Just leave me some ammo, a little water, some chips if you have ’em. – Runt of the Litter
On Apr. 8, 2020, in the chaotic early days of the coronavirus pandemic, Fox News host Laura Ingraham welcomed a little-known state senator onto her prime time show. With his unmistakable Minnesota accent and an aw-shucks bearing, Scott Jensen, a Republican, was the furthest thing from the typical fire-breathing cable news guest. But the message that he wanted to share was nothing short of explosive.
He told Ms. Ingraham he believed doctors and hospitals might be manipulating the data about Covid-19. He took aim at new guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warning that they could lead medical institutions to inflate their fees. “The idea that we are going to allow people to massage and sort of game the numbers is a real issue because we are going to undermine the trust” of the public, he said.
Ms. Ingraham’s guest offered no evidence or data to back up this serious allegation. Coming from a random state senator, the claim might have been easily dismissed as partisan politics. What gave it the sheen of credibility was his other job: He is a medical doctor.
He would go on to make numerous appearances on far-right conservative outlets. In February of this year, Ms. Ingraham invited Dr. Jensen back on to her show. Dr. Jensen was, in Ms. Ingraham’s telling, a truth-teller who had been demonized by the media and the left, a medical professional who’d had the temerity to defy the establishment and call out the corruption when he saw it. “You were vilified,” Ms. Ingraham said. “I was vilified for featuring you.”
By that point, Dr. Jensen, 67, had left the State Senate after a single term in office. Instead, he was a leading contender for the Republican nomination for governor of Minnesota. Riding a wave of grass-roots support, he easily won the primary after defeating four other candidates, including the former Republican majority leader of the State Senate, at the party’s endorsement convention. Dr. Jensen’s Covid theories proved central to his message. “I dared to lead when it wasn’t popular,” he said at the G.O.P. convention. “I dared to lead when it wasn’t politically safe.”
At the heart of Scott Jensen’s candidacy is a jarring contradiction: a medical doctor who downplays, if not outright denies, the science of a deadly pandemic. And yet Dr. Jensen’s self-abnegation captures something essential about the nature of today’s Republican Party, its voters and its candidates. Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for Arizona governor, is a former journalist who never misses an opportunity to attack the “corrupt, rotten media” that wants to “brainwash” Americans. And there are lawyers like Matthew DePerno, the Republican nominee for Michigan attorney general, who have centered their campaigns on the baseless claim that the 2020 election was fraudulent and that President Biden is therefore an illegitimate president — in other words, lawyers who are campaigning against the rule of law itself.
It is possible to see Dr. Jensen, Ms. Lake, Mr. DePerno and their ilk as simply pandering to the MAGA base. But their appeal runs deeper than that. They have tapped into an archetype that’s almost as old as humanity itself: the apostate. The history of American politics is littered with such figures who left one party or faction for another and who profess to have a righteous knowledge that was a product of their transformation.
Just like Liz Cheney, right?
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/opinion/republican-apostate-midterms.html
Meanwhile…
At The Bulwark, Charlie Sykes went down the rightwing rabbit-hole. I am guessing you will be shocked but not surprised.
I am old enough to remember when Republicans wanted to blame rock ‘n’ roll for the demise of society.
I recall when Republicans blamed video games for gang violence and school shootings.
The Right wants us to believe guns aren’t responsible for gun deaths.
They tell all that violent rhetoric does not lead to violence.
After a right-wing troll shouting “Where’s Nancy?” attacked the speaker’s 82-year-old husband, a debate broke out about the role that anti-Pelosi rhetoric may have played in the attack. Top Republicans quickly retreated into whataboutism and denial…. even the guy who had actually posted a tweet of himself shooting a gun with the hashtag #firepelosi.
6:59 PM ∙ Oct 30, 202210,224Likes2,891Retweets
While the attack was widely condemned, even Good Republicans™ struggled to keep it classy. “Speaker Pelosi’s husband had a break-in last night in their house, and he was assaulted,” Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin said. “There’s no room for violence anywhere, but we’re gonna send her back to be with him in California. That’s what we’re going to go do.”
Others didn’t even bother to try. Here’s California’s former GOP nominee for governor:
Now that “the bird is free” in the Era of Elon, right-wing Twitter celebrated with a cascade of crassness and conspiracy theories.
Within hours, timelines were flooded with bizarre conspiracy theories about a gay lovers’ quarrel. Even though the story was quickly and decisively debunked, it spread throughout the hellscape of social media — pushed by the usual cadre of grifters and trolls, including this well-known convicted felon:
1. Assailant in his underpants 2. Paul Pelosi knows his name and tells police he’s a “friend.” 3. Assailant asks “where’s Nancy?” to make sure she’s not home. 4. Pelosi takes bathroom break from spat and makes 911 call Conclusion: This guy was a sex partner or male prostitute!1:50 PM ∙ Oct 30, 202230,003Likes6,565Retweets
This toxic bilge quickly went viral.
[Republicans are still upset about Jerry Falwell, Jr’s menage a trois with the pool boy. Worse than Herschel’s multiple abortions. And why do you think that is, I wonder.]
Back in the day, Donald Trump tried to name Monica Crowley a deputy national security advisor. Here she was this weekend:..
And this, from the former president’s grown ass son:
Amid the hilarity, Rep. Clay Higgins — a sitting member of Congress — weighed in:
For a brief moment, we wondered: how would Elon Musk react to the cataract of hate and defamation? Would he condemn it? Block it? Rethink his approach to content moderation?
Surely, you jest.
The shitposting billionaire jumped into the shitposting himself, pushing the conspiracy theories to millions of his new customers.
“There’s a tiny possibility,” he wrote, “there is more to this story than meets the eye” — and linked to “an article that is a compilation of tweets from random Twitter users claiming that Paul Pelosi brought home a left wing male prostitute after the bars closed and that there’s a conspiracy to cover it up.”
Musk’s tweet was eventually removed (censored!?!!!!), but not before it was retweeted and liked tens of thousands of times.
So, on his very first weekend of being Chief Twit, Musk helped launched a toxic conspiracy theory that will now take on a life of its own. MMFA’s Matt Gertz explains how it all worked:
1. By week’s end, a sizable percentage of the GOP base will believe an absurd conspiracy theory positing that Paul Pelosi was assaulted by his leftist gay lover. Allow me to explain.3:24 PM ∙ Oct 30, 202220,928Likes5,337Retweets
(I’ve unrolled his thread.)
2. Over decades, the right built a parallel media ecosystem featuring: A) Numerous outlets that generate conspiracy theories B) Food-chain mechanisms for their distribution C) An audience that demands them D) Minimal internal guardrails E) Barriers against outside media.
3. Police say the guy who broke into the Pelosi home and assaulted Paul Pelosi was targeting Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The assailant’s recent online footprint is a hodgepodge of recent right-wing conspiracy theories.
This is very bad for the right because those conspiracy theories are either trumpeted or excused at the highest levels of the right-wing media and GOP. They needed to come up with something else, fast.
5. The right’s conspiracy theorists went to work. They operate by putting existing facts – particularly ones from early in a story, when initial reports are often wrong – in new dubious contexts through wild logical jumps. In this case, they draw on two pieces of info.
7. And B) Pelosi was able to trick the invader, call 911 from the bathroom, and, while speaking to the dispatcher “in code” to avoid suspicion, the dispatcher said he referred to the home invader at one point in that call as a “friend.”
8. The right’s conspiracy theorists put those two pieces together, threw in some wild and baseless speculation, and came up with the theory that Pelosi was the victim of a gay lover’s quarrel.
9. That filtered up through low-level RW influencers to… the owner of this site, who is celebrated on the right and has now blasted to everywhere.
10. The site Musk pushed out is not remotely credible, but it reaches a conclusion that is extremely convenient for the right, and that’s good enough.
11. Meanwhile, the right has come up with nonsensical explanations for why the assailant’s internet footprint was a forgery and he’s actually a leftist. They cannot accept the reality without taking on responsibility. So they find an alternate explanation.
12. The right-wing press has spent decades building a huge audience for these sorts of convenient conspiracy theories. And their regular denunciations of the mainstream press built a bubble to keep out reality – only the right’s commentators can be trusted.
13. As for those trusted commentators – there are no powerful actors within that bubble who knock down those conspiracy theories. That’s how you end up with Fox hosts pushing QAnon talking points and scoffing at its extremism.
14. So what happens next? I’d expect to see GOP lawmakers and prominent Fox hosts at least winking at the Pelosi conspiracy theory. Someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Tucker Carlson might even go all-in….
15. Credible news outlets will point out that this is all nonsense. But thanks to the right-wing media bubble, their facts won’t make it to the people inclined to believe it. And so this will become the explanation for the Pelosi attack for a sizable chunk of the GOP.
16. There’s not much that can be done for the people who will buy into this. But what can be done is punishing Musk for his role in the fiasco.
The piece ends right there.
Punishing Musk for his role in this fiasco is like locking up an orange loser who steals national secrets.
Don’t see it happening any time soon.
“Depape also later explained that by breaking Nancy’s kneecaps, she would then have to be wheeled into Congress, which would show other Members of Congress there were consequences to actions.”