This was a hell of a week. I'm not sure how many consecutive weeks we can have like this one without losing our goddamn minds but inside the chaos there are some revealing lessons. So here we go.How the pro-Trump media responds to a crisis.
On Tuesday — which may as well have been six months ago — I traced the 18 hours following the Washington Post scoop that Trump revealed highly classified information to Russian diplomats in the Oval Office. My conclusion? It's a 4 step process: 1) Stay quiet. 2) blame and discredit. 3) change the news cycle. 4) close the loop.
...And if you don't want to read: I spoke with the great folks at On The Media about it for their radio show. Listen here.
Changing the news cycle: The WaPo scoop was hardly the only crisis the pro-Trump media had to endure. The bombshell reports from the mainstream media hit every day around 5:30 P.M. Monday-Friday. But Americans — depending on your politics — now live in two different universes, each with their own media. And in pro-Trump land, there were only two stories this week: Seth Rich and Anthony Weiner.Seth Rich/Wikileaks explained: Rich is a DNC staffer who was tragically murdered last year. His death is unsolved. The conspiratorial side of the pro-Trump media has been suggesting for months (last August Wikileaks offered a $20k reward for info on Rich's murder) that Rich was murdered because he leaked thousands of DNC documents/emails to Wikileaks (which would mean that Russia didn't hack the DNC). This Monday — as the aforementioned WaPo story broke — a local Fox TV station broke a story allegedly tying Rich to Wikileaks. The pro-Trump media jumped on the story and ran with it.
The only problem? The story was bogus.
Rather than explain it here, I'm going to refer you to Oliver Darcy's excellent reporting on this over at CNN. Darcy chased this story all week and his reporting got Fox to issue an editor's note on the piece (though they never retracted or changed the headline). TL;DR: Fox's source did NOT have any factual evidence linking Rich's laptop to Wikileaks.
But that didn't stop the conservative media from pushing the story. Hard.
As of Saturday afternoon, Fox News' Sean Hannity — who has a massive audience — was still championing this conspiracy theory. Despite the fact that Rich's family condemned the rumors and issued a cease and desist letter to the private investigator in this case. Then, just as things were quieting down, Kim Dotcom — a friend of Wikileaks' Julian Assange and general internet provocateur — spoke out to suggest he has proof that Rich was involved with Wikileaks:
Thing to understand: Inside the pro-Trump media world (and among those who get their news from these people) this was a bombshell akin to a Washington Post or New York Times scoop. And it sent shockwaves through this world, reinvigorating the conspiracy theory. There's an excellent explainer on this over at The Daily Dot.
Here's a bit what these threads look like (this one is from 4chan):
On Friday the Russian Embassy got involved. They tweeted this:
Why it matters (besides the fact that the narrative attempts to exonerate Russia): As the Embassy told Oliver Darcy: "because it "was raised in the British social media."
UGH.
On reddit the pro-Trumpers in places like r/the_Donald began trying to find Rich's social media accounts in an attempt to solve the murder on their own (note: history has shown this never, ever ends well).
From here, things get messy. The vigilante investigation largely took place on r/the_donald. Which, was made private by its moderators this weekend for a while. This kicked off more of a flurry that Reddit was trying to censor the investigation. The hornet's nest was kicked. And the pro-Trump media went off.
Dave Weigel over at the Washington Post has a great piece analyzing the Rich/Wikileaks stuff and what it says about the world we live in. Read it all but basically: TV news is an easy mark for a conspiracy, debunking doesn't kill a fake story anymore, and "none of it makes sense. That means we're never going to stop hearing about it."
Where we are right now: The mainstream has debunked the Fox reports again and again. There's no hard information out there. But the murder remains unsolved and so the pro-Trump world remains on high alert for information. Kim Dotcom has yet to reveal any 'evidence.' The vigilante investigators are poking and prodding. The mainstream media is trying to move on and focus on the heaping pile of news on Trump/Russia. And the pro-Trump crowd is claiming that the MSM is trying to cover up the TRUTH.
Basically: there are two completely, 100% different narratives. One based in evidence and the other based in conjecture and conspiracy. Neither side will budge. Meanwhile there's a grieving family at the center and the situation gets more toxic by the hour.
The one tweet that sums it all up:
A quick bit about Anthony Weiner: This week, Anthony Weiner plead guilty to a federal obscenity charge for his sexting with a minor. The pro-Trump media, which loves to seize upon pedophilia narratives (see Pizzagate), ran with the Weiner story. Especially Mike Cernovich who played up Weiner's connection to Hillary Clinton.
What we can learn from this: For Cernovich, this accomplishes three vital things.
1) It distracts from the bombshell scoops this week that show the Trump/Russia narrative heating up. It presents an alternate narrative to run with that plays to the pro-Trump base.
2) It suggests that the MSM is glossing over and covering up the story and sympathizing with Weiner (none of which appear to be true). This reveals the awful MSM bias to the base.
3) It cements Cernovich as right all along..sorta! Cernovich championed the Pizzagate stuff early on and was (rightly) chastized for it. But the fact that Weiner's is connected in a way to Hillary Clinton (through his wife, Huma Abedin, who is filing for divorce from Weiner) is good fodder for Cernovich to spin that Clinton's friends were INDEED connected to a "child pornographer."
Weiner, legally, is not pleading guilty to making child pornography or for pedophilia. But because Weiner's offense is in the same general area, Cernovich is equating them and using it to show that his instincts were correct. Essentially, he's hoping his base will look at this whole situation with their eyes crossed and say, 'makes sense!' (Spoiler: that is exactly what they'll do.)
A pro-Trump media bit of classic spin, via Ashley Feinberg: Breitbart stories are usually pretty straightforward aggregations with very little spin. But the headlines are meant to distort the truth. Like this one.
Your favorite pro-Trump trolls/independent journalists are starting a company/website to target MSM journalists. The Daily Caller reports that we've entered the darkest timeline.Quick nugget: Pro-Trump media always spins criticism back onto the mainstream media. As you can see by this tweet right here:
Good reads this week:- A banger from Ben Collins at The Daily Beast about how trading algorithms are influenced by fake news, including Infowars.
“People were asking me today, ‘Is Infowars a site I have to start reading now?’ And I said, ‘The answer is yes,’’ said Button.
“You’re not trading on what’s true and what’s false. You’re trading on what the average voter believes is true. It’s a propaganda war.”
- My colleague Joe Bernstein on a 4chan war with Shia Labeouf the art world.
- Alex Jones is forced to back down against Chobani yogurt. Owned.
Let's end with something absurd!
4chan/Reddit pro-Trump trolls have this inside joke about a place called Kekistan. It's a fictional country based on the word 'Kek' which is troll message board short hand for the sound you make when you laugh (I can't believe how dumb I sound trying to explain this). They have a fake flag for it and everything. It's your standard in-joke. It's stupid but it's also a way of belonging.
ANYHOW: last night somebody created a GoFundMe campaign to raise $500,000 to buy a castle in Italy so they can make Kekistan a reality. This is both a total troll and definitely a semi-earnest attempt. (not going to link to it because I'm not in the business of directing traffic to fundraisers).
"Kekistan, since its creation, has been only an idea in the minds of activists. People use it as a way to identify with other members of the free speech movement. Its use has spread to the real world showing up in riots. In reality, it is still only an idea. In order to give it the boost it needs to continue spreading the message of free speech with supreme levels of strength, we first must give it a centralized area made specifically for Kekistan. Just like a country's capital, this will function in a similar fashion. It will be a headquarters to organize Kekistani movements and be the primary source of news and necessary information for anyone who follows it. This headquarters will be a castle in Italy."
Until next week, friends!