book description]. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1648210853.[better ^source ^needed]
Posobiec & Lisec, Unhumans, p. 2
Pollitt, Katha (15 August 2024). "Jack Posobiec Calls Leftists "Unhuman." JD Vance Seems to Agree". thenation.com. The Nation. Retrieved 20 August 2024.
Michelle Goldberg (August 5, 2024). "JD Vance Just Blurbed a Book Arguing That Progressives Are Subhuman". New York Times. Archived from the original on August 6, 2024. Retrieved August 6, 2024.
Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them) [product description]. Skyhorse Books. 9 July 2024. ISBN 978-1648210853.
Target Department Store, *Unhumans*, includes blurbs by JD Vance, Tucker Carlson, Don Trump, Jr., and others.
David Corn. "J.D. Vance Endorsed Book That Calls Progressives "Unhumans" and Praises Jan. 6 Rioters". Mother Jones. Archived from the original on August 7, 2024. Retrieved August 6, 2024.
David Gardner (August 6, 2024). "Vance Praised Book Calling the Left 'Unhumans' and Praising Dictators". Daily Beast. Archived from the original on August 6, 2024. Retrieved August 6, 2024.
Nathan J. Robinson (July 31, 2024). "The Horrifying Fascist Manifesto Endorsed By J.D. Vance". Current Affairs. Retrieved August 7, 2024.

A STEVE BANNON SELFIE FOR VDARE

Bannon, the former Trump adviser, physically embraced the white nationalist Brimelows at NYYRC, spoke to the couple for several minutes and took a selfie with them. VDARE traffics in the great replacement conspiracy theory and has published defenses of writing a terrorist who gunned down 24 people in an El Paso Wal-Mart in 2019 allegedly authored. Peter Brimelow attended the white supremacist American Renaissance conference in November, whose host has portrayed Black people as being subhuman. The Brimelows publish writing authored by Jason Kessler, who helped organize the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

When Hatewatch attempted to speak to Lydia Brimelow after her conversation with Bannon to inquire about it, she walked away. Hatewatch did not get close enough to Bannon to ask him about the encounter with Peter and Lydia Brimelow.

‘PIZZAGATE’ JACK DESCENDS ON NEW YORK CITY

Jack and Tanya Posobiec arrive in New York City by train before the NYYRC meeting in Midtown on Dec. 10. (Photo by Michael Edison Hayden)

Posobiec, a radical right political operative, resides with his wife Tanya Posobiec in Hanover, Maryland. The couple took Amtrak Northeast Regional train 88 into New York’s Penn Station Moynihan Hall on Saturday afternoon to get to the NYYRC gala. Train 88 pulled in at around 3:45 p.m., and a Hatewatch reporter observed Posobiec and his wife deboard and enter New York City.

“Antifa, don’t even think about it tonight,” Posobiec posted to Twitter three hours later, at 6:39 p.m., with the location of the tweet marked Manhattan, New York.

NYYRC gave Posobiec a speaking slot and an Allen W. Dulles award, named after the former head of the CIA. NYYRC said in its December bulletin that the award is given to “an individual who embodies the virulent anti-Marxist spirit of [Dulles].”

Like the Brimelows, Posobiec has a well-documented history of radical-right activism. He to the antigovernment Oath Keepers, fraternized with the Proud Boys, and at least twice, filmed propaganda videos with. He is primarily known for pushing the, which falsely suggested that Democrats ran a pedophile dungeon in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizzeria.

Hatewatch spoke with Posobiec around midnight at the NYYRC event and asked him about his involvement in pushing the #StoptheSteal hashtag onto Twitter during the runup to the 2020 election. Although “Stop the Steal” became synonymous with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol building, Posobiec started tweeting the hashtag from his over-1-million-follower account as early as Sept. 7, 2020, two full months before anyone tallied any votes.

While responding to Hatewatch at NYYRC, Posobiec first attempted to associate the hashtag with Roger Stone and then with Ali Alexander, two of his collaborators. Then he called it “a meme.” He never explained why he abruptly started posting the hashtag in September 2020.

While answering questions, Posobiec grew testy with a Hatewatch reporter and described SPLC as a “domestic terror organization.” Posobiec called that reporter a “scumbag” and a “troll.” After Posobiec’s speaking tone became palpably agitated, a crowd formed and NYYRC executive secretary Viswanag “Vish” Burra escorted both Hatewatch reporters to the exit, physically shoving one of them.

NEWSWEEK FLAUNTS ITS RADICAL-RIGHT CREDENTIALS

Newsweek editor Josh Hammer (in suspenders) texts from table #6, near the front of the stage, at the NYYRC gala on Dec. 10. (Photo by Michael Edison Hayden)

Starting in May 2020, after editor Nancy Cooper and chief content officer Dayan Candappa brought political activist Josh Hammer to run *Newsweek*’s opinion section, the 90-year-old publication has emerged as a hub for opinion pieces authored by radical right activists. Newsweek has published the extremist Posobiec as well as 2020 election-lie pusher Raheem Kassam in recent years, and Hammer has also hosted both of them on his Newsweek-branded podcast. The three men sat together talking and laughing at table #6 during the NYYRC event, near the stage.

Newsweek contributor and disinformation peddler Raheem Kassam texts a selfie to someone at the NYYRC event on Dec. 10. Kassam sat at table #6 with Newsweek editor Josh Hammer and fellow Newsweek contributor Jack Posobiec. (Photo by Michael Edison Hayden)

When QAnon influencer-turned-congressperson Marjorie Taylor Greene took the stage, Hammer stood up and applauded. When she endorsed former President Trump as her 2024 presidential candidate of choice, Posobiec turned to Hammer and grinned. In January, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis invited Hammer on a tour of his office, and the Florida-based Newsweek editor has since hyped DeSantis as a potential presidential candidate.

“You gonna go up there, Josh?” Posobiec chided Hammer about Greene’s endorsement of Trump, eliciting laughter from the table.

A Hatewatch reporter approached Hammer after Greene’s speech, made an introduction and asked if he knew Peter Brimelow of VDARE.

“He’s right here, right now?” Hammer asked with excitement.

“I didn’t even know he was here!” Hammer said of the infamous white nationalist publisher. “I’m going to say ‘Hi.’ ”

The Hatewatch reporter asked Hammer how he got his job at Newsweek, and the opinion editor abruptly stopped talking. He asked the reporter to identify himself again. When the reporter did, Hammer’s expression slackened. He quickly claimed he did not know Peter Brimelow and left.

‘WHAT’S RACIST ABOUT PROJECT VERITAS?’

Multiple figures associated with Project Veritas, the hard-right propaganda group that engages in sting operations, attended the NYYRC gala. The group’s founder James O’Keefe and Project Veritas board member Matthew Tyrmand hobnobbed with NYYRC guests Saturday.

Legal trouble has entangled Project Veritas in recent months. Former associates sued Project Veritas in August, citing the creation of a “highly sexualized” work environment, which they claim included substance abuse and unpaid labor. (The group has denied these allegations.) In September, a jury in a civil case found that Project Veritas had “violated wiretapping laws and fraudulently misrepresented itself” during a sting operation targeting a group called Democracy Partners. The FBI raided O’Keefe’s home in November 2021 as part of an investigation into the alleged theft of a diary belonging to President Joe Biden’s daughter Ashley. (The group has claimed that they acted lawfully in obtaining the diary.)

Outside of the building on 583 Park Ave., O’Keefe argued with antifascist protesters, according to footage reviewed by Hatewatch. A different, self-described “independent video journalist” posted a series of clips to Twitter at 8:15 p.m., showing O’Keefe asking antifascist protesters on the corner of Park Avenue and 62nd Street, “What’s racist about Project Veritas?”

The same social media user posted a video to Twitter at 9:12 p.m. In it, O’Keefe could be seen standing on the street outside the venue alongside several other men, including Newsweek’s Hammer.

“Would you like to make a tax-deductible donation to Project Veritas?” O’Keefe asked the protesters.

Rudy Giuliani (center) chats with guests alongside radical right activist Lucian Wintrich (left) at the NYYRC gala on Dec. 10. (Photo by Michael Edison Hayden)

Hatewatch observed Project Veritas’s Tyrmand sitting at table #4, the one closest to the center of the stage, alongside Trump-world power players Steve Bannon and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani. A recent *New York Times* report named Tyrmand and Bannon as key U.S. figures in an effort to depict Brazil’s November presidential elections as being fraudulent, after voters in that country pushed hard-right favorite Jair Bolsonaro out of office. Tyrmand, who is known for his ties to the global radical right, took the stage and lauded the ultranationalist European leaders in attendance.

“This is an all-star room, and I urge all of you to meet everybody here and continue to spend time together, getting to know each other, so we can fight the battle, arm in arm,” Tyrmand said of the European extremists, including the contingents from Austria and Germany.

ALMOST MIDNIGHT

Donald Trump Jr. addresses the NYYRC gala on Dec. 10 in Manhattan. (Photo by Michael Edison Hayden)

Speakers including Trump Jr. and Greene sought to downplay the Republicans’ failure to secure a so-called “red wave” victory in the 2022 midterms by attacking such familiar right-wing targets as Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden and LGBTQ+ people.

“The party is in a pretty good spot, but America may not be getting it. We have a party right now that is actually delivering for the American people. But what we don’t have [is] our same people in Washington, who can make those things happen,” Donald Trump Jr. told the crowd after he came on stage.

Greene suggested eliminating Democrat members of House committees in her closing speech, as a way of shifting the tide of power in Washington. She also told the audience it was “almost midnight,” meaning they risked losing their country to perceived enemies.

Greene praised a Project Veritas video focused on LGBTQ+ education published by the group, saying it shows that teachers “pass around dildos, butt plugs and lube.” (The school issued a statement claiming “[Project] Veritas deceptively edited the video with malicious intent.”)

Greene expressed her gratitude to Project Veritas for their work.

“Thank you very much. We appreciate that,” she said to scattered applause.

---

aDAM KLASFELD / October 19, 2018

MANHATTAN (CN) – New York City police arrested two members of the far-right Proud Boys on Friday, a week after videos captured members of the group beating up protesters outside the official Manhattan club of the Republican Party.

Proud Boy Geoffrey Young, 38, was released on his own recognizance after being arraigned on two misdemeanor counts of riot in the second degree and attempted assault in the third degree.

A New York City police detective said that surveillance video caught Young punching and putting one person in a headlock, while kicking another person in the stomach.

A witness recorded Young kicking a third person three times in the head, police say.

The New York Daily News reported that police also arrested Jay Kinsman, who has not yet been arraigned, on Friday.

The arrests fall a full week after video captured the NYPD standing by as Proud Boy members attacked protesters outside the Upper East Side’s Manhattan Republican Club, which invited the group’s leader Gavin McInnes to reenact the samurai sword assassination of a Japanese socialist.

After that event, video captured Proud Boys participating in violence, but the NYPD arrested only three anti-fascist protesters that night.

New York City Public Advocate Letitia James, the Democratic nominee for state attorney general, pushed for police action the day after the violence.

"I am disturbed and disgusted by the videos I’ve seen of members of the neo-fascist, white supremacist Proud Boys group engaging in hate-fueled mob violence on the streets of New York City," James tweeted on Oct. 13. "New York will not become the next Charlottesville, and we refuse to let the actions of a hateful few define our city."

Legal Aid attorney Rebecca Kavanagh argued that the charges show the NYPD continues to treat the group with kid gloves.

“Why when video shows #ProudBoys stomping on person lying on ground in the fetal position is #NYPD planning only to charge them w/ Riot & Attempted Assault?” Kavanagh tweeted two days before the charges became public. “Riot is a Misdemeanor & I guarantee my clients would be charged w/ Gang Assault.”

The Daily News reported that police are looking for seven more Proud Boys and three anti-fascist protesters, widely known as Antifa.

In a press conference on Thursday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio suggested that both sides are complicating the investigation.

“You’ve got two factions, if you will, that unfortunately both seem to engage in violence at times and don’t want to cooperate with the police,” de Blasio told reporters. “That makes this more complicated.”

Governor Andrew Cuomo refused to draw equivalencies between the groups.

“The Proud Boys are a hate group,” Cuomo told WCBS this morning. “They are a white supremacist group, anti-women group and there was violence after they brought the Proud Boys and they brought them to the Republican headquarters.”

---

nation mag

no lnx pix

POLITICS / AUGUST 29, 2023

The War Within the Young Republican Party

At the Young Republican National Convention, far-right figures made few inroads—but they did read my Nation investigation.

AMANDA MOORE

Gavin Wax, president of the New York Young Republican Club, speaks to members of the media during a rally outside the New York County Criminal Court in New York City on Monday, March 20, 2023.

On August 19, The Nation released my article to subscribers detailing some of what I saw during my 11 months undercover in far-right circles. By chance, the article’s publication coincided with the Young Republican National Convention in Dallas, Tex., an event I had long planned to cover. I knew that Gavin Wax, one of the figures mentioned in the piece, would also be there in his role as the president of the New York Young Republican Club.

During the convention, my investigation was only available to subscribers—it wasn’t pushed in front of the hard paywall until Tuesday, August 22, so I figured no one would read it at the Omni Dallas Hotel. After all, how many subscribers to The Nation could possibly be at a Young Republican event?

Read the Article that Enraged the Right

Undercover With the New Alt-Right

AMANDA MOORE

On Saturday morning, Wax greeted me with an over-the-top hello and a joke about the far right taking over. I had written about Wax twice before, and one of those times he worked to mass report both my Twitter account and my editor’s in retaliation for my coverage of him. I assumed his sarcastic acknowledgment was related to my prior work. By that night, things changed.

Saturday evening was the National Awards Gala. After the event, I ran into Wax in the hallway. The NYYRC and New York State Young Republican Club had won an award for outstanding recruitment, which Wax was holding. Wax and Chelsea Hall, the NYYRC’s communications director, announced that Wax had won an award, and told me I should write about that next time. Not realizing they had read the undercover piece, I was confused. I congratulated Wax on doing such a good job. “He did do a good job,” Hall yelled, and I promised to mention the award next time I wrote about him. (Promise kept.)

I made my way over to a group of Young Republicans who were aware that I was a journalist. NYYRC Vice President Nathan Berger walked up to us, and aggressively asked who I was and why I was there. At that moment, I couldn’t place his face, though I was pretty sure he was a member of NYYRC.

“Do you know Gavin Wax? I’m a journalist, and I write about him,” I said, then told Berger he looked familiar. He assured me that I didn’t. Someone asked what club he was from, and when he said New York, one gestured to me and said that he must know who I was.

Berger snapped that he did not know me, then immediately announced that I had just written a piece for The Nation, and everyone should read it.

“Sounds like you know who she is!” someone replied to Berger.

Uncomfortable with Berger’s temper and bizarre confrontation style, we made our way downstairs, where we ran into Wax and Hall. Wax began yelling at the person next to me, screaming that I was antifa and demanding to know why he was talking to me. This was a Young Republican event, he said, and I was not a Republican. “Did you know that she’s antifa?” he asked.

The YR being yelled at told Wax that he didn’t know who he was, but his angry, loud demeanor did not make him seem particularly credible. Wax announced that I was secretly recording everything everyone said to me, and it dawned on me that I probably should record this interaction. When I pulled out my phone, Hall pointed out what I was doing.

“Yeah, I know that she’s recording,” Wax replied. “And I love that you admitted that you committed multiple felonies in Florida.”

When I countered that the places were public—or at least not venues where you’d have an expectation of privacy—Wax smirked. “OK, you can argue that in court. I cannot wait for the arrest warrants.” He turned back to the YR who was talking to me. “But anyway! Good luck, she’s recording everything you’re doing, and have the best time here.”

While Wax was happy to cause a scene, most of the YRs just avoided me, though a few were willing to talk. Wax is brash and aggressive on Twitter, and he will leverage his followers against outspoken YRs whom he considers RINOs. At YRNC, that brutish, Trumpian approach to politics was not the norm. Multiple people who heard Wax confront me apologized for his behavior later.

As with the larger GOP, Donald Trump has divided the YRNF. On August 19, the YRs voted on their new national leadership. There were two coalitions to choose from: the more moderate Grow YR and Ascend, who largely represented the MAGA wing of the YRs. (A representative from Ascend told me the group does not want to make YRNF a MAGA populist organization, though nearly every person I talked to supporting Grow disagreed.)

Popular

We Have Mounting Proof That Cruel Men Control Women’s Bodies in Red StatesWe Have Mounting Proof That Cruel Men Control Women’s Bodies in Red States

JOAN WALSH

Grow’s candidate for national chair was Hayden Padgett of the Texas Young Republicans. In 2020, Padgett released a video saying that George Floyd was murdered and that Black lives matter. Padgett’s message in the 2020 video was not an endorsement of the Black Lives Matter protest movement but of the idea that everyone is created equally and in God’s image.

Some of his detractors spent a year and half using the video to discredit him, even buying the URL www.haydenpadgett.com and redirecting it to a clip of him acknowledging anti-Black racism.

But the campaign didn’t work, and Padgett won with overwhelming support, pulling in 575 votes to his opponent’s 127. As it turns out, the Trumpian wing of YRNF does not have the same pull within the organization that they have on social media.

Kari Lake was the keynote speaker for the awards gala, and there had been rumors of a walkout. And when she went up to speak, a few people did leave the room. Some YRs complained about her lies over the election. One person said they didn’t want to hear about Ukraine, saying that Ukrainian immigrants in their district were reliable Republican voters and that the US was right to defend the country’s sovereignty.

The last day of the convention, the Texas YRs de-federated the Dallas Young Republicans, removing the chapter from Texas Young Republican Federation and stripping them of the right to use the Texas Young Republican name. The Dallas YRs have a reputation for being “based,” which in this context means they embody some of the worst characteristics of Trumpian politics. The group’s chair, for instance, has an event next month featuring John Doyle, who planned a Stop the Steal rally with Nick Fuentes and is a proud Christian nationalist.

“The Dallas YRs were removed, because they have refused to engage with the parent organization for a very long time,” said Matt Wiltshire, the YRNF’s finance director. “They don’t talk to us or communicate. They have not cared about rules for years. They allow expelled Texas YRs to attend their events.” (Dallas YRs have since spent their time on Twitter, insisting they quit before they were voted out.)

The Texas YRs also voted to separate themselves from the Republican Party of Texas, due to their strained relationship with Matt Rinaldi, the Texas GOP chairman. In the lead-up to the election, Rinaldi refused to endorse Padgett, a fellow Texan who was almost unanimously supported by the Texas YRs, or even to remain uninvolved. Instead, Rinaldi endorsed Padgett’s more MAGA opponent, whose brand of Republicanism was more in line with his own.

“Rinaldi came to the convention not to spend time with the Texas YRs, but to go to the New York State Young Republican meeting,” Wiltshire explained. The meeting had “people who have been cruel to many members of our organization,” and Rinadli went “in order to disparage the Texas YRs and Hayden.”

Just before the cote, a representative from Ascend had told me, “Even though it’s the last thing we want, I assume there will be splinter organizations. This could be the last large YRNF convention ever.” This may already be playing out.

On Sunday, the Rockwall County YRs voted to leave the Texas Young Republican Federation, citing TYRF’s decision to end their partnership with the Republican Party of Texas. Like Dallas, Rockwall has a reputation for being a based club, one that is not in lockstep with TYRF’s leadership. In their release, they wrote that they “are proud to form a coalition with the Dallas Young Republicans.”

While the MAGA populists might often be the loudest voices from YRNF, they appear to be losing the internal struggle for power. Much like within the GOP, the rift over is likely to grow wider and deeper in the lead-up to the 2024 election.

Amanda Moore is a writer and researcher who focuses on far-right extremism. }}}:

---

mma 11 23

## Wallace and Chutkan are presiding over two Trump cases

- Colorado District Court Judge Sarah Wallace is presiding over a 14th Amendment case against Trump, which will decide whether Trump should be disqualified from having his name on the ballot in the state in 2024 over his alleged role on January 6. Reuters, [10/30/23]
- U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan is overseeing Trump’s litigation in D.C. and recently reinstated a gag order on the former president following a temporary freeze after Trump appealed.CNN, [10/30/23;Axios, 10/20/23]

## Right-wing media have attacked Colorado Judge Wallace
- Michael Knowles of The Daily Wire suggested that Wallace’s decision to allow a lawsuit regarding Trump's eligibility for office under the 14th Amendment to move forward could result in another civil war. Knowles remarked: “Civil wars happen. And the liberals would appear to be cultivating the conditions to make it much more likely.” Media Matters, [10/24/23]

- On X, Fox News host Mark Levin shared an NBC News article about the case, adding, “We have a real problem in America with tyrannical leftwing judges who run their courtrooms like political circuses.”Twitter/X, [10/30/23]

- On his show War Room, Steve Bannon called Wallace “radical” while his guest, Mike Davis, a right-wing judicial activist, called on her to recuse herself from the case.Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [10/30/23]

- Later on, Bannon claimed the case is happening in a kangaroo court that’s “every bit as deadly as the Nazi judges and Stalin show trial.” Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [10/30/23]

- Davis also made an appearance on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle and called Wallace “biased” and cited a $100 donation to the Colorado Turnout Project she made prior to taking the bench. He went on: “I think she’s going to rule for these Democrat operatives and try to take President Trump off the ballot here in Colorado. And I think that Democrats are going to try to use that precedent to go to other states like Minnesota and Michigan. So, it looks like the Supreme Court of the United States is going to have to step in here and fix this eventually.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [10/30/23; Colorado Politics, 10/30/23]

- On X, Mike Davis wrote: “New Denver District Judge Sarah Wallace, a Democrat Donor, Commits Reversible Error By Refusing to Recuse from Trump January 6th Case After Donating to Anti-Trump January 6th PAC.”He went on to ask, “Will the public reasonably believe she can give Trump a fair January 6th-related bench trial after she donated to an anti-Trump January 6th PAC ? The answer is clearly not.” Twitter/X, [10/30/23]

- Davis also posted on X a clip of his appearance on War Room, adding, “Anyone with a brain can see that she can’t objectively be fair to President Trump given her past donation to a leftist cause.” Twitter/X, [10/30/23]
- Replying to Davis’ post, bigoted social media personality Mike Cernovich wrote, “Judges are overtly flaunting the law as a show of force. It’s Stalin era tactics.” Twitter/X, [10/30/23]

- On GETTR, Bannon wrote: “Crazed Left Wing Judge and Radical Secretary of State for Colorado Attempt to Remove President Trump from Ballot in 2024.” GETTR, [10/30/23]

- Davis joined Jack Posobiec on his show Human Events Daily and called Wallace “clearly biased,” adding, “No one in their right mind thinks that this judge is going to be fair.” Posobiec described Wallace as a “left-wing judge” and called the case “a bench trial,” referring to a type of trial with no jury. Real America’s Voice, *Human Events Daily*, [10/30/23]

- On X, previously known as Twitter, pro-Trump troll and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer called Judge Wallace “another political hack” and “a MAJOR Trump-hater.”Loomer also went after Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, calling her “a communist who was funded by George Soros.” Twitter/X, [10/30/23]

- Loomer also took aim at Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) for not attacking Wallace, claiming she’s been “silent” about the case.She asked, “How come you don’t have any condemnation for Judge Sarah Wallace and the efforts to take Trump off the ballot in Colorado, which you supposedly ‘represent’ when you aren’t getting drunk on dates with Democrats?” In a separate post, Loomer said that if “Boebert is too dumb to see how this lawsuit will ultimately impact her race, then she doesn’t deserve to be in Congress.” Twitter/X, [10/30/23, 10/30/23]

- In another post, Loomer described Wallace as “the radical Leftist judge overseeing the anti—Trump trial in Colorado.” She then claimed the case is “direct ELECTION INTERFERENCE” and “pure lawfare, orchestrated by partisan Democrats and their left-wing financiers to cheat the American electoral system and deprive the American voters of their rightful choice for a President.” Twitter/X, [10/30/23]

- The right-wing publication National Pulse ran a headline on an article about the lawsuit reading, “NOW: Soros’s ‘Kick Trump Off Ballot’ Case Begins, With Far-Left, Democrat Donor Judge.” The National Pulse, [10/30/23]

- Breitbart wrote: “Democrat-Appointed Colorado Judge Greenlights Effort to Kick Trump Off 2024 Ballot.”Breitbart, [10/23/23]

- Sean Spicer, former press secretary and communications director for Trump and current host of The Sean Spicer Show, wrote on X, “Talk about election interference.... Colorado judge paves way for trial on whether 14th Amendment disqualifies Trump from office.” Twitter/X, [10/26/23]

- Right-wing commentator Rogan O’Handley, or DC_Draino, complained on X that “Democrat” Wallace refused to recuse herself.He added, “FAKE SHOW TRIAL!” Twitter/X, [10/30/23]

- On X, Catturd wrote, “The reason Democrats are trying to get Trump off the ballot in Colorado is because cheating is the only way they can win elections. It’s really that simple.” Twitter/X, [10/30/23]
## MAGA media figures and trolls have renewed attacks against D.C. Judge Chutkan
- Users on 4chan have unleashed a barrage of racist images and antisemitic rhetoric against Judge Chutkan. 4chan, [10/31/23, 10/31/23, 10/30/23]

- In a post on X, pro-Trump troll and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer called Chutkan “the Obama appointed affirmative action poster child.” Twitter/X, [10/30/23]

- Fox News host Mark Levin posted on X calling Judge Chutkan “a disgrace.”He went on to argue, “The DC courts need to be broken up, its jurisdiction for high profile cases withdrawn, and the judicial seats and subject-matter jurisdictions should be moved to other parts of the country.” Twitter/X, [10/30/23]

- On Fox News, host Laura Ingraham said, “The Democrats are getting a lot of help from federal Judge Tanya Chutkan.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [10/30/23]
- Right-wing judicial activist Mike Davis called Chutkan an “obnoxiously partisan DC Obama judge” on X.Twitter/X, [10/30/23]

- Conservative commentator Julie Kelly also posted on X that “Chutkan shouldn’t be within 100 miles of this case given her inflammatory, biased, and inaccurate statements in court about Trump and Jan 6. But here we are.” Twitter/X, [10/30/23]

- Jim Hoft of the Gateway Pundit wrote in a headline, “Obama-Appointed Judge Chutkan Reinstates Gag Order on President Trump.” In the piece, Hoft describes her as the “Jamaican-born Obama- appointed Judge Tanya Chutkan.” The Gateway Pundit, [10/29/23]

- On X, Tom Fitton of the conservative legal organization Judicial Watch reposted an earlier tweet of his in light of the reinstatement, saying, “Judge Chutkan has now effectively taken over Trump's presidential campaign.” Twitter/X, [10/17/23]
- In another post, Fitton called the developments in the case “election interference by the Biden regime and anti-Trump judge.....” Twitter/X, [10/29/23]

- Responding to a piece from Conservative Brief on the gag order, far-right political commentator Sebastian Gorka wrote, “This is no longer Republican vs Democrat. It's The People vs The Establishment. Good vs Evil.” Twitter/X, [10/30/23]

---

mma 6 23

Blake Neff, a former writer for Fox’s now-defunct Tucker Carlson Tonight who resigned from the show in 2020 following revelations that he made racist and sexist posts in an online forum, has resurfaced on Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk’s radio show, apparently as a producer.

In July 2020, CNN’s Oliver Darcy reported that Neff, then the top writer for Tucker Carlson’s show, had been anonymously posting racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and other offensive content on an online forum for five years. Neff used racist and homophobic slurs, referred to women in a derogatory manner, andpushed white supremacist content while writing for Carlson’s show. Neff resigned after CNN contacted him for comment.

On the website for The Charlie Kirk Show, Neff is identified as “producer Blake.” In addition to appearing on that show, Neff has also joined Kirk on a new panel show called THOUGHTCRIME.

Neff appeared with Kirk on the first episode of THOUGHTCRIME, a new weekly panel show streamed live exclusively on Kirk’s Rumble channel that’s apparently co-hosted by Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec. Kirk introduced Neff as “very high-IQ Blake,” saying, “And we’re really honored to have Blake on our team —he’s great. And the most, let’s just say, awful people in the world tried to destroy Blake’s life and we’re not going to let that happen.” Later he added, “We love Blake and he does a great job.”

In a prerecorded introduction attached to the audio-only version of the show, Kirk described THOUGHTCRIME as “R-rated,” with “rather graphic elements,” and “not homeschool friendly.”

On June 21, Neff appeared again on Salem Radio Network’s The Charlie Kirk Show to discuss the submersible vessel carrying four tourists and a captain that got lost while diving to the Titanic shipwreck.Kirk described Neff as “our resident submarine expert,” and a chyron identified Neff as “The Charlie Kirk Show Submarine expert.” Neff described the plight of the lost vessel story as “refreshing” as far as news cycles go.

After the break, Kirk referred to Neff as “part of” the new weekly panel show. Neff also said, “I don’t want to say, like, you should not” go on a submersible vessel seemingly operated on a video game controller.[vid]

during THOUGHTCRIME, the panelists repeatedly used an anti-trans slur and discussed the X-rated topic of “glory holes” in response to The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh’s claim on Twitter that “Fox Corp is celebrating Pride by encouraging employees to read about ‘“glory holes.’”

This type of talk stands out coming from Kirk, not only because of the raunchy topic, but also because of how it contrasts with the self-righteous Christian nationalist rhetoric he’s embraced over the last year with the launch of Turning Point USA Faith, an initiative to propagandize young people by setting up Turning Point USA chapters in their churches.

“What is a glory hole?” asked Kirk.

“Oh my sweet summer child,” responded Neff.

Kirk then Googled it live on air.

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an 6 23

no lnx

Tucker Carlson claims 'neocon war agenda' is behind Trump documents prosecution

Alex HendersonJune 14, 2023

When former President Donald Trump was arraigned on 37 federal criminal counts in a Miami courtroom on Tuesday, June 13, a long list of right-wing media outlets reflexively echoed Trump's claim that the prosecution is a baseless "witch hunt."

Not all conservatives have been defending Trump, of course; MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, attorney George Conway, The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson and The Bulwark's Charlie Sykes are among the many Never Trumpers on the right who have been applauding special counsel Jack Smith and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for pursuing the case and stressing that Trump is not exempt from the rule of law. Conway, in fact, slammed Trump's Republican defenders as

unprincipled and shameless" during a June 14 appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

But MAGA pundits have been painting Trump as the victim. One of them is former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

READ MORE: Trump takes aim at Jack Smith with treason accusation in late-night attack

In a 13-minute video posted on Twitter on June 13, Carlson argued, in essence, that: (1) storing classified government documents at Mar-a-Lago is no big deal, and (2) a hawkish combination of Biden Democrats and establishment Republicans are trying to bring Trump down because of his anti-neocon views.

Carlson told viewers, "What matters, then and now, is foreign policy. The invasions and occupations and proxy wars — the decisions that determine which global populations will thrive and which will die…. In Washington, that's what actually matters."

"Permanent Washington," Carlson added, "decided to send Donald Trump to prison" seven years ago because he opposed the "neocon war agenda." Trump, the former Fox News host argued, "sealed his fate" when he condemned the invasion of Iraq during the 2016 GOP presidential primary debates.

"Whatever else you say about him," Carlson told viewers, "Trump is the one guy with an actual shot at becoming president who dissents from Washington's longstanding, pointless war agenda. And for that — that one fact — they are trying to take Trump out before you can vote for him."

READ MORE: Retired conservative judge: Trump 'dared, taunted, provoked, and goaded DOJ' into indicting him

Carlson was highly dismissive of the federal government's system for classifying documents, saying, "Washington is a city where internal memos about Labor Day are classified because everything is classified…. None of this is done in order to make America safer."

Twitter CEO Elon Musk praised Carlson's video as "bold" and posted, "This is why we like Tucker!" And far-right MAGA conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec wrote, "Tucker just spent 13 minutes giving the best explanation for why Trump should be president."

In the Daily Beast, journalist William Vaillancourt alluded to Carlson's legal battle with Fox News, writing, "Despite an escalating dispute with Fox News over the Twitter videos, Carlson returned to the social media platform, expressing support for the former president and criticizing the very concept of classified documents, asserting casually that in Washington, D.C. 'everything is classified.'"

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retaliate benghazi

https://www.mediamatters.org/jack-posobiec/jack-posobiec-suggests-conspiracy-theorist-darren-beattie-chief-investigator

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https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-deace/nefarious-steve-deaces-self-proclaimed-christo-fascist-propaganda-horror-movie-has-been

mma 6 23

right-wing media have promoted the Christian film Nefarious as one of the latest battlegrounds in so-called “spiritual warfare.” Through strategically cut trailers, influencer promotion, and a Coachella event, the film's creators have worked to “subversively” market it as a generic thriller to a mainstream audience in the hopes that it would “show them the light.”

The movie Nefarious is a prequel to A Nefarious Plot, a book by right-wing commentator and BlazeTV host Steve Deace, who partnered with directors Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon — the duo behind other right-wing faith-based movies such as Unplanned and God’s Not Dead1 and 2. Deace has an extensive history of using virulently anti-LGBTQ, misogynistic, anti-abortion, and other bigoted rhetoric such as saying lessons for kids about Pride Month are “right out of the pit of hell.” He claimed that he and his company “invested millions of dollars that [he] frankly didn’t have to make this movie” because “storytelling” is the “last place left where real persuasion can occur.”

Though marketed to a mainstream audience as a standard horror movie, Nefarious serves as a “Christian allegory, and it is conveyed with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer,” as the Washington Examiner put it, with the two main characters — an atheist psychiatrist and a death-row inmate who claims to be possessed by a demon — debating the existence of the devil and God. The movie also suggests humanity is engaged in a spiritual war against demonic forces, with the demon progressive political and social stances that have taken root in American society, like abortion rights and LGBTQ equality.

The movie’s theme is captured in a scene featuring bigoted conspiracy theorist and BlazeTV founder Glenn Beck, playing himself. Beck asks the psychiatrist, “What happens to an atheist that is confronted by demonic evil?” Later the psychiatrist notes, “There’s a great battle going on, whether we realize it or not — a battle between good and evil — and we’re all participants, willing or not.”

The film’s promotion of a right-wing Christian worldview on viewers is clear: On his BlazeTV podcast, Deace agreed with an online reviewer who described it as “Christo-facist propaganda.” Yet Deace, Solomon, and Konzelman repeatedly admitted that Nefarious was marketed as a standard horror film to reach viewers who might not choose to see a faith-based movie. The film started streaming on June 2 and it has been playing in hundreds of theaters nationwide for at least seven weeks, grossing over $5 million.

Nefarious’ creators marketed it as a standard horror film to attract “nonbelievers”

In April, Deace boasted to right-wing groupThe Family Leaderthat the film’s trailer was crafted “subversively” to portray Nefarious as a horror movie and hide from potential moviegoers that it was faith-based and contained right-wing ideological themes. Apparently, the trailer played ahead of the nonfaith-based movie Cocaine Bear in at least some theaters. In the same interview, Deace went on to call the Motion Picture Association “demonic” for the R rating that Nefarious received, claiming that it was given this rating only because the group was afraid “unbelieving” kids “would be impacted by it.”

Deace, as well as directors Solomon and Konzelman, repeatedly admitted to trying to attract a mainstream audience.

In April, Deace described the movie’s marketing campaign as “tricking” the audience into thinking it was a horror movie rather than faith-based, saying: “Now that we're done tricking — I'm sorry, ‘marketing’ it as a horror film to the Ninevites — we're just gonna flat out now be honest about the movie now that it's in theaters. It's a faith-based film. It was always intended to be a faith-based film. We just packaged it in a way to bring people in that are being attracted to darkness to then get them in the theaters so that we can then show them the light.” (Ninevites descend from Nineveh, which is famous for its depiction in the Bible as a sinful city.)
vid?]
discussing online reviews of the movie during his podcast, Deace agreed with a reviewer who described the film as “Christo-fascist propaganda,” saying: “Even most of the critical reviews from users were like, well, it's actually very well-acted and well-made. I just hated the world view. It's Christo-fascist propaganda. OK, which is true, but I digress.”

In an interview with a right-wing Catholic site, Konzelman described the movie’s poster as a “Trojan horse”: “Don’t be afraid of the poster — [it] looks pretty intimidating. The poster is a Trojan horse designed to lure the mainstream horror audience into the film, nonbelievers.”
In the same interview, Konzelman said: “This is the movie for your family member who has fallen away from the faith, or your friend who has never been a believer. You can take them to this film, and under the guise of entertainment, they’re going to be confronted with the greater questions.”
On his podcast, Deace and his producer, Aaron McIntire, mocked online reviewers, whom they described as being “lured” into the movie by the “effective marketing” and failing to “do their homework about what this movie was.” They also mocked a reviewer who said she “went to see Nefarious completely blindly thinking it was just a scary movie.” McIntire said to Deace of similar reviews from unsuspecting viewers: “Seeing those reactions, you accomplished something.”

The movie was seemingly also promoted through aninfluencer campaign— a growing tactic within the right-wing ecosystem that can create a false impression of organic public support.

[pix twt]

at least two dozen influencer and meme accounts, including accounts affiliated with right-wing influencer group Today is America, across Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok promoted Nefarious, particularly in late April after it received a 33% review on Rotten Tomatoes. The content of the various posts was very similar, if not exactly the same, generally using the hashtag #WokenTomatoes, and encouraging followers to see the movie.

It also appears that there was a red carpet event in Palm Springs, California, for the film prior to the Coachella music festival, seemingly hosted by actor Paul Butcher and attended by celebrities including Victoria Justice. Like much of the film’s official marketing, the event seems to have presented Nefarious primarily as a paranormal thriller, not a faith-based movie. From photos shared of the event — which was attended by mainstream social media influencers with hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers — it appears that guests were entertained with a tattoo booth and a vodka company was a sponsor.

[twt]

right-wing media figures are promoting Nefarious using rhetoric from the religious right that warns of an ongoing“spiritual war”

The larger political context surrounding the release of Nefarious is growing Christian nationalism and apocalyptic political rhetoric on the right, which frames the country as engaged in existential “spiritual warfare” against satanic forces.

Some right-wing media figures are alsolabeling trans people and abortion as “demonic,” and Konzelman and Soloman made similar claims in various interviews while promoting Nefarious. In one, they cited the existence of trans people as evidence ofsatanic influence: “There will come a time when good is considered bad, and bad is considered good, when women will be as men, when all these things that are happening in our world today. … You can see the devil’s machinations.”

Numerous right-wing media figures — and even members of Congress — have endorsed or promoted Nefarious, including Glenn Beck, right-wing influencer and neo-Nazi collaborator Jack Posobiec, BlazeTV host The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, Salem Radio host, conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza, right-wing podcast host Elijah Schaffer, former Trump administration official Ben Carson, former Newsmax host Grant Stinchfield, and disgraced former Trump attorney Sidney Powell

[vid]?

several right-wing and Christian media outlets also covered the movie’s message positively, including Fox News, Church Militant, Breitbart, The Christian Post, Western Journal, Christian Broadcasting Network, The Federalist, and The Daily Wire.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirks-conspiratorial-fearmongering-and-retaliatory-fantasies-reach-dangerous

no lnx many vids

Charlie Kirk's conspiratorial fearmongering and retaliatory fantasies reach a dangerous new level

Kirk: "We are living in an enemy-occupied country. They have taken over the government and we have to think as dissidents.”

WRITTEN BY SOPHIE LAWTON & JACK WHEATLEY

PUBLISHED 04/03/23

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In late March, Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk repeatedly told his audience that they must take action against a demonic and tyrannical force that is targeting them for their conservative political views. While Kirk is no stranger to extreme rhetoric, his noticeably more incendiary and alarmist rhetoric is primarily in response to three news stories from the past week — the March 27 school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee; recent reports that the IRS visited the home of journalist Matt Taibbi; and the March 30 indictment of former President Donald Trump by a New York grand jury.

Trump indictment

As reports of Trump’s indictment in New York emerged on March 30, Kirk held a special livestream to speculate about the news and reasoning behind the sealed charges. Kirk claimed that the indictment is a distraction from the shooting in Nashville and is actually a “designed campaign” to goad conservatives into violence. Kirk stated, “They would love nothing more than for people to act uncharacteristic. They need to try to incite you to right-wing violence to justify their mass takeover of the country.”

Kirk also called for retribution against his political opponents, who he claimed are “acting like Stalinists,” and said “we must make them pay a price and a penalty” by indicting Democrats. “They crossed the Rubicon,” Kirk claimed. “They have declared quote-unquote the Roman Civil War.”

Video

CitationFrom the March 30, 2023, edition of Real America's Voice's The Charlie Kirk Show

As a guest on Thursday night’s edition ofThe Ingraham Angleon Fox News, Kirk took to spreading more conspiracy theories following the news of Trump’s indictment. Kirk again insinuated that the left and the “national security state” are “almost trying to incite the American conservative community to act uncharacteristic” and carry out right-wing violence which, in turn, would be used to presuppose the creation of “a Patriot Act 2.0, and that could then further justify their power grab across the country.”

Later on in the segment, Kirk claimed that Trump’s indictment was an act of revenge by those still upset over his election in 2016, saying that “it seems as if there is this bloodthirsty appetite and desire at the highest level of the Democrat eliteto quote-unquote get Trump.” Kirk went on to claim there’s a “kind of Stalinization of the American criminal justice system” that he hopes independent and moderate voters will recognize before the upcoming presidential race. Fox host Laura Ingraham agreed and added, “It’s like Stalin’s purges, right? That’s what we’re seeing.”

Addressing his audience the day following Trump’s indictment, Kirk said the only way to “bring the country together” and “heal” is for conservatives “to win,” then told his listeners that winning will include “a lot of our side going to jail, a lot of their side going to jail.” Kirk reminded his audience to stay peaceful though quickly reverted to inflammatory rhetoric, saying, “The country we grew up in has ended, a new country is born. Who’s going to control it? If we want it, we can win.”

In the same March 31 episode, while introducing an interview withDonald Trump Jr., Kirk told his listeners, “You should be angry today. And this is a time for action, and this a time to realize that the country we love has slipped away and we have to get it back.”

Video From the March 31, 2023, edition of The Charlie Kirk Show

Nashville school shooting

In the wake of the tragic school shooting in Nashville on March 27, Kirk unleashed vile attacks on the LGBTQ community following police reports that the shooter was transgender.

On his March 28 show, Kirk claimed that activists are becoming “trans jihadists” in the name of “this lie of a quote-unquote trans genocide” adding that “people think they’re on kind of a holy crusade.” He said that “there’s a lot of violent fantasies, unfortunately, among the trans radicals,” and went on to specifically blame the transgender community for the tragic attack in Nashville, claiming that they have “a violent undercurrent that tragically manifested in three dead kids and three dead teachers yesterday.” (Labeling all transgender people as violent is a common anti-trans trope.)

In his Tuesday episode with guest and Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec, Kirk read a statement from a group called the Trans Resistance Network referencing the shooting in Nashville and claimed the group “is blaming us, is blaming Michael Knowles, blaming Matt Walsh, blaming Jack Posobiec, blaming all of us for the massacre of children.”

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After discussing the Nashville shooting again on his March 29 podcast, Kirk told his audience, “The trans movement is almost on a jihad.They have been told that people like us want them deadand I’m afraid they’re on some sort of unholy crusade,” adding, “We have to stop it immediately.”

Supposed IRS targeting

IRS agents reportedly made a recent house call to Substack journalist Matt Taibbi, according to a statement from Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Republicans on the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government based on Taibbi’s own claims. Kirk told his audience that the supposed IRS visit to Taibbi was just the beginning of a “targeted campaign to chill speech” and that the government will be visiting “Real America’s Voice listeners and viewers, grassroots conservatives” first. Kirk called the visit “Stalinistic, Maoist behavior from the Biden regime.”

After once again referring to the IRS visiting Taibbi as “the Stalinization of America” during his March 29 show, Kirk called it “full outright Gestapo behavior.” He then told his audience that “we are living in an enemy-occupied country. They have taken over the government and we have to think as dissidents.”

Video From the March 29, 2023, edition of The Charlie Kirk Show

Kirk’s fearmongering about the government targeting “political enemies,” specifically conservatives, included claiming that “the IRS is one of the most dangerous” and “powerful government agencies that is able to ruin your life,” telling his audience that “political force” will be used to “try and crush you.”

Kirk also suggested the government planned the IRS visit to scare Taibbi out of testifying against “the liberal quote-unquote street gang,” claiming, “If you want out, they beat you up, they kill you.” Kirk questioned, “You have to wonder did somebody plan the IRS visit so Matt Taibbi would reveal his sources? Did they do the house call to his front door the day he was going to testify for the purpose that he would break? Was it the equivalent of waking up with a horse’s head in your bed, how the mob used to operate?”

Other extremist comments

On his March 29 podcast with guest Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Kirk defended the Second Amendment by claiming someday Americans may need guns to fight against a “tyrannical, usurpatious government.” Kirk claimed that “the last 100 years shows 150 million people slaughtered because they were disarmed.”

At a Turning Point Faith event that same day, Kirk suggested that conservatives know evil is happening but are afraid to act on it because “the cost is being called something they wish they would not be called. Racist, bigot.” Kirk then said that “racism and bigotry mostly comes from the left,” saying. “We are such a decent, not racist country, that the incentive structure is to fake your own hate crime.”

At the same Turning Point event, Kirk compared the existence of transgender people to “homeless encampments” and said, “We should not have tolerance for public degeneracy or depravity of our streets.”

During an earlier live event on March 28, Kirk went on a rant about how the “woke mind virus” is a product of Satan sent to “destroy the greatest nation ever to exist in the history of the world.”He encouraged American pastors “excommunicate … the demons of the woke,” stating, “Evil should not be tolerated in the American church.”

Video From the March 28, 2023, Turning Point Faith event, livestreamed on YouTube

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At the March 28 Turning Point Faith event, Kirk also attacked universities and academics, claiming their actions are “rooted in anti-whiteness” and that “I think they’re trying to start a race war in this country.” Throughout his seemingly endless stream of extreme comments, Kirk also issued calls to action to his listeners.

At the same event, when asked about critical race theory, Kirk called the educational theory a “tumor” in our schools that happened because “good people have allowed evil to spread.” Kirk then called on the audience to be part of stopping such “evil,” claiming it will ”require good people with courage and boldness to stand up against what seems to be an overwhelming force and to say stop.”

“CRT has spread, andnow it’s time for us to remove the tumor,” Kirk concluded.

Video From a March 28, 2023, Turning Point Faith event streamed live on YouTube

Kirk used the “tumor” metaphor again when discussing a recent Wall Street Journal poll showing a decline in patriotism in America. Kirk claimed this generation of Americans are “the most depressed, most suicidal, most alcohol-addicted, most drug-addicted generation in history.” He then told his listeners, “Sometimes you need to get harsh, honest news and then have a battle plan, a plan of attack to remove the tumor” — implying the need to remove unpatriotic people from the country.

vid From the March 27, 2023, edition of The Charlie Kirk Show

Kirk has not specified what he means when he tells his audience to “stop” transgender people or critical race theory, but he’s also promoted preparing for future events by investing in gold and “buying a lot of bullets.”

Video From a March 28, 2023, Turning Point Faith event livestreamed on YouTube

THE LATEST

Charlie Kirk's conspiratorial fearmongering and retaliatory fantasies reach a dangerous new level

04/03/23 12:13 PM EDT

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04/03/23 11:33 AM EDT

Anti-civil rights activist Chris Rufo has extensive ties to Christian nationalist-led Center for Renewing America

04/03/23 11:25 AM EDT

Media Matters’ Evlondo Cooper discusses broadcast news' lack of attention to people of color and environmental justice with A Rude Awakening

04/03/23 11:03 AM EDT

With conventional abortion pill regimens likely to be pulled, anti-choice activists are increasingly attacking a safe alternative

04/03/23 11:01 AM EDT

Pagination

Current page1

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Right-wing media react to report of Trump's indictment

03/30/23 6:26 PM EDT

Charlie Kirk, Steve Bannon, and a QAnon conspiracy theoristare all boosting a far-right Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate

03/21/23 2:27 PM EDT

Right-wing media rally behind Michael Knowles’ eliminationist anti-trans rhetoric

03/08/23

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beast

Right-wing activist James O'Keefe has reportedly resigned from the conservative Project Veritas group he founded. O'Keefe had previously been put on leave after employees alleged he had been abusive.

On Monday, OAN correspondent Neil McCabe first reported O'Keefe "read his resignation letter to his former team and board members at their Mamaroneck, N.Y. headquarters."

"This is a very disappointing development," Real America's Voice host Charlie Kirk told his audience.

Earlier this month, The Daily Beast reported that employees complained in a letter about O'Keefe's mismanagement of Project Veritas.

"James has become a power drunk tyrant," one staffer said in the letter.

"I would describe Project Veritas' current environment with this saying: 'The beatings will continue until morale improves,'" another employee agreed.

Real America's Voice host Jack Posobiec suggested that the Veritas board ousted O'Keefe instead of allowing him to resign.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-and-jack-posobiec-claim-concern-about-equity-reminiscent-apartheid-south

CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): And Jack, here's one of the tragedies – it will create more bigotry and more stereotyping. So,

JACK POSOBIEC (GUEST): Of course.

KIRK: So if you areboarding a United Airlines flight and you see a Black pilot, they are conditioning you to think, I don't know if he's there because he's a wonderful pilot, and that's not good. I don't want to live in that country. I don't want to have that kind of lens. But that will be a rational thought that someone will have because of, now, the hiring quotas and because of the way that we are now putting people in positions of authority and power. They are changing medical licensing exams. I hope everyone knows this. They are changing medical licensing exams so that it is pass-fail because different scores were used to award residencies and those were, of course, racist. One minute, Jack.

JACK POSOBIEC (GUEST): You remember this famously came up with Mindy Kaling's brother. So the famous actress Mindy Kaling came out in 2015 and says, I faked being Black, and that's how I got into medical school. This can't be – obvious they're of Indian descent, but he decided to fake being Black, was able to get into medical school, was able to go all the way through and say, there's no way that you can choose – there's no way that you can threaten me.

So, Charlie, I think the way out of this really is for everyone to just go ahead and identify with whatever you feel works for you –

KIRK: That's terrible.

POSOBIEC: If you want to identify as multiracial, as quasi racial, pseudo race, whatever. Go for it. Because who is actually going to question this? How are they going to --

KIRK: I mean --

POSOBIEC: It would be one way to break the system.

KIRK: What they call equity, is they want to create a world where you are in a deficit if you are white. That is that is the world they're trying to create. And it's really cruel to say that. But when they say equity, they're trying to make it where you have a structural disadvantage through hiring –

POSOBIEC: Almost like apartheid.

KIRK: Of course it is.

POSOBIEC: It almost sounds like apartheid.

KIRK: But that is what South Africa did. South Africa took the awful, kind of, immoral approach to apartheid and they just flipped it upside down. They just said, ok, now we're going to extract revenge on the colonizers because now we're in charge. And South Africa is not a functioning country.

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right-wing media weaponize the East Palestine train derailment to claim white conservatives are being persecuted

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j6 ch 5

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January 5, 2021: Bannon Publicly Amplifies the Pressure on Vice President Pence.

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:{:{While President Trump misrepresented the Vice President’s agreement with Eastman’s theory, his on-again, off-again political advisor, Steve Bannon, pressed President Trump’s campaign against Vice President Pence in public. Bannon echoed the public pressure on Pence that the President continued to propagate by talking about his purported authority. The Select Committee learned from phone records that Bannon spoke to President Trump at least twice on January 5th.220}:

During a January 5, 2021, episode of War Room: Pandemic, Bannon and his guests openly berated Vice President Pence. Bannon cited an erroneous news report claiming that Senator Grassley would preside over the certification of the electoral college vote—instead of Vice President Pence.221 Bannon’s cohost, Raheem Kassam, took credit for the public pressure placed on Vice President Pence. “I want to remind people who has been sitting here, saying ‘Light Pence Up’ for the last couple of weeks. Right? That would be Raheem Kassam.” They then discussed President Trump’s speech in Georgia the previous evening. “I think the President of the United States took your advice last night, wrote a line in there,” Bannon said. To which Kasseem responded: “. . . and yours . . . hold the line.”}:

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Jack Posobiec, an alt-right personality with a large Twitter following, chimed in quoting a member of their audience as saying that “Pence will betray Donald Trump.” 222 In response, Bannon stated: “Call the play. Run the play.” 223

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:{:{The “play” was Bannon’s version of the “Green Bay Sweep”—a plan to subvert the transfer of power on January 6th named for a brutally effective power running play developed in the National Football League (NFL) in the 1960’s. Steve Bannon’s political version of the sweep was intended to undermine the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election.}:

One account of Bannon’s “Green Bay Sweep” comes from Peter Navarro, Director of the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy. Navarro refused to cooperate with the Select Committee and was subsequently indicted for contempt of Congress. Although he doesn’t fully explain in his book, In Trump Time: A Journal of America’s Plague Year, how Bannon’s sweep was intended to work, Navarro writes that Vice President Pence was envisioned as the “quarterback” who would “assert his constitutional power” to delay certification.224 Navarro writes that his own role was to “carefully document the fraud and myriad election irregularities,” while Bannon’s “role was to figure out how to use this information—what he called the ‘receipts.’” 225

Navarro’s account helps explain why Trump and his loyalists became so fixated on Vice President Pence. They saw Vice President Pence as their last hope for keeping President Trump in office. Navarro writes of Pence’s supposed “betrayal.” 226 In a telling sentence, Navarro likens Vice President Pence to Brutus, a Roman politician and the most famous assassin of Julius Caesar. Navarro writes:

On this cold, momentous day, I shiver as I think to myself, “January 6 will be either Mike Pence’s finest hour or the traitorous ‘Et tu, Brute?’ end of both his and Donald Trump’s political careers.” 227

The goal of these Trump allies was clear: to overturn the election result.228 Statements by participants in this effort indicate there were several different endgame strategies in mind. One was to get the Vice President to unilaterally reject the Electoral College votes of Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and other States, then simply declare that Trump had won a majority of the electors actually submitted. The other major possibility was to reject or “return” the Electoral College votes of these States and then declare there was no majority in the Electoral College process, thereby triggering a so-called contingent election under the 12th Amendment.229

This would have meant that the House of Representatives had chosen the president not on the basis of one-member-one-vote, but on the basis of one-State-one-vote, pursuant to the 12th Amendment. Donald Trump’s strategists emphasized repeatedly that the GOP had a 27-to-22 margin in control of the States’ Congressional delegations, with Pennsylvania being tied at 9-to-9, therefore presumably a non-factor.

5.3 President Trump and his Allies Continue to Pressure the Vice President on January 6th, Threatening His Life and Our Democracy.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/brazil/new-right-pretends-be-isolationist-their-rhetoric-brazil-shows-couldnt-be-further-truth

no lnx vid

The new right pretends to be isolationist. Their rhetoric on Brazil shows that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Right-wing pundits are increasingly embracing the Monroe Doctrine, one of the oldest expressions of US imperialism, and looking to manufacture a new cold war against China in the process

WRITTEN BY JOHN KNEFEL

PUBLISHED 01/13/23

Right-wing media personalities are increasingly embracing a two-century-old expression of U.S. imperialism called the “Monroe Doctrine,” and exposing their own militaristic impulses in the process.

Fox News’ top star Tucker Carlson and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon have both recently endorsed the Monroe Doctrine as a guiding principle, undercutting their supposedly isolationist views on U.S. military policy. In both cases, the conservative pundits invoked the doctrine as a means of opposing what they see as China’s increasing political and economic importance in South America, specifically in Brazil.

Bannon and Carlson both position themselves as antagonists towards the neocons, a faction of the conservative movement that ascended during the presidency of George W. Bush and was a driving factor in the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The so-called America First ideology that Bannon, Carlson, and others in the Trump-aligned wing of the conservative movement identify with is sometimes described, incorrectly, as isolationist. Their recent invocations of the Monroe Doctrine suggest that, far from being isolationists, these conservatives are increasingly interested in dominating China militarily, especially in the Western Hemisphere.

Carlson, Bannon, and their allies have adopted a new Cold Warrior posture, with China replacing the great boogeyman of the USSR, and Brazil — for now — taking the place of Vietnam, Afghanistan, El Salvador, and other countries where the U.S. waged proxy wars against the perceived communist threat. But whatever investments China has made in South America don’t, or shouldn’t, justify the recent insurrection in Brazil, which right-wing media in the United States celebrated.

A much better approach would be to support interstate partnerships following the “pink tide” that has surfaced across Latin America since 2018. Leftist leaders have been elected across the region in recent years, most recently in Colombia and Brazil. The ability of these left-of-center governments to fulfill their promises toward greater social equality remains in question, as their countries are still shackled with the conditions created and defined in many ways by the Monroe Doctrine.

“The United States deployed this doctrine [the Monroe Doctrine] to keep Latin America subordinate to U.S. interests, whether through direct interventions like coups, invasions, and assassinations or institutional arrangements like free-trade agreements and painful structural adjustment programs,” write David Adler and Guillaume Long in The American Prospect. “As a result, Latin American countries remain highly dependent on exporting raw materials to large powers like the U.S., and importing high-value products and sophisticated technology.”

The two argue that “Latin America must be free to build the independent institutions that it deems necessary to guarantee health, security, and a strong economy in an increasingly turbulent world.” The Biden administration could — but hasn’t — adopted this approach, which would likely have the added benefit of building regional resiliency against a potentially unwanted Chinese incursion. But because the Latin American leaders who could implement this policy are various stripes of socialists, they face strong headwinds from U.S liberals and overt hostility from conservatives.

Carlson, the Monroe Doctrine, and “our hemisphere”

Last year, Carlson’s team made a documentary-style film about Brazil that conspicuously avoided discussing whether then-President Jair Bolsonaro would respect the results of the upcoming election, or if he’d attempt to stay in power using extrajudicial means.

Carlson began the film by offering his definition of the Monroe Doctrine, and explicitly claiming U.S. imperial domain over the rest of the Western Hemisphere.

Video

CitationFrom the September 22, 2022, Tucker Carlson Original The China Takeover: Brazil

“In 1823, President James Monroe announced a policy that has been the center of American foreign policy for the last 200 years, called the Monroe Doctrine,” Carlson began.

“Great powers would not be allowed to control nations in the Western Hemisphere,” he continued. “That would be a direct threat to the interests of the United States. And for 200 years, we haven't allowed it.”

Carlson then accused President Joe Biden of changing that policy, saying the doctrine was “no longer enforced,” in part because the administration was overly focused on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The Biden administration has abdicated its responsibility and into the void left by the United States moves a new superpower,” he concluded. “We've come to Brazil to see for ourselves the rise of China and how the government of China is replacing the United States as the dominant power in our hemisphere.”

Carlson’s use of the first-person plural, possessive phrases here — “our hemisphere” — is key. The “our” clearly refers to the United States, not a broader collective of self-governed countries in the hemisphere. In Carlson’s rendering, the fight is between the United States and China for dominance over Brazil – not for Brazilian sovereignty in itself.

The rest of the movie is a series of fearmongering accusations leveled against China, all in support of Carlson’s primary thesis: that the Chinese Communist Party is attempting to turn Brazil into a de facto colony. Carlson appears more upset that China is supposedly taking on this role (instead of the United States) than that any country is engaged in this kind of imperial project in the first place. “There is one government left in South America that is sympathetic to the United States, and it's this one here in Brazil,” Carlson said to conclude his film. “But it's being ignored by the Biden administration for ideological reasons. When the smoke clears, China may control Brazil too.”

Carlson has casually asserted the United States’ rightful domain over Latin and South America before. In February, he reported that China had “announced a partnership with Argentina, in part on currency.”

“Argentina's president also said his nation would join China's Belt and Road Project,” he continued. “Again, it's in our hemisphere. Monroe Doctrine, anyone? But it's happening, and nobody is even mentioning it.”

Bannon’s New Cold War

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Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon is almost monomaniacally obsessed with China’s rise and the threat he believes it poses to U.S. hegemony, both globally and specifically in the Western Hemisphere. As one small but telling example, his show’s bumper music is a rap song by Chinese dissident — and Bannon-backer — Miles Guo whose hook is: “Let’s take down the CCP.”

Shortly after pro-Bolsonaro forces staged an insurrection by storming multiple Brazilian governmental buildings, Bannon invoked the Monroe Doctrine to justify the rioters’ actions. Bannon falsely characterized President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, as nothing but a puppet of the Chinese government, and argued that China is attempting to seize power across the region.

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The CCP aims to create “Latin America as a communist superstate backed by the Chinese Communist Party directly aimed at the United States,” Bannon said. “This is what the Monroe Doctrine is about.”

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“Our founders, our framers warned us, ‘Don’t go searching for monsters to slay in Ukraine — watch what they do here in the Western Hemisphere,’” he continued.

“We’re not in a great position, and now we have it in our hemisphere,” his guest,Matthew Tyrmand,responded. “China, under Lula, will have control of the entire wealth, and power, and geopolitical strategic positioning of South America.”

South America “will be a Marxist superstate should the Brazilians accept Lula as their leader,” Tyrmand added.

Video

CitationFrom the January 9, 2023, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

Bannon and Tyrmand had previously had almost the exact same discussion, including the invocation of the Monroe Doctrine, on the night of Bolsonaro’s loss in late October.

“The communists, the CCP foothold in this hemisphere has been growing already, and this would be very deleterious,” Tyrmand said. “And of course we’ve got corrupt, senile, comatose vegetable in the White House fiddling as our Rome-hemisphere burns.”

“And so, all of MAGA should understand, these are our allies in Brazil,” Bannon responded, referring to Bolsonaro and his supporters.

“Remember, this hemisphere was kept orderly because of the Monroe Doctrine,” Bannon continued. “We absolutely had a line in the sand from the beginning of this republic that there would be no foreign interference in this, in this — and by the way, for 200 years we've been adamant about that.”

He added that now “the CCP” is “deeply involved in a takeover” of “the most significant country in Latin America, South America.”

Video

CitationFrom Steve Bannon's Gettr account, streamed October 30, 2022

In the summer of 2021, Bannon spoke with conspiracy theorist and neo-Nazi collaborator Jack Posobiec at least twice about China’s role in the Western Hemisphere. As protesters took to the streets in Cuba, cheered on by right-wing U.S. media, Posobiec expressed his outrage that foreign countries would warn the United States not to meddle in the demonstrations. Like Carlson, he referred to “our hemisphere” in describing U.S. dominion over sovereign countries.

“Yesterday you had China, Iran and Russia — came out and they put out a statement jointly saying the United States needs to not interfere in Cuba,” Posobiec said. “I'm sorry. No, you don't get to tell us in our homes what happens in our hemisphere. This is the Monroe Doctrine."

“That was U.S. policy, bipartisan for generations in this country,” he continued. “Who are you to say that you were going to tell us what's going on in our backyard? No, I don't think so. Are we a great power or not?”

As in the more recent case with Brazil, Posobiec invoked the Monroe Doctrine explicitly as a justification to counter hypothetical Chinese expansionism. “What's Joe Biden going to do? What's [Secretary of State Tony] Blinken going to do when you've got Chinese subs off the coast of Havana?” Posobiec asked. “Because you know that's coming next. You know, what are you going to do? Are you going to stand up and defend our hemisphere, to defend our national interest or not?"

When they returned to the topic that October, the two were even more explicit in their comparisons to the Cold War. During the segment, Bannon’s producers showed a graphic that was reminiscent of anti-communist propaganda from the 1950s, lest the point get lost on any War Room viewers.

Video

CitationFrom the October 20, 2021, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room: Pandemic

Bannon asked Posobiec to “talk about the Chinese Communist Party, what they are doing in South America and the Caribbean, and the direct impact on the United States of America.”

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“The United States has largely, you know, in the past been sort of seen as sort of the hegemon when it comes to the Western Hemisphere,” Posobiec replied. “This goes back to Monroe Doctrine.”

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“This is classic U.S. policy,” he continued. “It's the idea of when the Soviet Union wanted to get a foothold in Cuba and plant their missiles.”

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Posobiec then argued that “now you're seeing China come in to play that role,” before claiming that “of course they're going to Cuba; of course they're going to Venezuela, but they're doing everything they can to get into these countries like Colombia, like Brazil, like Bolivia, Argentina.”

He added that then-President Bolsonaro is “the guy that's fighting back against what China is doing” and that if China “can take over Brazil, they are going to be able to use that to control the entire South American continent.”

America First means MAGA empire

Carlson and Bannon both exert considerable influence over the shape of the Republican Party. They are not simply talk show hosts, but political operators whom Republican politicians often seek to curry favor with. Both played significant roles in the GOP’s approach to the midterms, for example. Carlson provided Republicans with messaging support, endorsed candidates in primaries, and then attempted to help those candidates win. The same is true for Bannon, who dedicated his show to pushing an unrelenting stream of election denialism prior to last November’s contests.

Both Carlson and Bannon — as well as the rest of the Republican Party — fared poorly in the midterms, but that doesn’t retroactively negate their influence. Indeed, the early days of the new House GOP majority suggest that hardliners in the Carlson and Bannon mold are as empowered within the caucus as they’ve ever been. When the two of them show their true colors as imperialist neo-Cold Warriors, they can be seen as a stand-in for a much larger element within the broader conservative movement.

For Carlson, Bannon, and their fellow travelers, America First isn’t a call for directing public policy to benefit people living in the United States, no matter their protestations. It is instead a rearticulation of a standard ideology based on U.S. dominance, both in the Western Hemisphere and in what they see as the larger geopolitical battle with China. In this way, their philosophy is not nearly as different from the neocons as they claim it is.

Where the neocon project was largely justified under a flimsy pretext of spreading democracy, America Firsters are reimagining and recreating Cold War-style global power struggles. This context is key to understanding and deciphering conservative foreign policy goals and rhetoric in the coming election cycle. The Trump wing of the movement may pay lip service to opposing U.S. foreign wars, but their chauvinistic invocation of the Monroe Doctrine shows they believe in maintaining U.S. military and political hegemony, just like their factional rivals.

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rww Tags: Ali Alexander Gary Bauer Jack Posobiec Jenna Ellis Marjorie Taylor Greene Tom Fitton Capitol Insurrection House select committee on Jan. 6 Jan. 6 Judicial Watch

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rww 12 22

House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection released a 150-page summary of its findings and voted Monday to send the Justice Department criminal referrals for former President Donald Trump and others who assisted his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Right-wing political groups and leaders generally responded either by ignoring the historic action altogether or by dismissing it as a partisan move without engaging substantively with the committee’s extensively documented findings.

Far-right activist Ali Alexander, who was a leader of the so-called “Stop the Steal” effort to overturn the 2020 election and keep Trump in power, called the committee’s criminal referrals “a coup against the voters.” Alexander, who participated in the recent disastrous Kanye West and Nick Fuentes appearance on Alex Jones’ show that turned into a festival of praise for Adolph Hitler, also released a statement purportedly on behalf of “Team Ye,” accusing Democrats and the “Republican Establishment” of working together “to rig our GOP primary or choose which candidates can be in the ballot before the American Voter.”

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton took to Twitter to charge that “’January 6’ is all about Biden/Left seeking to suppress/jail political opponents who blow the whistle on their election misconduct — and suppressing political opponents in 2024…” Fitton shared a video of himself claiming that “The left has decided that if you are challenging results they like in elections, you’re breaking the law and you should be jailed and prosecuted.”

Fitton also retweeted Claremont Institute Senior Fellow Jeremy Carl’s suggestion that the threat to democracy was somehow not Trump’s effort to overthrow the election or the violent effort to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, but the committee’s investigation: “A completely partisan House panel is trying to work hand-in-glove with a completely partisan DOJ to bring criminal charges against the previous U.S. President. If you still think we live in a functional democracy you need to wake up and realize what time it is.”

Former Trump attorney and self-styled “America’s lawyer” Jenna Ellis claimed, “It’s all a political pretext with zero basis in fact or law”—a ridiculous statement given the committee’s meticulous gathering of evidence, including testimony from many Trump administration officials.

Not to be outdone, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene dismissed the House committee as “communist.”

Writing in his daily email newsletter, longtime religious-right activist Gary Bauercalled the committee a “kangaroo court” and referred to the criminal referrals as outgoing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi “seeking to extract one last act of revenge against Donald Trump.” Bauer was similarly grumpy about the committee referring four Republican congressmen to the House ethics committee for refusing to comply with committee subpoenas. Bauer didn’t defend their defiance of the law but railed against what he called a “despicable precedent established by petulant progressives.”

Pizzagate promoter Jack Posobiec greeted the conclusion of the committee’s final public meeting with a message on Telegram: “Bring it, demons.” Posobiec didn’t pass up the chance to raise money, urging his readers Monday night to buy Christmas presents from MyPillow using a code that would presumably give Posobiec a cut: “Jan 6 wasn’t an insurrection to overthrow the govt but promocode Poso is an insurrection to overthrow prices this Christmas!”

The committee is reportedly set to release a massive amount of additional documentation Wednesday.

Tags: Ali Alexander Gary Bauer Jack Posobiec Jenna Ellis Marjorie Taylor Greene Tom Fitton Capitol Insurrection House select committee on Jan. 6 Jan. 6 Judicial Watch

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https://www.mediamatters.org/climate-deniers/great-reset-conspiracy-theory-hotbed-climate-denial

ted mac

major climate conferences, such as the upcoming Conferences of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27), are often the subject of right-wing media's ire. During last year's COP26, right-wing media was rife with climate change denial, mockery, and claims that climate action is a ploy to control the citizenry. While we can expect to see these same talking points during COP27 in Egypt from November 6-18, another idea that the right has weaponized and may deploy during the event is the Great Reset conspiracy theory.

Although the concept of a Great Reset has spawned a number of conspiracy theories, the common premise among them all is that a cabal of global elites are conspiring to abolish personal freedoms in order to install a tyrannical, one-world government. According to the Great Reset’s adherents, climate policies (among other issues) are a pretext being used by said global elites to implement this global government.

While conspiracy theories related to the Great Reset as a whole are not new, issues of climate denial associated with the Great Reset have been gaining momentum across right-wing media in recent months, fueled by the global energy crisis and a summer of climate-fueled weather disasters. A key driver of the climate components of the Great Reset conspiracy theory is longtime right-wing media darling and climate denier Marc Morano. Other far-right media personalities including Charlie Kirk, Jack Posobiec, and Peter Sweden have alluded to or directly referenced the Great Reset conspiracy theory.

At a time when more global dialogue on climate action is crucial in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change, prominent right-wing media figures espousing unhinged Great Reset conspiracies is a worrying prospect.

What is the Great Reset? //agenda 21]

The Great Reset, as envisioned by World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab in June 2020, is a plan for what the world should look like after the coronavirus pandemic ends. Schwab stated “the pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world to create a healthier, more equitable, and more prosperous future.” In essence, the Great Reset asks the question of how to prepare for a more sustainable future, and it promotes more global governmental and corporate cooperation in order to solve the world’s most pressing problems, including poverty, income inequality, and climate change.

A June 2021 BBC deep dive into Great Reset conspiracy theories detailed some of the problems related to the plan. They called it “a vague set of proposals,” before stating that “this lack of clarity, combined with the plan being launched by an influential organisation, provided fertile ground for conspiracy theories to grow.” Among the first and most popular of the Great Reset conspiracy theories dealt with coronavirus. BBC noted, “In this narrative, lockdown restrictions were introduced not to curb the spread of the virus, but to deliberately bring about economic collapse and a socialist world government, albeit run for the benefit of powerful capitalists.”

Indeed, early right-wing criticisms of the Great Reset focused on the idea of a radical transformation of the world economy. In June 2020, Justin Haskins of the libertarian, climate-denying Heartland Institute wrote op-eds insinuating this on both the Fox News and Fox Business websites. Two segments on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle in November 2020 also addressed the idea of an overthrow of the world economy, with host Laura Ingraham stating on November 13, “Well, with the coronavirus, that idea went global. And since last spring, powerful people began to use this pandemic as a way to force radical social and economic change across the continents.”

In his June 2020 Fox Business op-ed, Haskins also pushed the idea that climate policies would be used as a pretext to advance the Great Reset agenda. This idea was also mirrored by former Breitbart writer James Delingpole, who wrote in November 2020 that climate change is “really just a pretext for the kind of globalist takeover now being conducted by our governments.” Fast forward to 2022, and this is one of the main tenets of the Great Reset conspiracy theory.

Key climate denial talking points within the Great Reset conspiracy theory

There are several themes related to climate change within the Great Reset conspiracy theory that have been pushed by right-wing media figures.

“Climate lockdowns are coming”

As the aforementioned BBC deep dive piece noted, adherents to the Great Reset conspiracy theory believe that there are more sinister motives to coronavirus lockdowns than just protecting public health. Now, the theory’s adherents believe the same about climate action. Adherents push the idea that “climate lockdowns” are being planned by world governments in order to set off recessions and rapidly restrict economic growth.

Notorious climate denier Marc Morano was pushing this idea as early as 2020, when he stated on the December 21 edition of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight that the Biden administration will “go from COVID lockdowns to climate lockdowns.” Morano returned to it on the June 19, 2022, edition of Newsmax’s Gorka Reality Check, where he railed against Green New Deal policies and stated that Bill Gates and George Soros “love this idea of lockdowns. …That is their path to the Great Reset, emergency declaration gives them more power.”

Popular alt-right commentator and Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec also echoed this line of thinking, tweeting to his more than 1 million followers on September 20 that “Davos launching new push for permanent ‘climate change’ lockdowns: ’The lockdowns aren't for them, the lockdowns are for YOU.’" On the September 21 edition of Newsmax’s Eric Bolling The Balance, host Eric Bolling stated, “The same reasons given for the COVID lockdowns will be the same reasons for creating climate change lockdowns.” He led with this by showing pictures of internment camps, insinuating to his viewers that this is the end goal that climate action will lead to.

“Climate change is about control”

This claim is based on the lie that climate change is a manufactured crisis which wealthy individuals and powerful governments are using to implement policies that police peoples’ movement and ultimately end basic freedoms.

On the July 15 and 16 editions of Fox & Friends, co-host Will Cain made this claim, stating that there’s “protests against the Great Reset” all around the world, and claimed, “All of this goes back to a global plan to attempt to control the climate no matter the cost.”

Bolling also pushed this idea, telling his audience on the September 12 edition of Eric Bolling The Balance that climate change is a hoax being used “in order to make people fear the end of the world and convince us to change everything. They want to control us forever and ever.” (In fact, the entire 16 minutes of his monologue was focused on climate denial.) Speaking about the Great Reset on the September 20 edition of OAN News, climate denier guest Bonner Cohen insinuated that the “environmental movement” recognized that “scaring people to death about ‘climate change’” is a way to control them. He then continued:

Once you control energy, you also control the people who use and need energy. This is a way of forcing them to do exactly what you want to do, and will enable unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., and for that matter, around the world to determine how you spend your life, how you spend your money, how you use your energy to the benefit of a tiny percentage of the population.

Controlling agriculture and meat

Another climate-related tenet of the Great Reset conspiracy theory is the idea that those in power want to control food production and police what people eat.

In reference to the Dutch farmers' protests, The Post Millennial tweeted out a quote from Posobiec on July 7, which said, “The government of the Netherlands perhaps should be listening to their farmers ... instead of listening to the WEF and pushing the Great Reset green agenda upon them.”

In a discussion on general problems facing the U.S. on the September 3 edition of Newsmax’s Wendy Bell Common Sense, right-wing radio host Jeff Kuhner stated, “It's the Great Reset. … Many of these left wing global – they want food shortages. They want energy rationing. They want to break the back of the middle and working class of this country.”

Great Reset conspiracy theorists also imply that people will be forced to eat insects. In July, pseudo-journalist and Holocaust denier Peter Sweden got over 12,000 likes on a tweet saying, “In Belgium there are now talks about an ‘environment tax’ on meat. They want you to eat bugs and be happy. Are you enjoying The Great Reset?”

Dog whistling about the Great Reset

Oftentimes, the term Great Reset won’t be directly referenced, but certain keywords and allusions are used as dog whistles. In September, Peter Sweden and Morano baselessly claimed people will be forced to eat bugs.

Another example comes from right-wing writer Joel Kotkin in Newsweek, who, on September 19, suggested that coronavirus lockdowns are a test run for coming climate lockdowns, and both are “top-down edicts over how people live.”

Fox News star Tucker Carlson also alluded to the Great Reset conspiracy theory on the September 9 edition of Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle. Discussing the energy crisis, Carlson suggested that transitioning away from fossil fuels is about control. He claimed, “Energy is civilization. … People don’t understand how threatening this is and how close we are to being under the complete and total control of people who wish us ill.”

Additionally, if a speaker references “globalists,” Klaus Schwab, Davos, or the World Economic Forum within a climate denial context, that’s generally a sign they are referring to the Great Reset. For example, on the September 9 edition of Newsmax’s Real America, Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA) suggested that global elites are pushing climate policies to make money at the expense of the poor. She said, “They want the climate crisis to continue because they make money off of it. … They're so disconnected. And they truly are globalists and they're more interested in the World Economic Forum and what Klaus Schwab has to offer.”

Key drivers of the Great Reset conspiracy theory are popular figures within the right-wing media ecosystem

One such narrative-shaper is Morano, a longtime climate denier and frequent Fox News guest who recently wrote a book titled “The Great Reset: Global Elites and the Permanent Lockdown.” In addition to various Newsmax appearances, Morano appeared on two separate OAN shows on September 16 to discuss the Great Reset. In July, his book was promoted on Tucker Carlson Tonight. On October 8, he appeared on Fox News’ Unfiltered with Dan Bongino and said the Great Reset is about “collapsing our energy, food, transportation, and our free speech rights.” He’s also been doing right-wing radio interviews promoting his Great Reset conspiracy theory book.

Hosts on Newsmax are also promoting the Great Reset conspiracy theory.Bolling has devoted several segments to climate denial and the Great Reset in recent months. On the October 13 edition of his program, Bolling lied about President “Joebama” waging a “war on our own oil independence,” and that he is making people “suffer for the Great Reset. Control us for the Great Reset.” He said this all alongside a chyron that stated, “You shall eat no meat.”

Newsmax anchor Rob Schmitt also pushed this idea on the September 29 edition of his show Rob Schmitt Tonight, stating, “In 50 years we will still be burning fossil fuels on this planet. … No person is actually going to gut their quality of life to help John Kerry implement a Great Reset that will do nothing to save the climate and insidious plan that really just rapidly socializes our country and the world, which is what they really want.” Newsmax anchor Chris Salcedo also mentioned the Great Reset on his show on September 15.

Popular alt-right media personalities are also driving much of the Great Reset chatter. One example is Peter Sweden, whose regular tweets about climate denial and the Great Reset receive significant engagement. One tweet, which racked up tens of thousands of likes, stated, “The Great Reset is another word for Global Communism.” Two other tweets with significant engagement also exhibit climate denial and link the Great Reset to “global communism.”

Jack Posobiec is another right-wing figure pushing Great Reset talking points. In September, Turning Point USA (TPUSA) hosted an event in Phoenix called “Defeating the Great Reset.” Notable speakers included Posobiec, Charlie Kirk, and Steve Bannon. The description of the event lied about the WEF’s plan, saying they want people to “own nothing and be happy” (a Reuters fact check from early 2021 disputed this claim). Conference speaker James Lindsey invoked this phrase and insinuated that powerful elites will come after our modes of transportation. Additionally, Charlie Kirk interviewed guest attendee Alex Jones about banning meat, with Jones saying that meat is a “symbol of freedom” and that “globalists” want to ban it.

What’s worse, the September 22 of Kirk’s podcast was entirely devoted to climate denial, using the title “Exposing the Great Climate Change Hoax.” The Great Reset was mentioned multiple times in this episode. He also alluded to climate lockdowns, stating, “How do you stop a virus? You lock down everything. How do you stop climate change? You lock down everything.” He also claimed that dictators use crises “to get their tyranny, their power, their control implemented.” He then called climate change “the next crisis and the perfect one.” He also suggested that the transition to clean energy is all about a transition to more global government and less freedom. Finally, Kirk used violent rhetoric to describe climate activists, noting that the “enviro-fascist movement” is “the greatest threat to civilization.”

Tenets of the Great Reset conspiracy theory have also popped up on Fox News, which is the most-watched cable news network in the United States. In addition to the examples above, the September 7 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight featured a segment on the growing threat of climate lockdowns. Ingraham also mentioned lockdowns on the October 30 edition of The Ingraham Angle, where she insinuated that the climate crisis, much like the pandemic, is made up, and that it will be an excuse for elites to “extend emergency powers” over the population.

This conspiracy theory will only get worse from here – news outlets should pay attention

Given the growing proliferation of the Great Reset conspiracy theory in right-wing media, it’s worth noting that there are legitimate critiques of the WEF’s vague proposal outside of unhinged conspiracy theories. The BBC deep dive referenced earlier found that the lack of clarity around Schwab’s screed provided fertile breeding ground for conspiracy theories to grow. Writing in The Intercept in late 2020, climate writer Naomi Klein argued that people have a right to be skeptical of wealthy and powerful figures introducing bold new ideas, stating that the Great Reset “is an attempt to create a plausible impression that the huge winners in this system are on the verge of voluntarily setting greed aside to get serious about solving the raging crises that are radically destabilizing our world.” Finally, writer Ivan Wecke argues the real issue with the Great Reset idea is that it gives corporations, and not democratic institutions, more control over our lives.

The lack of clarity around the original Great Reset idea and the real problems associated with it make the right-wing conspiracy theories related to it all the more worrying. Given the threats posed by climate change, we do need to envision a way to create a more sustainable future. Global dialogue on climate action is necessary to do this, and it’s why conferences like the upcoming COP27 are crucial: We need forums to discuss ways to phase out our deadly addiction to fossil fuels and introduce cleaner sources of energy that will allow those at the bottom to live more just and equitable lives.

The right’s Great Reset conspiracy theory flips all of this on its head: By calling climate change a hoax to advance a tyrannical agenda, Great Reset conspiracy adherents are advocating for a future with more fossil fuels which will lead to more devastating climate impacts that will disproportionately affect those at the bottom.

The Cambridge Extinction Rebellion Twitter account did an excellent job of explaining why this conspiracy theory should be taken seriously, noting that adherents “will frame fossil fuels around notions of freedom, claiming pro climate and anti fossil fuel policies harm freedom. They will heavily capitalize on the energy crisis this winter to advance this narrative. It is likely to be persuasive to many.” Given the rapid spread of conspiracy theories like QAnon and the belief that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump, people need to understand the danger behind climate denial and the right-wing Great Reset conspiracy theory. They can start by keeping an eye on it around COP27 discussions.

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https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/jack-posobiec

many lnx

jack Posobiec is a political operative and internet performer of the anti-democracy hard right, known primarily for creating and amplifying viral disinformation campaigns. His disinformation typically focuses on making his political opponents seem dangerous or criminal, while ignoring or downplaying the corruption of authoritarians. Posobiec has repeatedly employed self-aggrandizement and acts of deception to boost his own profile. Researchers have noted the likelihood that automation, or “bots,” helped some of his posts trend on Twitter. Posobiec has used his prominence on Twitter to promote Russian military intelligence operations. He helped lead the “Stop the Steal” campaign, which cast doubt on the integrity of the 2016 and 2020 American presidential elections. He has also collaborated with white nationalists, antigovernment extremists, members of the Proud Boys, and neo-Nazis in his capacity as an operative.

Jack Posobiec

EXTREMIST INFO

Born1984

LocationHanover, Maryland

IdeologyGeneral Hate

About Jack Posobiec

In this article

• Background

• Disinformation agenda

• Russian influence

• Ties to white supremacists

• Ties to Polish neofascists

• Male supremacy agenda

• Ties to mainstream figures

Jack Posobiec presents himself to the public, misleadingly, as a journalist. The social media company Twitter helped make Posobiec into a public figure by verifying his account in April 2017. Twitter verified Posobiec following a half-year period in which he claimed “fmr CBS News” in his profile biography on the site. CBS News told SPLC’s Hatewatch in 2020 that Posobiec never worked for them. He posts thousands of times per month on Twitter, with his verified status helping draw hundreds of millions of impressions.

Posobiec rose to prominence during the 2016 election while working as an operative for the Roger Stone-linked 501(c)4 organization Citizens for Trump.Posobiec has described Stone, a former Donald Trump adviser and convicted felon who was pardoned by Trump in 2020, as a mentor. By tweeting to his massive following, Posobiec helped Stone’s anti-democracy “Stop the Steal” project go viral.

Although Posobiec disseminates his propaganda primarily through Twitter, he helped build his reputation through a variety of different right-wing outfits including Canada’s Rebel News, the embattled cable channel One America News Network (OANN), Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, and the fringe news and opinion website Human Events. The youth-focused non-profit Turning Point USA (TPUSA) advertises Posobiec as a “contributor” on its website and has featured him as an event speaker.

Since Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, Posobiec has emerged as arguably the most active spreader of disinformation among all internet performers in the far-right social media ecosystem. He pushed the #Pizzagate lie in 2016, suggesting that Democratic politicians frequented a nonexistent pedophile dungeon below a Washington, D.C., pizzeria. He also promoted the “Rape Melania” disinformation campaign in 2016, associating liberals with sexual violence. According to Buzzfeed reporting, Posobiec held up the sign bearing those words. He then used Twitter to lead people to believe that anti-Trump protesters had waved it. (Posobiec has denied those claims.) He has since pushed lies and distortions associating violent crimes with anti-racist demonstrators, as detailed below.

[at last a real false flag]

Posobiec has worked with a global network of extreme far-right and pro-authoritarian figures in his activism. He printed his second book through a publishing house where white supremacist Theodore Beale, known by the pen name Vox Day, serves as lead editor. In May 2017, Posobiec and the neo-Nazi Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer amplified the Russian military intelligence-backed “#MacronLeaks” operation, a so-called hack-and-leak effort to boost the campaign of far-right, anti-immigrant French politician Marine Le Pen. Around the same time, Posobiec collaborated on content for the online publication Rebel News at least twice with Jeffrey and Edward Clark, brothers who were active in online Neo-Nazi circles. The Clark brothers were reportedly connected online to Robert Bowers, who is now facing federal charges in connection with the massacre of 11 people in 2018 at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. Posobiec has appeared at events with such white nationalists as Richard Spencer and Scott Greer. He has appeared multiple times as a guest on the antigovernment conspiracy website Infowars. He has posed for smiling photos with leaders of the neofascist Proud Boys. Posobiec has targeted Jewish reporters with antisemitic hate and collaborated with, and marched alongside, Polish far-right extremists in Warsaw.

In His Own Words

“It’s time for real Christians to stand up and take this country back.… This country is not ours. This country is his. He is king. God is king. Christ is king. And, the minute we get that back, we get our country back.” – Colorado Christian University, Oct. 18, 2021

Tweet feeding into a disinformation campaign that antifa stormed the Capitol building

“Eyewitness reports one of the first people to break a window at the Capitol wearing a US flag shirt but took it off and tossed it in bush after. Others in dark clothing urging people to rush forward, starting anti-govt chants in crowd.” – Twitter, Jan. 6, 2021, feeding into a disinformation campaign that antifa stormed the Capitol building that day

“[Jan. 6] will be something that no one’s seen before. … I think it’s going to be absolutely historic, and really codify America’s history not only for this time but for years to come.” – to The Epoch Times the night of Jan. 5, 2021, during the “Stop the Steal” event that preluded the attack on the U.S. Capitol

“StoptheSteal 2020 is coming.” – Twitter, Sept. 7, 2020, a full two months before news outlets declared Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election

“It’s all fun and games until the rooftops start speaking Philly.” – Twitter, June 2, 2020, referring to a group of armed, white vigilantes who positioned themselves on rooftops in response to antiracist demonstrations and rioting in Philadelphia

“In the Russian point of view, modern warfare is information warfare. These modern wars take place in the psychological space – as pressure is applied through communications, politics, economics, and technology – suppressing an adversary’s will to act. Essentially, they have shifted from a war in the physical environment to war inside the human consciousness.” – 2018, from the book 4D Warfare: A Doctrine for a New Generation of Politics

“The @ADL_National would be wise to remember what happened the last time people made lists of undesirables” – Twitter, July 20, 2017, referring to a Jewish nongovernmental organization, alongside a selfie taken at Auschwitz

“Why shouldn’t white people also be allowed to speak at a racial seminar?” – Twitter, June 26, 2017, referring to the white nationalist groupIdentity Evropa’s disruption of a speaking engagement by Black civil rights activist Lutze Segu.

“My ancestors are smiling at me. Can you say the same?” – Twitter, May 8, 2017, following the Russian military intelligence-backed #MacronLeaks operation, which he played a central role in amplifying

“So why do we need organizations like this? I want to get this back on topic, okay? I want to get this back on topic. … What is the purpose of organizations like that? Like Proud Boys, like the Oath Keepers, that have been out there. I work very closely with the Oath Keepers. If you guys didn’t know that. … You know, they were out there all day today. … They were doing their support. … The Oath Keepers are already doing pre-security for the Trump rally in Harrisburg this Saturday. They’re letting me know what’s going on with that. Because of my background in the Navy and my background working, ah, ah, with the intelligence community, um, I’m very, very security minded.” – Periscope, April 2017, supporting the use of extremist groups as security

“I heard, someone heard … they turned Kekistanis into soap. … [They’re] turning them into lampshades.” – Periscope, March 31, 2017, referring to an antisemitic meme while filming white nationalist Scott Greer’sbook launch

“On Election Day, Stop the Steal operated in realtime [sic], with volunteer data input and broadcast directly on StoptheSteal.com. The program was found to be highly accurate in the end, especially in PA, OH, and FL. It success [sic] can be duplicated in any race, at any level, and will be an effective tool in the 2018 midterm elections, and Donald Trump’s re-election in 2020.” – 2017, from the book Citizens for Trump: The Inside Story of the People’s Movement To Take Back America, referring to the anti-democracy campaign that eventually spawned the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“I was honored to be among such company.” – 2017, from the book Citizens for Trump: The Inside Story of the People’s Movement To Take Back America, referring to a group of extremists that included Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes and Proud Boys member Joe Biggs

“#PizzaGate may be bigger than we suspected.” – Twitter, Nov. 21, 2016, less than two weeks before a gunman opened fire in Comet Ping Pong pizzeria

“Surrounded by (((them))) at Peter Thiel press conference” – Twitter, Oct. 31, 2016, singling out Jewish journalists with an antisemitic meme.

Background

Jack Posobiec has promoted an idealized version of himself that includes misleading details about his backstory and downplays his extensive ties to white supremacists. By his own account, he grew up in the Philadelphia suburb of Norristown, Pennsylvania, where he thought of himself as a future entertainer. He described his desire to find a career in show business in the introduction to his 2017 book Citizens for Trump: The Inside Story of the People’s Movement To Take Back America, writing:

Working in politics is not something that I ever sought out to do. … I always wanted to be a filmmaker, or a writer, or an actor. I really enjoy being creative, I enjoy performing – especially live – and I really enjoy being able to entertain people and share that love of performance with them. I did my stand-up comedy act at age 8, in front of my entire grade school. I tried my hand at it some more, when I got older, at clubs in Philadelphia. A lot of fun!”

In an early self-produced podcast, Posobiec described auditioning for roles in musical theater on Broadway. He appeared briefly in the 2008 Kung Fu film Forbidden Kingdom, playing the role of a thug. Although footage of Posobiec playing music surfaces online from time to time, he put most of his performance energy after 2016 into hard-right politics, spinning fabricated, propagandistic stories, giving direct-to-camera speeches over Twitter’s Periscope livestreaming app and pulling attention-seeking stunts on social media. For example, in June 2017, Posobiec joined anti-Muslim bigot Laura Loomer in disrupting a production of Julius Caesar in New York’s Central Park, shouting, “You are all Goebbels!” at the audience members.

Posobiec has also earned a reputation for hyping himself as person of importance. In 2019, he promoted to his followers a comic book called “Agent Poso,” which depicts him as a secret agent summoned in stealth by the president to do battle against “a global threat.” He has also positioned himself as an expert on a variety of trending news topics. He has billed himself an “intel analyst” focused on “counter-extremism research.” He has called himself a “CCP expert,” referring to the Chinese government, a “China analyst,” and a “Mandarin Linguist.” (SPLC presented to experts in the field evidence of Posobiec speaking Mandarin and talking about China. According to these experts, he struggled with the language and demonstrated a shallow understanding of Chinese culture.) Posobiec has also presented himself as an authority on Eastern Europe. FellowTPUSA contributor Benny Johnson described Posobiec to his audience as a “defense expert” during a March 5, 2022, broadcast of his show on Newsmax.

Posobiec attended Temple University. He wrote in his book Citizens for Trump that he headed up Temple’s College Republicans. SPLC reached out to Temple University about Posobiec to confirm these details, but the school chose not to respond to questions about him. He wrote in Citizens for Trump that he disagreed with the views of other students and professors in college.

“I realized early on that something was wrong. Very, very wrong,” he wrote in the book, referring to his college experience.

Posobiec also wrote in Citizens for Trump that he “attended the Aresty Institute of Leadership at the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania.” A person who declined to be named in this research sent SPLC an apparent resume of Posobiec’s, which matches his biographical details. The PDF document also lists that Ivy League school, marked only with the year 2009.SPLC reached out to Wharton for a clarification on Posobiec’s mention of Wharton, and a spokesperson wrote back that Posobiec never took any classes toward earning a degree.

“Unfortunately, we have no information about Jack Posobiec. We are better able to track former degree students,” the spokesperson wrote back.

Posobiec served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Naval Reserve from 2012 to 2018, according to records the Navy provided to SPLC. The Navy revoked Posobiec’s security clearance in 2017. The military-focused publication Task and Purpose wrote about the incident, quoting a source who claimed that the Navy yanked Posobiec’s security clearance after he shared confidential information to Twitter. Posobiec denied that accusation. Mainstream media outlets, including NBC News, reported on Posobiec’s time as a U.S. Naval Reserve officer, and his loss of security clearance, following the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Although Posobiec did not attend “Unite the Right,” Trump retweeted spin Posobiec posted, comparing the violence to murders in Chicago. Critics depicted the post as racist and an attempt to cover for the murder of activist Heather Heyer.

“I don’t know how much I can talk about. … They said somebody made a complaint against me,” Posobiec told Task and Purpose about the Navy revoking his security clearance.

A former active-duty intelligence officer analyzed Posobiec’s military record for SPLC, concluding that he was “unlikely in the extreme to have ever done any intelligence gathering of any national level importance.” They described Posobiec as being “infamous and hated” among his peers and noted that during television appearances he wears a “warfare” pin that Navy personnel consider inappropriate to flash in public, particularly given his experience level. Posobiec sometimes insists on his livestreams that what he did for the U.S. Naval Reserve, which included a stint at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, must be kept classified. The Task and Purpose story notes that, far from the secret agent persona he promoted through his “Agent Poso” comic book, “Posobiec has had ancillary duties as a urinalysis officer and overseeing physical fitness testing in his units.”

While still part of the Navy, Posobiec launched a Game of Thrones-themed Twitter account, @AngryGOTFan, which sometimes posted racist and antisemitic content.

“THE #BOYCOTTSTARWARSVII PEOPLE HAVE A POINT #PROBLEMATIC,” the @AngryGOTFan account posted on Oct. 19, 2015, showing actors of color and female actors from the 2015 film as “GOOD GUYS,” and the all-white, all-male slate of actors as “BAD GUYS.”

@AngryGOTFan later targeted Jewish people with antisemitic hate. @AngryGOTFan added triple parentheses around the names of such people as CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, whose family survived the Holocaust, and also the showrunners for Game of Thrones. White supremacists commonly put three layers of parentheses around the names of Jewish people to make them “echo,” or stand out as different from white, Christian people. Under Posobiec’s control, @AngryGOTFan also posted bizarre, pro-Kremlin propaganda, including a meme showing Trump riding a lion and Putin riding a bear while crossing a stream together.

Tweet referring to a hack-and-leak effort against the Democratic National Committee

“MAGISTER DONALD RIDES WITH LORD PUTIN #DNCLEAKS,” @AngryGOTFan published to Twitter on July 25, 2016, referring to a hack-and-leak effort against the Democratic National Committee (DNC) perpetrated by Russian military intelligence.

Posobiec would later help deny Russia’s involvement in #DNCLeaks by falsely pinning the blame on murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich. SPLC’s Hatewatch learned through an OSINT investigation that @AngryGOTFan likely switched his handle to @JackPosobiec sometime on the afternoon of Aug. 29, 2016, as Trump’s campaign for president entered its homestretch. Posobiec started using his own face on Twitter at that time and then immersed himself in a series of online stunts, highlighted by the repeated amplification of the #Pizzagate lie.

Posobiec branched out as a public figure in fall 2016 by giving interviews to the antigovernment conspiracy network Infowars and doing livestreams with such figures as white nationalist Timothy “Baked Alaska” Gionet, who now faces charges for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. Posobiec sometimes made public appearances in 2016 wearing a pin associated with the pro-Trump “Lion Guard,” which was at the time also used by white nationalist groups such as VDARE. In September 2016, Posobiec posted a series of tweets using the numbers 14 and 88, which white supremacists commonly insert into memes. (SPLC’s Hatewatch investigated the phenomenon while analyzing his Twitter usage.) He also attended events hosted by white supremacists such as Richard Spencer and Jared Taylor and livestreamed from them.

After Posobiec showed his face and name to the public on Twitter, he listed “fmr CBS News” in his bio, which led people to believe he at some point worked as a producer for that network. SPLC’s Hatewatch also found no reference to CBS News in the apparent Posobiec resume submitted by a source. The resume lists him as working at the Philadelphia-based talk radio station WPHT, which is owned by CBS, as a promotions assistant from December 2005 to February 2007, when he would have been a student at Temple. Michael Smerconish, a TV and radio host who worked for WPHT at the time, told SPLC’s Hatewatch in 2020 he had “zero recollection” of Posobiec ever working there.

Twitter verified Posobiec’s account in April 2017, meaning the company chose to put a blue check next to his name, a designation typically reserved for journalists and other public figures. Twitter’s choice to verify a man who was already closely associated with extremism, harassment and lying loaned him an air of credibility he would not have otherwise been easily able to obtain. SPLC has reached out to Twitter about Posobiec for multiple stories, but the company has never provided a formal statement about him.

Archives show that soon after Twitter verified Posobiec’s account on April 16, 2017, he posted an apparently fake story with the headline: “SHOCK: London Police Chief Appears to Give Tips How to Assassinate Trump During Visit.” The baseless post represents just one example of many lies, half-truths and over-the-top propaganda efforts Posobiec amplified through his verified account in his capacity as an operative. (SPLC details some, but not all, of Posobiec’s aggressive efforts to spread politically charged disinformation below.)

Posobiec’s Twitter account tallied over 100,000 followers by the time he promoted the Russian intelligence-backed #MacronLeaks hack in May 2017,designed to shape the outcome of the 2017 French elections in favor of anti-immigrant and hard-right politician Marine LePen. He crossed 1 million followers by September 2020, when he started promoting the iteration of #StoptheSteal that later mutated into an attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Posobiec has repeatedly denied being an extremist. In April 2020, he claimed that SPLC sought to “incite a mass shooting against [his] wife and child” for reporting on his demonstrable ties to the white supremacist movement. SPLC’s Hatewatch documented Posobiec’s connections to extremists across nine stories, published in a series between July 2020 to April 2021. Posobiec has never contacted SPLC pointing to any claimed error of fact . He has told his fans to disregard people who use such terms as “white supremacy,” “antisemitic” and “Russian-linked.”

When SPLC reached out to Posobiec about this report, a man named Andrew Kolvet responded on his behalf. Kolvet may be connected to TPUSA: The organization puts his name and number on its press kit, and Kolvet has also identified himself as a TPUSA spokesperson in the past. Kolvet did not, however, present himself as representing TPUSA during a roughly 80-minute “fact finding” phone call. He declined to go on the record with SPLC to defend Posobiec. SPLC reached out to TPUSA through its website, seeking more information about Kolvet or a statement from the group about their relationship to Posobiec. They did not respond.

Disinformation: #Pizzagate era

Posobiec has repeatedly focused his disinformation tactics around making critics of hard-right populism appear depraved and criminal, while downplaying or seeking to minimize acts of corruption and violence from his allies. Sometimes, Posobiec does this by distorting the facts around truthful details, giving them disproportionate weight, and amplifying them as central to a story. Other times, as with #Pizzagate, he plays up yarns with no apparent basis in fact. He wrote about the strategy of spreading disinformation and deception at length in his 2018 book 4D Warfare, while advising readers on how to win political campaigns.

“Deception is designed to affect the judgment of adversary operatives, especially as it concerns their analysis of your goals. In short, deception helps you achieve your goals by confusing your adversaries about what they truly are,” he wrote.

Outside of his own fans on the far right and researchers of extremism, the public primarily knows Posobiec for his role in amplifying the #Pizzagate lie in November 2016. Posobiec has denied being serious about #Pizzagate and has since sought to downplay his role in pushing the fake story that Democrats visited a non-existent child sex dungeon at the restaurant Comet Ping Pong. These facts are irrefutable:

Posobiec tweeted about the importance of #Pizzagate, making such comments as “#PizzaGate may be bigger than we suspected.”

Posobiec took the “investigation” of #Pizzagate further than many other extremists who posted about the conspiracy theory online, by traveling to the Washington, D.C., restaurant and going inside. The restaurant staff, viewing Posobiec’s behavior as harassment, called the police and asked him to leave, claiming he was creating a “dangerous situation.” Posobiec left the premises on his own, and police did not charge Posobiec with a crime.

Posobiec appeared as a guest on the antigovernment conspiracy network Infowars for an interview about his experience inside Comet Ping Pong.He used that platform to talk about “little kids” being present and insinuated the restaurant hid something through a “secret door.”

In December 2016, a gunman named Edgar Maddison Welch drove up to Washington, D.C., from North Carolina, entered Comet Ping Pong carrying an AR-15 and fired it inside the restaurant. He told police that he was motivated to save the children he believed, based on the PizzaGate conspiracy, were being trafficked through there. The FBI charged Welch with assault with a dangerous weapon and transporting a firearm over state lines. He served four years in prison for his crimes. Welch wrote that he “came to D.C. with the intent of helping people.”

Restaurant workers from Comet Ping Pong suffered for years from trauma related to the harassment they received because of such falsehoods and antics by Posobiec and his allies, according to James Alefantis, Comet Ping Pong’s owner. Alefantis told SPLC’s Hatewatch that people who believe the #Pizzagate lie continued to stalk and harass his staff, long after Trump’s term ended.

“We invented Jack Posobiec. Do you know what I mean? He was a literal no one and now he’s somebody,” Alefantis said of Posobiec and the role #Pizzagate played in his notoriety.

Posobiec has involved himself in so many disinformation campaigns beyond #Pizzagate that quantifying them presents challenges.He infiltrated a crowd of anti-Trump protesters with a hand-printed sign that proclaimed “Rape Melania” outside the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., Buzzfeed reported in January 2017. Twitter users amplified images and video of the sign, building a false impression that an anti-Trump protester wrote it. “Rape Melania” later trended on Twitter. Posobiec denied the accuracy of Buzzfeed’s reporting, suggesting he never held the sign.

Writing to Twitter on Nov. 14, 2016, Posobiec claimed: “1. Melania Trump calls for an end to cyber-bullying. 2. [Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey] allows Rape Melania to trend,” using the account that also claimed “fmr CBS News.”

Buzzfeed reported that it had obtained private chats in which Posobiec boasted that he urged anti-Trump protesters to advocate killing Trump. Posobiec denied to Buzzfeed that those chats were authentic. If Posobiec did manufacture the “rape Melania” moment to smear liberals, it arguably raises questions about other times he has claimed to observe violence by opponents of Trump. For example, Hatewatch found an archived tweet from Nov. 10, 2016, in which Posobiec purports to quote an anti-Trump protester saying, “Assassinate that N***a.” Whether such a protester really made this exact statement is impossible to know, but it became news in some circles. The Kremlin-tied news website RT published Posobiec’s tweet in a story on their English-language site one day later.

Disinformation: #StoptheSteal, 2016-21

Posobiec and other extremists pushed #StoptheSteal to plant doubts about the integrity of U.S. elections and spread lies about widespread voting irregularities that never actually occurred. He amplified #StoptheSteal in 2016 through his work with the 501(c)4 group Citizens for Trump. (In addition to backing #StoptheSteal, Posobiec’s Citizens for Trump also promoted racist commentary about former President Obama and faced scrutiny after associating themselves with the white nationalist website Eternal Sentry.) Posobiec amplified #StoptheSteal again during the 2018 midterms, targeting elections in multiple states. Later, Posobiec helped launch the now-infamous iteration of #StoptheSteal in 2020 that preceded the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

While the former Trump adviser and convicted felon Roger Stone created #StoptheSteal in 2016, his ally Posobiec helped push it onto Twitter. Stone, who involved himself in George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign to claim victory in Florida, started #StoptheSteal to pressure the Republican Party to accept Trump as the party’s nominee. He soon expanded it into a “poll watching” operation targeted at multiracial areas where Democratic turnout is high. Critics depicted the effort as being racist and anti-democrat.

Posobiec boasted about the effectiveness of #StoptheSteal in his 2017 book, Citizens for Trump: The Inside Story of the People’s Movement To Take Back America. He devoted an entire chapter to it called “Stop the Steal.” He described the operation as a repeatable formula in coming elections, including the 2020 presidential race.

“With Mr. Trump shining a light early on about the possibility of corruption, vote stealing, and election rigging, thousands of Americans put their time effort, and special skills to work for the movement,” Posobiec wrote in his book.

Posobiec tweeted, “#StoptheSteal 2020 is coming…” on the afternoon of Sept. 7, 2020, two full months before the media ultimately confirmed Biden’s victory. The Atlantic Council’s DFRLab listed the post as the first event in a timeline demonstrating how the hashtag transformed into the movement that attacked the U.S. Capitol. Posobiec tweeted about #StoptheSteal repeatedly in the runup to the violence on Jan. 6, 2021. After the violence unleashed by Trump’s supporters inspired national media attention and widespread outcry, Posobiec deleted Twitter posts in which he used the hashtag. (Hatewatch, and others, archived evidence of him using it.)

Posobiec has for years demonstrated a collaborative relationship with Ali Alexander, the hard-right operative who helped build the 2020 on-the-ground version of “Stop the Steal.” Alexander worked with white nationalist Nick Fuentes, antigovernment extremists and the Proud Boys to promote and organize rallies throughout the country denying the validity of the 2020 election results. Along with such extremists as Alex Jones of Infowars, Posobiec spoke in Washington, D.C., on the night of Jan. 5, 2021, in an event that amplified Trump’s lies about the 2020 election and preceded the attack on the U.S. Capitol. He focused his speech on the Chinese government, spoke in Mandarin and declared, “The American people are not for sale.”

Posobiec told The Epoch Timesthat night that the gathering at the Capitol the next day would be “something that no one’s seen before.”

“[Jan. 6] will be something that no one’s seen before … I think it’s going to be absolutely historic, and really codify America’s history not only for this time but for years to come,” he said.

Disinformation: Fabricated crimes

Enabled by Twitter’s unwillingness to remove Posobiec’s account after #Pizzagate, “Rape Melania” and other incidents that appear to violate the company’s terms of service, Posobiec pushed lies about antifa throughout 2017. Antifa is a left-leaning protest movement focused on opposing fascism and racism. The following examples represent a selection of Posobiec’s campaigns to tie opponents of hard-right politics to crimes:

In May 2017, Posobiec amplified a fake Twitter account that had antifa branding and purported to desecrate the graves of U.S. soldiers under the hashtag #DestroyHate.The stunt had no basis in truth.

Posobiec amplified to Twitter an obscure Facebook comment on Nov. 5, 2017, commenting, “Antifa discuss attacking churches,” following a mass shooter killing 27 people inside of a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Devin Patrick Kelley, the shooter, had no associations with the protest movement antifa.

Following an Amtrak train derailment near Tacoma, Washington, on Dec. 18, 2017, Posobiec claimed to his followers that antifa “targeted trains” in the area. The National Transportation Safety Board investigated the incident and determined that the train’s conductor pushed the train to travel 50 MPH above the speed limit at the time that it crashed. Antifa had nothing to do with the accident. “Antifa has targeted trains for weeks very near where the Amtrak derailment tragedy took place today,” Posobiec wrote at the time.

Disinformation: Fake QAnon debunk

At a time when the catch-all conspiracy QAnon threatened to embarrass Trump, Posobiec stepped in to “debunk” it. Posobiec interviewed on OANN a pro-Hitler disinformation poster who goes by the online moniker “Microchip,” who pretended to have created QAnon and shared fabricated screenshots to back up his yarn. Microchip and Posobiec have described each other as “friends.” Posobiec’s pseudonymous white supremacist friend has published commentary in support of Hitler and of the accelerationist neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division, whose members believe acts of terrorism is the only way to usher in a white ethnostate. Microchip praised the group linked to at least five murders in two posts on the fringe website Gab on July 24, 2018.

“I wish [Atomwaffen Division] had survived. They did great work in scaring the living shit out of everyone,” the person behind the Microchip Gab account wrote. “We need more hatred and fear. Everyone needs to stop being such f------ p------.”

Posobiec provided no context to his audience about Microchip’s extremism or involvement in previous disinformation campaigns. SPLC’s Hatewatch published a story about Posobiec’s use of Microchip to create disinformation in July 2020. Since that time, other researchers have come closer to proving the true origins of the QAnon conspiracy theory, demonstrating the fatuousness of Posobiec’s OANN segment. Posobiec and Microchip contributed to the same propaganda and disinformation campaigns during Trump’s 2016 campaign, including #Pizzagate.

Disinformation: ‘Color revolution’ era

Posobiec continued to sow false and misleading stories about critics of hard-right politics during the runup to and aftermath of the 2020 election, planting the idea that leftists planned a “color revolution” in the United States. A color revolution typically refers to a protest movement that culminates in changing a government, often after a disputed election.

“Antifa wants a color revolution in America,” Posobiec tweeted on June 1, 2020. “This is the same playbook used the world over. Be smart!”

Posobiec told lies about fictional terrorists to support his hyperbolic story about a color revolution. During the antiracist demonstrations and riots of June 2020, he led his followers to believe that participants in those events planted bombs in Washington, D.C., that never existed.

“BREAKING: 2 crates filled with pipe bombs discovered near Korean War Memorial in DC after suspects spotted in bushes,” Posobiec tweeted on June 2, 2020, amid the nationwide public outcry over the police-led murder of George Floyd.

The Daily Beast reported that U.S. Park Police spokesman Sgt. Eduardo Delgado told the publication that nothing like that had ever taken place. At the time Posobiec posted the pipe bomb story, Twitter accounts shared it roughly 30,000 times. Some conservatives bought Posobiec’s yarn without questioning it. Of those who did, many used it to reinforce a false narrative that domestic terrorists led the pushback to Floyd’s murder.

“Now they have bombs. It’s escalated, if you still think this isn’t terrorism, you are wrong,” a Twitter user with the handle @Texan__Pride replied to Posobiec.

Posobiec promoted the color revolution disinformation campaign on Twitter other times in the runup to the 2020 election. He later used the “color revolution” story to imply that leftists had stolen the election from Trump, complementing his “Stop the Steal” activism.

“What happened to Trump was a domestic color revolution,” Posobiec tweeted on Nov. 6, 2021, nearly a year after Trump’s loss. “Call it what it is.”

After the Posobiec-affiliated “Stop the Steal” movement transformed into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol building, he contributed to the disinformation campaign by blaming what happened on antifa.

“Eyewitness reports one of the first people to break a window at the Capitol wearing a US flag shirt but took it off and tossed it in bush after. Others in dark clothing urging people to rush forward, starting anti-govt chants in crowd,” Posobiec posted to Twitter as the attack took place that day and the disinformation campaign started to trend.

Posobiec continued to associate the attack on the Capitol with antifa in his 2021 book The Antifa. First, Posobiec misleadingly conflated the far-right-linked Boogaloo movement with antifa-supporting left-wing anarchists in his book. Then, he suggested the FBI did not properly investigate the role of either group in the attack on the U.S. Capitol, appearing to feed into lies he helped spread about the day’s events.

“Curiously, the FBI sought not to link the events on January 6, 2021, to the Boogaloo movement, even though members claim several of their groups took part, and it is an event specifically in line with the movement’s ultimate goal. But perhaps that’s a story for another day,” Posobiec wrote in his book.

Posobiec also amplified misleading material in The Antifa about Connor Betts, a mass shooter who murdered nine people, including his own brother, in a bar in Dayton, Ohio, on Aug. 4, 2019. He cited Betts as an example of antifa’s growing threat to U.S. security. The publishers also included a photograph of Betts on the book’s back cover.

“Betts was a member of the antifa movement,” Posobiec wrote. “Betts’ shooting rampage is the most chilling early evidence of Antifa’s penchant for ruthless brutality. Violence perpetrated by leftist anti-government extremists had been sharply mounting in frequency and severity for years, and especially since the election of Donald Trump.”

The FBI countered that assessment on Nov. 29, 2021, by publishing an investigative report on Betts’ attack based on “over 125 interviews in multiple states, the review of over 950 surveillance videos amounting to approximately 400 hours of footage, and a comprehensive analysis of electronic devices, social media content, and other evidence.”

In other words, Betts may have expressed interest in left-wing politics, but those beliefs do not appear to have motivated his violence.

“The evidence from the extensive investigation indicated the perpetrator, Connor Betts, was solely responsible for the injuries and deaths that were a result of his actions. He acted alone and was not directed by any organization or aligned to any specific ideological group,” the FBI determined in their report.

Posobiec posted to Twitter about the color revolution again on March 22.

“2020 was a textbook Color Revolution. Right down to the violent riots across major cities,” he wrote.

Russian intelligence-backed operation: Seth Rich

Hard-right internet performers like Posobiec concocted #Pizzagate from the contents of a Russian intelligence-led hack-and-leak operation targeted at Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta. These operators pulled mundane, hacked emails mentioning Comet Ping Pong pizzeria and distorted them to seem more consequential by sprinkling in salacious lies about child abuse. While a larger group of extremists, including supplement peddler Mike Cernovich, junk news blogger Cassandra Fairbanks and overt neo-Nazis, also pushed #Pizzagate, Posobiec played a more central role in elevating other Russian intelligence-backed operations.

Along with Fox News, Posobiec played a key role in popularizing the lie that former Democratic National Committee (DNC) employee Seth Rich, not Russian intelligence, provided leaked DNC emails to Wikileaks in 2016. Someone shot and killed DNC staffer Seth Rich at 4:20 a.m. on July 10, 2016, in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of Washington, D.C., and Posobiec and other pro-Trump figures twisted the event to seem like part of an elaborate coverup. The posts gave cover for Russia’s efforts to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.

On April 8, 2017, Posobiec tweeted a flurry of times about Rich showing apparent private chats with “Guccifer 2.0,” the figure behind the leak of DNC emails. The screenshots showed the person behind the account claiming that Seth Rich provided the materials to them. The U.S. Department of Justice revealed in March 2018 that Guccifer 2.0 worked for the GRU, or Russian military intelligence.

“Now we know why FBI did not examine the DNC servers - there was no hack, there was #SethRich,” Posobiec tweeted on the morning of April 8, 2017, days before Twitter verified his account.

Posobiec also used Guccifer 2.0’s lies to give cover for Russia in explicit terms.

Tweet: "Who killed #SethRich?”

“Who killed #SethRich?” Posobiec tweeted around the same time. “He leaked the DNC Emails - not Russia.”

Posobiec posts using the #SethRich hashtag ran up thousands of retweets that day, causing the hashtag to trend. In 2016, Posobiec appeared to celebrate Russia’s connection to the DNC leak, when he posted propaganda connecting the leak to Putin.

Russian intelligence-backed operation: #MacronLeaks

Posobiec amplified another Russian hack-and-leak effort in the first week of May 2017, when he delivered to Twitter news of hacked emails belonging to then-candidate Emmanuelle Macron. SPLC’s Hatewatch reported out Posobiec’s centrality in pushing #MacronLeaks in a 2021 investigative feature, following the DOJ issuing charges to six Russian hackers who worked with the GRU. The story found:

Posobiec’s verified handle emerged as the central vessel from which news of #MacronLeaks reached France. His account coined the hashtag.

Three prominent American-born extremists buoyed Russia’s hack-and-leak effort: Posobiec, his ally Chuck Johnson and neo-Nazi Andrew “weev” Auernheimer.

The extremists amplified news of the hack-and-leak operation during a pre-election period in which French law prohibited their own citizens from engaging in spreading propaganda in support of either Macron or the anti-immigrant, hard-right politician Marine Le Pen.

Bots stemming from Russia likely buoyed Posobiec’s flurries of posts while promoting the #MacronLeaks hashtag. He racked up at least tens of thousands of shares during the campaign and an unknown quantity of impressions.

Posobiec justified his attempt to elect the anti-immigrant Le Pen by citing his “ancestors.” “My ancestors are smiling at me. Can you say the same?” he published to Twitter on May 8, following his efforts to influence the French election.

#SlavRight

Posobiec has called himself “a proud member of #SlavRight.” #SlavRight is a hashtag that connotes the support of hard-right authoritarianism in Eastern Europe. SPLC’s Hatewatch reported out Posobiec’s use of the esoteric slang word in July 2020:

From April to June 2017, Posobiec produced far-right propaganda for a Canadian website called The Rebel Media, which has since rebranded as “Rebel News.” Posobiec’s bio for The Rebel Media described him as a “recovering political operative” and “a proud member of #SlavRight.” Posobiec used the hashtag #SlavRight on Twitter as an apparent play on the white supremacist-friendly hashtag #AltRight. “Slav” is short for the word Slavic, connoting a heritage in eastern Europe. In addition to Posobiec and his wife, Hatewatch found Richard Spencer, Spencer’s ex-wife and a pseudonymous Twitter user advocating for “Right Wing Death Squads” also using the #SlavRight hashtag.

Posobiec has referred to his Belarusian-born wife Tanya, mentioned in the above text, as a “linguist.” She boasted publicly about his participation in the #MacronLeaks campaign, and has also appeared to champion the Russian government on social media.

Posobiec promoted Russian neofascist author during #MacronLeaks era

In the runup to #MacronLeaks, Posobiec hyped to his Twitter followers a 1997 book from the Russian neofascist Aleksandr Dugin. Dugin promotes a philosophy known as neo-Eurasianism, which is a political movement that envisions Russia as its own distinct civilizational entity that is between “Europe” and “Asia.” Dugin’s worldview blends Western fascist thought with more traditional Russian ultra-nationalism. Marlene Laruelle of George Washington University characterized Dugin in her 2021 book, Is Russia Fascist?, as a “chameleon thinker” who appeals to some European or American extremists, like Posobiec.

“[Dugin] can adapt his discourse to different groups,” Laruelle wrote.

Posobiec promoted to his followers Dugin’s 1997 book, The Foundations of Geopolitics, a 600-page Russian-language tome that argues Russian security services should “introduce geopolitical disorder” in the United States by promoting sectarian and racial tensions. As SPLC’s Hatewatch previously reported, Posobiec tweeted about The Foundations of Geopolitics seven times in just under an hour on April 23, 2017. Posobiec promoted Dugin’s book again on June 13, 2017, when he uploaded a picture of it with the caption, “Summer campaign reading.” He tagged his location as the CIA’s headquarters in Virginia in the post.

John Dunlop, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who has written extensively on Russian nationalist movements, noted in a 2004 article that the General Staff Academy, a military academy in Moscow, used The Foundations of Geopolitics as a textbook. Dugin lost his adjunct professorship at Moscow State University in 2014 for calling to “kill, kill, kill Ukrainians.” His reputation as a thinker declined due to the statement, according to Laruelle. One of Posobiec’s tweets from April 23, 2017, quoted Dugin as writing, “Ukraine should be annexed by Russia.”

Russian intelligence-backed operation: South Front

On April 15, 2021, the U.S. Department of Treasury issued a press release sharing intelligence about an obscure website called “Southfront,” which they described as a product of Russian military intelligence. The press release coincided with the U.S. government issuing sanctions against Russia in response to “influence the 2020 U.S. presidential election at the direction of the leadership of the Russian Government.”

Domain records indicate someone registered the Southfront website in 2015. SPLC reviewed archived versions of Southfront’s old Twitter account and found that it had published nearly 7,000 tweets as of June 24, 2014, roughly three months after Russia annexed Crimea, a peninsula along the northern coast of the Black Sea. Southfront’s early posts on Twitter focused on spreading disinformation about the war in Donbas, an armed conflict in eastern Ukraine that began in April 2014. In 2015, the operators of the Southfront Twitter account changed their bio from “Donetsk People’s Republic,” a reference to one of the disputed territories in eastern Ukraine, to describing themselves as being focused on “news, politics and analysis.”

SPLC’s Hatewatch noted in an April 2021 story that among verified Twitter users, only Posobiec appeared to repeatedly share links to the Southfront site. He did so 28 times from November 2019 to August 2020. He shared Southfront links relating to such subjects as Iran, Syria, Libya and China. Hatewatch reached out to Posobiec during the reporting of that story to ask where he had heard of the website, but he did not respond.

“SouthFront is an online disinformation site registered in Russia that receives taskings from the FSB,” the government press release noted, referring to an arm of Russian intelligence. “It attempts to appeal to military enthusiasts, veterans, and conspiracy theorists, all while going to great lengths to hide its connections to Russian intelligence. In the aftermath of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Southfront sought to promote perceptions of voter fraud by publishing content alleging that such activity took place during the 2020 U.S. presidential election cycle.”

Biolabs in Ukraine and downplaying of Bucha massacre

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Posobiec used Twitter to hype to his followers a Kremlin-backed disinformation campaign implying that something nefarious is taking place at U.S.-supported biological research labs in Ukraine.

“So we just aren’t going to do anything about the biolabs then,” Posobiec tweeted on March 21, 2022, appearing to reference the story.

The Daily Beast had detailed the Russian origins of the “biolabs” conspiracy theory in general terms one week earlier. On April 5, 2022, the Anti-Defamation League reported that a man associated with pushing the QAnon conspiracy, Jacob Creech, helped originate the Ukrainian biolabs story.

Posobiec also helped downplay alleged Russian atrocities following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Media Matters for America included Posobiec in a report about far-right influencers who spread the suggestion that the apparent mass killing of civilians in Bucha, Ukraine, might not have happened. Posobiec said on his TPUSA-affiliated podcast that “we can’t tell what happened” in Bucha.

Ties to white nationalists: I

White nationalist Richard Spencer says Posobiec introduced himself at a bar called The Tilted Kilt, outside the August 2016 Republican National Convention (RNC) in Cleveland. Spencer suggested that Posobiec described himself as a fan of his. Spencer quotes Posobiec as saying, “I work for Roger Stone, I’m Roger Stone’s man.” Indeed, Posobiec appears in YouTube footage from a Roger Stone speaking event in Cleveland, wherein he stands a few feet behind his mentor. Spencer also shared photographs on Twitter of the two of them to corroborate the story.

According to multiple witnesses, Posobiec ally Cernovich hosted the event at the Tilted Kilt and white nationalists beyond Spencer attended it. Kevin DeAnna, a propagandist who has written for a variety of white nationalist websites including VDARE and American Renaissance, attended. Nathan Damigo, founder of the now-defunct white nationalist group Identity Evropa, was also there. Posobiec has linked toVDARE’swebsite on Twitter before. He later expressed support for Identity Evropa’s terrorizing of Black civil rights advocate Lutze Segu in a now-deleted tweet published on June 26, 2017.

Posobiec’s apparent contact with Spencer at the RNC hardly represents a one-off incident. Spencer has discussed the degree to which Posobiec “followed [him] around in 2016.” Posobiec appeared at a Richard Spencer speaking event at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 9, 2016. Peter Brimelow of VDARE and the white supremacist Jared Taylor of American Renaissance also spoke at the event. Posobiec promoted and documented the event on Twitter, posting pictures of Brimelow, Spencer and other white nationalist activists.

“The media cant get enough of @RichardBSpencer,” Posobiec posted that day, alongside a photo of the white nationalist.

Ties to white nationalists: II

On Sept. 25, 2016, Posobiec made a spectacle of himself at the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., by staging a one-man protest. He dressed up in a Hillary Clinton wig and carried a sign to the event that read, “BLACKS ARE SUPERPREDATORS -H.” Civil rights activists and members of the Black community had long anticipated the opening of the museum, which took a quarter of a century to build. A Black police officer detained Posobiec for his antics, but he wasn’t charged.

A day later, Posobiec texted Richard Spencer to boast about his detainment. He cited an author of white supremacist novels in the context of mocking the man who detained him. Posobiec’s texts to Spencer began at 8:58 p.m. on Sept. 26, 2016:

Posobiec: It begins

Spencer: Very interesting.

Spencer: The crackdown might be too late and it’s counter-productive

Posobiec: Judicial Watch tells me they think 100% it’s bc I was a white protester and black cop. DC political demonstration laws are extremely lenient

Spencer: Doesn’t surprise me at all

Posobiec: Reminded me of the fatties in Covington’s novels

Spencer: Lol. I haven’t read a lot of Covington tbh

“Covington” refers to Harold Covington, a white supremacist science fiction author. Covington trafficked in violent fantasies about conflicts stemming from racial and cultural division. Before his death in 2018, Covington praised terrorist Dylann Roof, who murdered nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. “Fatties” refers to a type of federal law enforcement official described in Covington’s books.

Ties to white nationalists: III

Posobiec livestreamed from a book launch for white nationalist Scott Greer on March 31, 2017, at the Daily Caller’s office in downtown Washington, D.C. Posobiec appears to have deleted his livestream from the event from Twitter, but Right Wing Watch preserved it. Greer, a former Daily Caller contributor, wrote for Richard Spencer’s publication Radix Journal under the pseudonym “Michael McGregor” at the time the event took place. Posobiec praised Greer’s book No Campus for White Men on his livestream and then made jokes appearing to mock the Holocaust.

“I heard, someone heard … they turned Kekistanis into soap … [they’re] turning them into lampshades,” Posobiec said on the livestream.

“Kekistani” refers to a meme that extremists used on the imageboard site 4chan at that time, as SPLC’s Hatewatch previously reported. Proponents of the meme sometimes used it to soften Nazi imagery and make it palatable for a younger audience. Posobiec continued to interact with Greer on Twitter, up until at least 2020.

Alleged plagiarism of white nationalist Jason Kessler

The Rebel dismissed Posobiec from their company after white nationalist Jason Kessler accused him of plagiarism. Posobiec held the title of “Washington D.C. bureau chief” for the Canadian company at the time of the firing.

Kessler has organized with the neofascist Proud Boys. In August 2017, two months after the plagiarism allegations surfaced, he played a pivotal role in mounting the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Ties to white nationalists: IV

Posobiec has collaborated with white nationalist Stefan Molyneux since at least 2017. He appeared on Molyneux’s radio show to talk about antifa on April 23, 2017, and described himself as a “long time listener, first time caller.” He staged an interview with Molyneux from Warsaw, Poland, following a march that included neo-Nazi groups. He appeared on Molyneux’s radio show to talk about “China’s Global Conquest” on April 2, 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Posobiec also appeared alongside Molyneux at an event hosted by Mike Cernovich in 2018. He frequently interacted with Molyneux on Twitter before the company suspended the white nationalist’s account.

Before Twitter and YouTube suspended Molyneux’s accounts, the extremist repeatedly promoted racist pseudoscience suggesting that non-white people are predisposed to be of lower intelligence than white and Asian people. (Molyneux has denied being a white supremacist, despite endorsing white nationalism and making dehumanizing statements about “low IQ groups.”) He also promoted lies suggesting that women are predisposed to be less intelligent than men.

Posobiec worked for OANN at the time he recorded an interview with Molyneux from Warsaw, Poland, SPLC’s Hatewatch found. OANN did not respond to a request for comment about whether they ever aired the material Posobiec staged on Nov. 11, 2018. Posobiec and Molyneux recorded their talk from a five-star hotel, following their participation in a Polish-independence march that attracted neo-Nazis, neo-fascists, white nationalists and other extremists. Videographer Caolan Robertson leaked images from Posobiec’s interview of Molyneux to SPLC’s Hatewatch and described how the men discussed white nationalism that night:

Before shooting [the interview segment] they discussed how Stefan [Molyneux] had changed his mind and realized ‘white nationalism’ was actually an important factor to Poland's success. … Behind the scenes he and Jack would refer to this often. In this clip I found today while filming the summary, [Molyneux] even called his closing speech in the documentary [I shot for him] the ‘white nationalism speech’ to me, personally.

A video Robertson leaked to Hatewatch shows Molyneux referring to a monologue as his “white nationalism speech.” The New York Times reported that during the march Molyneux and Posobiec attended, people chanted “white Poland” in the crowd.

Ties to the neo-Nazi Clark brothers

While an employee of Canada’s The Rebel, Posobiec produced propaganda at least twice in 2017 with Jeffrey and Edward Clark, a pair of neo-Nazi brothers with connections online to the man later charged with murdering 11 Jewish people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in October 2018. Posobiec filmed the brothers for a video he shot for The Rebel at an event in support of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon on April 15, 2017. (SPLC’s Hatewatch covered the prevalence of white nationalists and neo-Nazis at the pro-Bannon event in a 2020 story about Posobiec’s ties to the white supremacist movement.) Later, HuffPost published a series of photos of Posobiec and the brothers walking around the neighborhood where Seth Rich died, filming something together.

The Clark brothers embraced national socialism and terrorism. Edward, 23, traveled to Theodore Roosevelt Island in Washington, D.C., and shot himself in the head on the morning of Saturday, Oct. 27, 2018, the same day of the Tree of Life terror attack. Family members speculated that by committing suicide that day, Clark may have stopped himself from carrying out a similar act of violence.

Jeffrey, Edward’s older brother by seven years, took up the handle @PureWhiteEvil on the fringe website Gab around the time he collaborated with Posobiec. He kept a noose hanging in his black, windowless bedroom, according to a photo later released by the U.S. Attorney’s office. Although Jeffrey was found to have no connection to the Tree of Life attack, he came to authorities’ attention due to online commentary, and police arrested him on a weapons charge one week after his brother died. He served prison time for it and has since renounced white supremacy.

Introducing esoteric hate materials to Twitter

Posobiec has shared esoteric material typically appreciated in fringe, white supremacist circles with his Twitter followers. He linked his Twitter followers to 8chan’s notorious /pol/ imageboard in May 2017. 8chan is the site where three far-right terrorists have posted their manifestos. Posobiec also directed his followers to “doxes” of CNN employees posted to on 8chan in July 2017. 8chan users had listed CNN employees’ addresses and home phone numbers at the time Posobiec directed his followers to the hate site. Posobiec also shared to Twitter links to the white supremacist-friendly site Gab in September 2018, when introducing his followers to his pseudonymous associate Microchip. Around the same time Posobiec linked at least five times to that Gab feed, his “friend” Microchip used that site to praise Hitler and call Black congresswoman Maxine Waters a “bush n----r.”

Posobiec also linked his followers to an obscure neo-Nazi website called National Justice in May 2020. A neo-Nazi going by the name “Eric Striker” authors National Justice. SPLC’s Hatewatch identified him as a man named Joseph Jordan in 2019. Hatewatch also found a Russian email address buried in National Justice’s source code, and linked it back to a series of websites created or sponsored by pro-Kremlin propagandist Charles Bausman. Bausman disappeared to Moscow after appearing in a mob inside the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021. Twitter has suspended multiple accounts related to National Justice, and at the time Posobiec shared the story link to his followers, no other prominent people on the site had done so, archives show.

Posobiec shared a photograph to Twitter of books published by the obscure, white supremacist publishing house Antelope Hill in Dec. 2021. “Mail call,” Posobiec wrote in a tweet, which pictured the books Man’s World 2021 and Raw Egg Nationalism. Both books appear in Antelope Hill’s catalogue. White supremacist groups like Patriot Front and National Justice Party trade Antelope Hill materials at their gatherings. Antelope Hill sells pro-Hitler books and a book on the opioid epidemic co-authored by an extremist who compares non-white people to insects. After a researcher from the Atlantic Council flagged the origin of the books, Posobiec deleted the tweet.

Ties to the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers

Posobiec has appeared at events with the neofascist Proud Boys and keeps company with the group’s founder, Gavin McInnes. He has also claimed to correspond with the antigovernment extremist group the Oath Keepers, announcing publicly that he “works closely” with them. Members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers both participated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“So why do we need organizations like this? I want to get this back on topic, okay? I want to get this back on topic,” Posobiec told his followers on a now-deleted April 2017 livestream. “What is the purpose of organizations like that? Like Proud Boys, like the Oath Keepers, that have been out there. I work very closely with the Oath Keepers. If you guys didn’t know that … you know, they were out there all day today … they were doing their support … the Oath Keepers are already doing pre-security for the Trump rally in Harrisburg this Saturday. They’re letting me know what’s going on with that. Because of my background in the Navy and my background working, ah, ah, with the intelligence community, um, I’m very, very security minded.”

Posobiec appeared with members of the Proud Boys at an event called the “Rally Against Political Violence” on June 25, 2017. Posobiec also appeared with white nationalist Molyneux, McInnes, members of the Proud Boys and an antisemitic entertainer named Owen Benjamin at an event hosted by Mike Cernovich in January 2018. Roger Stone, Posobiec’s mentor, enmeshed himself with the Proud Boys for years and also appeared with them in the runup to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Tweet singling out CNN’s Wolf Blitzer for being Jewish

SPLC’s Hatewatch found archives of Posobiec interacting on Twitter with McInnes and also with another Proud Boys leader, Joe Biggs, whom a grand jury indicted in March 2021 on charges related to storming the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021. (Twitter has since suspended accounts belonging to both men.) The Times of Israel published a photograph of Posobiec and Biggs posing together at the Trump International Hotel in October 2016. When Posobiec singled out CNN’s Wolf Blitzer for being Jewish in July 2016, he did so while reposting content from an account run by Biggs.

Posobiec wrote in Citizens for Trump that he was “honored to be among such company,” referring to a list of people allegedly published by antifa that included McInnes and Biggs. Posobiec recycled the same anecdote for his 2021 book The Antifa, which followed the pro-Trump attack on the Capitol, but removed McInnes’ and Biggs’ names from the new version of the story. (For a point of comparison, see the first example of Posobiec’s anecdote, including the names of Proud Boys, and the second example of the same story, where he appears to selectively remove their names.) Posobiec published The Antifa following the attack on the U.S. Capitol building, which implicated Proud Boys members in a number of alleged crimes.

Ties to Polish far right

Posobiec, who is of Polish ancestry, has worked with far-right extremists in that country since at least 2017. Hatewatch has reported out those connections in detail. Here is a summary of them:

Met with Krystof Bosak of the hard-right Ruch Nardowy party (RN) in July 2017, around the same time Trump gave a nativist speech authored by Stephen Miller in Warsaw. Bosak has called Posobiec his “friend.”

RN’s president Robert Winnicki has made antisemitic comments, like saying “the Jews will not get a penny from us,” referring to a U.S. bill seeking restitutions for Holocaust survivors.

Even under Poland’s right-wing government, Bosak is considered a fringe figure. He has publicly questioned whether Earth really revolves around the sun.

Posobiec has cited Bosak’s commentary about the antifa movement, calling the protest movement a “terror network.”

Tweet in support of Polish nationalists' march

In April 2017, Posobiec amplified to Twitter video and images of an event staged by Obóz Narodowo-Radykalny (ONR), a group with a long history of emulating Nazism. Today’s ONR finds its roots in an earlier iteration of the group that in the 1930s bombed Jewish people’s homes to “cleanse” the Polish population.

Posobiec marched in the 2018 Polish independence march. Marchers chanted “white Poland” that day, according to news reports. Both ONR and the white nationalist Molyneux marched. England’s Hope Not Hate published a photo of Posobiec in the crowd, along with other hate figures.

Posobiec has associated since at least 2018 with a Polish man named Wojciech Pawelczyk. The antiracist group Never Again found Pawelczyk making an antisemitic comment on a hard-right, Polish-speaking forum in 2020. Never Again, a Polish group, collaborated with SPLC’s Hatewatch to uncover Posobiec’s connections to extremists in that country.

Pawelczyk has posted photos of himself with Posobiec and claimed to help operate his social media accounts.

Bumble ban, targeting of women and male supremacy

The female-led dating app Bumble banned Posobiec from using their services in January 2018. A woman who used the service posted a picture of what looked like a Bumble profile of Posobiec to Twitter, asking, “Is @bumble_app still a feminist dating app or the place where white nationalists / nazis go to cheat on their wives?” Posobiec denied using the app to cheat on his wife and claimed that a troll created it. Bumble said they removed Posobiec from their service.

“Our team has removed Jack from our platform. Bumble was founded on the core values of kindness, respect, integrity and equality, and we do not tolerate anyone who does not uphold these values on our platform,” Bumble posted to Twitter on Jan. 24, 2018.

Prior to Bumble’s announcement, Posobiec involved himself in an apparent campaign to intimidate a woman who accused 2017 Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore of sexual misconduct. Known for his extreme far-right politics, Moore saw accusations of sexual misconduct bog down his campaign in October and November of 2017, before he lost the race to Democrat Doug Jones. Moore’s defeat marked a rarity for Republicans in the state. Among other accusations Moore faced, a woman accused him of trying to sleep with her when she was 14 years old. As Moore’s campaign struggled, Posobiec used his verified Twitter handle to post the woman’s name and photograph.

“Be a shame if the #RoyMooreChildMolester story turned out to be another false accusation after so many reporters have gone all in on it,” Posobiec tweeted on Nov. 10, 2017.

Critics of Posobiec noted the difference in tone he struck one year earlier, when addressing the fake #Pizzagate pedophilia scandal, wherein he claimed to feel concern for underage victims of sexual abuse. Posobiec tweeted that he found the woman’s information on the website Heavy.com, The Daily Beast reported. Posobiec deleted the tweets after facing criticism and briefly locked access to his account.

Men have targeted women with harassment after Posobiec has posted about them. For example, Posobiec targeted with derision a female CNN journalist in January 2021, following that reporter covering the Arizona Republican Party. Trolls targeted the reporter with harassment after Posobiec posted about her. One such person updated the reporter’s Wikipedia page and put “homewrecker” as her middle name, referring to an article about her personal life Posobiec shared. Two CNN employees told Hatewatch that they reported Posobiec’s account to Twitter at the time the troll storm took place. Twitter did nothing. (SPLC has elected to remove the reporter’s name to spare her further harassment.)

From April to July of 2021, Posobiec, along with a chorus of other extremists, repeatedly posted on Twitter about CNN contributor Dr. Leana Wen. Wen provided analysis to CNN about the COVID-19 pandemic, and Posobiec associated her with her previous work for Planned Parenthood, and with Chinese communism, across a series of at least five posts. (Wen is of Chinese descent.) Twitter users flooded into Wen’s replies following Posobiec’s posts. In July 2021, authorities charged a Texas man with making violent threats to Wen, although it’s unclear from where he found the inspiration to do so.

Posobiec has also associated himself publicly with male supremacists, including frequent collaborator Mike Cernovich, and as reported in The Daily Beast, Andrew Tate, whose home Romanian police raided in 2022 as part of a human trafficking investigation. Posobiec also “promoted” the misogynistic book Sanction to his followers, authored by Lyndon McLeod. McLeod went on to murder five people in a Denver shooting spree in December 2021.

Posobiec taunted supporters of abortion rights on May 5, 2022, when he posted to Twitter an image of some American states overlaid with imagery from the television show “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Women in that show are owned as property by a Christian fundamentalist totalitarian government.

Resurrecting pedophilia accusations

Tweet with the term “groomer,” used as a stand-in for pedophile

In April 2022, Posobiec repeatedly pushed a meme across Twitter, Instagram and Telegram suggesting that the company Disney enabled “groomers.” Responding to Disney’s opposition to Florida legislation undercutting LGBTQ rights in Florida, Posobiec and other far-right activists used the term “groomer” as a stand-in for pedophile, implying that LGBTQ people are grooming children for sex. Posobiec used his social media following to sell T-shirts issued by a company called Bring Ammo that placed the words “Boycott Groomers” over Disney’s logo. The shirt featured the words “Bring Ammo” in smaller letters.

Critics of Posobiec noted the similarities between the “groomers” campaign and #Pizzagate. SPLC reached out to Twitter for a comment about Posobiec for this report. The company temporarily locked Posobiec’s account on or around April 10, 2022, apparently over the “groomers” content, but never responded to SPLC’s email. Instagram also did not respond to a request for comment. In the same month Posobiec pushed pedophilia-themed campaign, he also took his family to Disney World.

Promotion and push notifications on Twitter

Twitter’s “who to follow” recommendation algorithm suggests Posobiec’s account to users who have browsed other right-leaning accounts. Twitter’s algorithm has promoted the accounts of key players involved in pushing #Pizzagate and also spreading 2020 election lies. The billion-dollar company has also enabled supplement peddler Mike Cernovich and junk news blogger Cassandra Fairbanks, but Posobiec has significantly more followers than they do.

In April 2021, Twitter sent a push notification to some of its users advertising Posobiec’s posts about the trial of former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin. Posobiec promoted on Twitter arguments in support of Chauvin’s defense team at that time. A jury found Chauvin guilty of murdering a Black man named George Floyd. Hatewatch reported about Posobiec’s commentary on the Chauvin trial on April 25, 2021:

Posobiec … repeatedly churned out misleading content about the trial through his Twitter account, which has more than 1 million followers. For example, Posobiec pushed on March 3 the idea that the city of Minneapolis could not be trusted to provide Chauvin with a fair trial, helping to create what went on to become a sustained far-right narrative. He later referred to Chauvin’s defense attorney as “crushing it” while linking to an obscure blog post depicting the prosecution as struggling to present a coherent case. … Posobiec also posted misdirecting comments and analysis about the subject of “intent” on the part of the accused murderer, a subject that he referenced multiple times on Twitter. Prosecutors had no requirement to prove Chauvin intentionally murdered Floyd – only that he intended to use illegal force.

Ties to mainstream figures

Although such prominent right-wing outlets as OANN and Canada’s The Rebel cut ties with Posobiec in recent years, mainstream figures in the conservative movement, such as members of Trump’s inner circle including Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, continue to promote him. (Posobiec devoted an entire chapter of his book Citizens for Trump called “Lyin’ Ted” to memorializing Trump’s smears of Cruz.)

Posobiec documented Peter Thiel’s Oct. 31, 2016, announcement of his support of Donald Trump at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., and is connected to the billionaire tech mogul. Posobiec commented derisively about Jewish reporters who attended the event by posting to Twitter, “Surrounded by (((them))) at Peter Thiel Press conference.” In September 2019, Thiel invited Posobiec into his apartment to document a fundraiser for hardline anti-immigrant Senate candidate Kris Kobach. Kobach went on to lose the race.

TPUSA, a youth-focused group of conservative activists, not only promotes Posobiec prominently on their website and feature him at events, they also loan their branding to a podcast he hosts.TPUSA founder and president Charlie Kirk invited Posobiec onto his podcast “The Charlie Kirk Show” to discuss Russia’s war with Ukraine in February, billing him as a “China expert.” After a jury acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse in late November 2021 of murder charges related to the shooting of two people in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during unrest in that city, Rittenhouse visited TPUSA’s offices, where he met with Posobiec. Rittenhouse also appeared with Posobiec on stage one month later at a TPUSA event in Arizona.

The Phyllis Schlafly Eagles, another prominent right-wing organization, hosted Posobiec at dinners at least twice, during 2018 and 2019. Allies of Posobiec’s who went on to push Trump’s disinformation about the 2020 election – including Cernovich, the junk news specialist Fairbanks, Brandon Straka, Scott Presler, Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft and former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn – also attended one or the other of these dinners. Beyond Stone, Posobiec has ties to others who advised former President Trump, including Flynn and Steve Bannon.

Donald Trump Jr., Trump’s son, associates publicly with Posobiec.The men congregated at Bannon’s anti-immigrant We Build the Wall event in July 2019, as SPLC’s Hatewatch previously reported. Authorities charged Bannon and co-host Brian Kolfage with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering over allegedly misusing funds they generated through the event. (Trump pardoned Bannon of the crime before leaving office in 2021.) Trump Jr. and Posobiec first started following each other on the site sometime in 2017, Hatewatch found. Trump’s son frequently reposts Posobiec’s Twitter content. Posobiec sent private text messages to former Breitbart editor Kate McHugh describing Trump Jr. as being “redpilled [as fuck].” “Redpilled” is an internet slang word that connotes different degrees of far-right radicalization.

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who spent $25 million to buoy Trump’s election lies, uses Posobiec as a pitchman for his pillows. Posobiec sells MyPillow merchandise through his verified Twitter handle, offering his followers a discount through a special promo code. Twitter suspended Lindell from its platform in January 2021 for publishing lies about the 2020 election. They also suspended the MyPillow Twitter account, making Posobiec the site’s most visible hype man for Lindell’s products.

Similarly, Posobiec has long promoted videos created by the hard-right activist group Project Veritas. Twitter suspended accounts related to Project Veritas and its founder James O’Keefe in 2021 over alleged violations related to “platform manipulation and spam.” Posobiec has continued to promote Project Veritas videos through his account, giving them visibility on the site. He tweeted “Project Veritas is infrastructure” on April 13, 2021, while the group hyped up a campaign they created, targeted at CNN. Twitter suspended O’Keefe days later.

Promoted by Donald Trump

With Twitter’s help, former President Trump built Posobiec’s celebrity. Trump boosted Posobiec’s August 2017 commentary about Charlottesville’s “Unite the Right” rally at a time when the country scrutinized the president’s Twitter feed. Trump also did so at a moment when #Pizzagate, #MacronLeaks and other stunts overshadowed public perception of Posobiec. For an example of how Twitter and Trump helped legitimize Posobiec, the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC), the most high-profile annual gathering of Republican politicians and activists in the country, denied the extremist access to their event in February 2017. CPAC has done this with other extremists, including anti-Muslim bigot Laura Loomer and white nationalist Nick Fuentes. Twitter verified Posobiec in April 2017, and Trump acknowledged him publicly in August 2017. CPAC then invited Posobiec to their event in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022.

In February 2022, a little over a year after the “Stop the Steal” campaign Posobiec promoted helped inspire an attack on the U.S. Capitol, CPAC picked him to speak on their main stage. CPAC also made Posobiec their closing speaker at CPAC Hungary, a May 2022 gathering that also featured figures such as Zsolt Bayer, a Hungarian propagandist who has compared Jewish people to “stinking excrement.” Posobiec closed the gathering with a speech that condemned as Satanic “globalism” and “open societies,” terms associated with the philanthropy of billionaire George Soros that double as common tropes of antisemitic propaganda.

On May 2, 2020, less than two weeks after SPLC’s Hatewatch reached out to Posobiec for a comment about an investigation into his background, Trump endorsed the extremist by name on Twitter.

“That’s right Jack. Keep up the good work!” Trump wrote, reposting a comment Posobiec made suggesting that the president reads his Twitter feed.

Twitter suspended Trump’s account on Jan. 8, 2021, two days after his supporters attacked the Capitol building.

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