Welcome to another edition of InfoWarzel, an on-going experiment to see how the pro-Trump world of the media is reacting to the week’s news. Thank you to the hundreds of people who subscribed after last week. If you like what you’re reading, please tell your friends or tweet the link (tinyletter.com/infowarzel) or post it to Facebook and get them onboard. Means a lot.
Here’s a bit of what I saw during the week that Wikileaks made Alex Jones the happiest man in America.
Wikileaks And The Phrase Of The Week ‘DEEP STATE’:
The top news all week in the Upside Down media was Wikileaks. No question. Wikileaks’ release of Vault 7, a pretty substantial dump of CIA documents that — among other things — laid out in explicit detail the very technical surveillance tactics that the CIA uses to track and collect information on targets through TVs, phones, and other electronic devices.
Tech companies like Apple have already claimed to fix some of the exploits in their software, etc. Mainstream media was a little reticent to jump on the dump at first — opting instead to do their due diligence and vet them through security experts, etc. The coverage has ramped up considerably though (read this great NYT piece) The far-right, however, did not wait to do this:
For Jones, personally. It was complete and total proof that everything he’d been saying for decades was true. Here’s him on his March 7th radio show VERY AMPED:
“A lot of people are freaking out now because we told you they can control your car and that there are kill switches in planes and that TV sets watching and listening to you. We told you everything and because patriots inside agencies were not able to speak out my show was early adopted as place to dump information. Former NSA guys countless great people and whistleblowers have come to me. We've been absolutely on target many years ago. And I've been told many large groups in intelligence and in the military they'd call and say that we here at Infowars are the resistance and that we were required listening.
...I've heard today from people high up in the military and in intelligence communities and they say, we got ordered 12 years ago to listen to Alex Jones. Seal Team Six and everybody.”
IN OTHER WORDS:
For others in the pro-Trump circuit, it was timely proof of the sinister and sneaky evil of the “Deep State” and intelligence community. HOW IT PLAYED: working in tandem with Trump's still-unsubstantiated claims that the Obama administration wiretapped his offices, Vault 7 was proof that the deep state is hell-bent on destroying Trump.
And so the big takeaway among pro-Trump media is that Wikileaks' Vault 7 dump shows that the CIA could have hacked the DNC and framed the Russians. Everyone's in on this line, including tech's weirdest anti-virus pioneer, John McAfee.
Where we stand: The deep state (meaning the nebulous entity that basically stands for the anonymous/amorphous parts of the federal government) is wickedly unpopular among the pro-Trump crowd.
As are the intelligence communities. Deep State is a favorite phrase right now. As a dude who goes by 'Virgil' writing on Breitbart remarks:
"It was different back on December 12, when Virgil first started writing about the Deep State; back then, references were scarce. Yet today, if one goes to Google Trends and types in “deep state,” this is what one sees: a recent sharp spike in usage. It’s fun to have company! "
A QUICK GLIMPSE AT THE DEEP STATE HASHTAG RIGHT NOW (oof):
Conspiracy Theories Are So Hot Right Now:
The CIA hacking the DNC and framing thoery Russia went big in conservative media circles. As Business Insider points out in a great little bit of web forensics, Fox News & Sean Hannity went full Infowars as Wikileaks’ conspiratorial talking points (straight from the official Twitter account known to be run by Julian Assange) were quickly picked up by the cable news channel. The speed of the this particular news cycle is pretty mind-blowing. You probably can’t ascribe this strictly to Infowars…but it’s hard to ignore the affect it has had on the far-right and the desire to embrace this line of argument.
Also Of Note: From Drudge Report To An Official Piece Of Government Communications: Just under 5 minutes.
Breitbart Goes To War On Healthcare But Not On Trump.
Business Insider’s Oliver Darcy had a great inside look at Breitbart “going to war” against the Republican Obamacare replacement plan. It has juicy Slack transcripts and it’s a good indicator of how Breitbart is going to hold GOP’s feet to the fire (opposition is sooooo much more fun and click worthy than being a straight up cheerleader).
Proof they’re going HARD: This intense/hilarious Breitbart headline, which made the rounds on Friday.
BUT NOT SO FAST. Breitbart may be dogging congress and parts of the White House, but they’re willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt, as evidenced by Joel Pollak’s editorial this week, titled “The Art Of The Deal Explains The Replacement Debate.” If you’re not into reading the passage below, it is basically saying that Trump is a master negotiator and this will be one of his classic deals. He writes (bolding, mine):
“In The Art of the Deal — which liberals ought to study as carefully as conservatives studied Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals if they want to begin to understand a president they have only demonized and caricatured thus far — Trump explains that one of his core negotiating principles is: “Protect the Downside and the Upside Will Take Care of Itself.”
President Trump has used the launch, and decline, of the American Health Care Act to highlight the downside — and take some wind out of the sails of the politicians and policy wonks who convinced themselves they had all the answers. As the bill falters, the next, inevitable step will be for nervous Republican leaders to ask Trump to offer a new plan.
And that plan will be more of a classic Trump bargain — one that does what Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama refused to do: namely, bring all of the stakeholders together, including doctors and patients, to hash out something everyone can accept.
Do not be fooled by the bill’s early troubles. Another principle in Art of the Deal is: “Deliver the Goods.” Watch.”
RANDOM THING I NOTICED: Breitbart is still featuring Milo (who was asked to leave Breitbart amid scandal) on its podcast widget on the site.
4chan’s Big Win Using “Ancient Astronomy”:
It was a busy week in actual political news but by week’s end, the Upside-Down’s lead story was that they couldn’t stop talking about...a 4chan prank against Shia LaBeouf. Yep. Here’s a (very) brief rundown.
Shia set up a campaign after Trump’s inauguration called “He Will Not Divide Us,” which was a 24 hour a day protest webcam livestream from a spot in Queens. 4 channers and pro-Trumpers hijacked the installation and harassed Shia endlessly. So Shia shut down the livestream and moved it to a different (undisclosed location).
So 4chan enlisted its vigilante investigators to ‘capture the flag’ (because we’re all adults here). It took them just over a day, according to 4chan (so, grain of salt) and they did it by studying the geotags on Shia’s social media accounts and…uh…analyzing airplane contrails and Flightpath navigation data. I mean…I should just let this fawning article from Heat Street do the talking:
“This area was too large to search unfortunately. The 4channers began looking to the star, using ancient astronomy to help map the direction of the camera and pinpoint a more precise location…They also sent out a guy in his truck to honk his horn around Greenville to see if they could hear it on the lifestream, to mark the location.”
It looked like this (allegedly):
They supposedly found it and replaced the flag with a “Make America Great Again” hat and a Pepe the frog shirt.
It’s an interesting use of time from a group that routinely mocks the left for having the time to protest Trump.
Why they care so much: It’s funny. But also, plenty of pro-Trump Twitter personalities are hailing it as another example of the online ingenuity of the troll crowd that "memed a President into existence.”
Far-Right reacted to International Women’s Day Pretty Much How You’d Expect
There was lots of celebrating women who are anti-protest and standing with the men to get work done. And tweets like this:
Almost Half of Americans Do Not Believe Your “Anonymous Sources.”
Here’s a demoralizing poll out from Morning Consult. The poll suggests that "44 percent of respondents in the poll said it is likely journalists and reporters make up anonymous sources for stories, compared with 36 percent who said it is not." This, of course, helps to explain the nugget at the heart of the Fake News claim that pro-Trump voters and Upside Down media level at the mainstream.
I think it helps to illustrate why some of these amazing Washington Post and New York Times blockbuster palace intrigue pieces don’t resonate with Trump voters the way they play with the MSM and beltway crowds. I keep hearing on mainstream podcasts and cable news and over Twitter how these inside the White House stories — which often have confirmation from 8, 9, 10…even 17 sources — are unprecedentedly damning (leaks!). And for anyone who is familiar with the sausage-making of reporting, that’s true. But for many in the pro-Trump universe, anonymous sourcing appears to mean “this reporter made it up,” adding extra fuel to the fake news fire.
For far-right media, there’s a good chance they know better, but it’s great fodder to use to try and discredit the mainstream. And it looks a lot like this:
This Week in #Pizzagate: A fake Drudge website (with 1.2 million followers) was banned from Facebook after Drudge tweeted about it. But plenty on the far-right were confused and thought it was some new nefarious censorship. Including some beleagured Pizzagaters.
This Week in Ughnghhgngghhhhhgnnhnnnnnnnnnghhnnnnnnnnnnnn: Birtherism is (somehow) back on far-right websites!
Other stuff to read:
Rosie Gray's great piece at The Atlantic on conservative news kingpin, Trump pal, and on-record quote machine, Chris Ruddy of Newsmax.
Ryan Broderick created a new Facebook account, started following some legit conservative pages and liking what the algorithm gave him back. It took only 4 days before his feed was radicalized into something pretty insane.
Finally, as promised. A picture of my dog (this is how we feel after summing up a whole week in the Upside Down):
