As always, feel free to tip me stuff that should be in this newsletter during the week (charlie.warzel@buzzfeed.com with the subject line 'Infowarzel'). Ok!ART OF THE WHEEL: No real reason for this but I mean COME ON...
How Pro-Trump Media Handled The Healthcare Debacle (The Art Of Repeal)1) Throw Paul Ryan under the bus. Breitbart (who've been putting on a masterclass in savaging the Speaker of the House) were among the first to report rumblings in Congress and the White House that people are looking for a replacement for Ryan.
As Business Insider pointed out, Drudge and other conservative outlets indicated this would happen. Here was Drudge this week before the pulled bill:
Then Trump (who, let's face it, is the biggest and most enthusiastic pro-Trump media outlet of them all) went one step subtler, instead enlisting a cable news host to throw Ryan under the bus for him. On Saturday he tweeted to his millions of followers, urging them tune into Jeanine Pirro's Fox News show that evening. Her message: a 6-minute opening monologue calling for Ryan's head. 2) Don't blame Trump. Despite Trump's campaign promises and musings that repeal and replace would be easy, the true Trump cheerleaders and loyalists trotted out out their favorite defenses, including:
- Not his fault! "The president went above and beyond, did everything in his power to get this bill across the finish line," according to Sean Hannity.
- The Art Of The Deal Defense (AKA: it's all part of the plan!). Breitbart's piece titled "Health Care Bill's Failure: Just Part Of The 'Art Of The Deal'
Key quote: "The conservatives will proceed with their demand for a full repeal of Obamacare. And then they will face the ire of voters who are deeply unhappy with Obamacare but upset about losing the paltry, expensive health insurance they currently have. That, too, will strengthen Trump, and convince conservatives they need his leadership."
Added bonus: the kicker of the piece is a Morpheus quote from The Matrix Reloaded.
Lee Stranahan, the investigative reporter who parted ways this week with Breitbart after a series of disagreements (including allegedly being asked by Matt Boyle to stop attending WH briefings), Periscoped Friday that Breitbart's trashing of the GOP healthcare bill/Paul Ryan won't end well:
Bill Mitchell's Poetry Corner"What are you doing, Breitbart? Donald Trump - the president! — has been actively supporting this bill...You are aware of the fact that Trump is supporting this bill, correct? By repeating "its Ryancare" you're not changing reality, all you're doing is looking dumb and setting the administration for a fall because you've helped kill it."
Bill Mitchell — Trump's most ardent Twitter pundit — had a big week. He was retweeted by President Trump ~* TWICE *~ in a row this Wednesday. "Yeah that was pretty cool :)" he texted Infowarzel shortly after the RTs.
But Bill's true time to shine came on Friday after the Trump/Ryan pulled the healthcare bill. Bill plunged deftly into the 'Trump is playing 12 Dimensional Chess' defense. He was in the zone. The tweets were peak @mitchellvii. Zen koans to Trump. Mitchell, to borrow from 30 Rock, was Reaganing.
If you need a Bill Mitchell primer, I got you covered. Alex Jones and the FBI and...Russia?
McClatchy reported that the FBI is looking into Infowars and other sites like Breitbart which may have willingly coordinated with Russian operatives to spread their stories on social media. Jones and Infowars responded in the most TOTALLY CHILL way:
Highly recommend the vid.Big Week For #Pizzagate: Alex Jones went with the classic Friday news dump just as the healthcare bill craziness heated up (almost as if he wasn't psyched to put out the news!) and issued a videotaped apology for his role in promoting #Pizzagate. Very un-Jonesian. P.S. It didn't satisfy the owner of Comet Pizza who is weighing his legal options.
A note on this: I've been listening to hours and hours of Alex Jones (old shows from across the years and new) and this apology sounds so completely different from Jones' off-the-cuff style. Not only is it very scripted. It sounds like it was written by a lawyer. I tweeted just that on Saturday and this happened (Biggs is a former Infowars correspondent who still files reports on occasion):
UGH YES THERE IS MORE ABOUT #PIZZAGATE (I'M SORRY): Pizzagaters held a rally in DC on Saturday. Will Sommer, who writes a similar style newsletter, was there and had a very wild/depressing series of tweets that you should read. Including this one, which...I dunno, man...
A QUICK CHECK ON THE DEEP STATE: According to the blog Zero Hedge,"The Deep State's Dominant Narratives And Authority Are Crumbling." The evidence? A Google trends chart!
A QUICK CHECK ON THE ALT-RIGHT: Richard Spencer wants Trump to "do the right thing" and bring about universal healthcare.
A QUICK CHECK ON 4chan: Waiting for Assange.
This Wikileaks dump was supposed to happen Wednesday but didn't. "Get your memes ready."
A QUICK CHECK ON HOW FAR-RIGHT COVERED LONDON TERROR ATTACK: About how you'd expect.
The IJR fallout. The up-and-coming semi-viral conservative media outlet has had a rough couple weeks. Business Insider's Oliver Darcy wrote the must-read behind the scenes. As far as media meltdown stories go, this one is GREAT.A Thing Upside Down Is Tweeting About: There were a bunch of Pro-Trump marches across the country this Saturday. One in CA got a bit violent. There are wild pictures. But the spin from pro-Trump world: tolerant liberals are not so tolerant and are pepper spraying anyone in a MAGA hat.
Upside Down On 60 Minutes: New Right blogger, Mike Cernovich is slated to appear on 60 Minutes (which will have happened by the time you read this). I can only imagine there'll be some griping about 'fake news' from MAGA Nation. Also...THIS:
...ENHANCE!
Katie's Reading Recommendation: Motherboard's "Trolling Scholars Debunk the Idea That the Alt-Right’s Shitposters Have Magic Powers"
A "Haunting" Article That Helps Explain The Spread Of Dark Online Messageboard Culture
My colleague, Ryan Broderick (who basically LIVES in the darkest corners of the net), writes in with a reading recommendation:
Since the alt-right/far-right/whatever you want to call it started to make big waves last year it's really bothered me that no one had really nailed down a coherent reason for why all of this was happening now. This like "cool," "edgy," ironic-but-not-ironic far right alt-right misogynist sexist online dude soup that quickly metasized across messageboards like 4chan, 8chan, and Reddit last year is such a weird blob of ideologies.They borrow pieces from similar hate movements like Men's Rights Activists, Gamergaters, Pickup Artists, Red Pill evangelists, and Anonymous, but I've never been able to really come up with a good reason as to why all of this was happening now. The easy answer is to just blame it on platforms or algorithms or lingering post-recession anger or just the racism that has always existed in America. Still, why now?
This month's issue of The Atlantic, though, has a piece called Breaking Faith by Peter Beinart and I think it might be the first thing I've read that's really nailed down exactly WHY all this shit is happening now. Here's a passage from Beinart's piece that literally made me say "oh fuck" out loud when I read it:
I'd love to end this on like a happy note, but I've literally been haunted by Beinart's article since I read it. Have fun!"Secularism is indeed correlated with greater tolerance of gay marriage and pot legalization. But it’s also making America’s partisan clashes more brutal. And it has contributed to the rise of both Donald Trump and the so-called alt-right movement, whose members see themselves as proponents of white nationalism. As Americans have left organized religion, they haven’t stopped viewing politics as a struggle between “us” and “them.” Many have come to define us and them in even more primal and irreconcilable ways."