Editors and reporters at the staunchly pro-Trump conservative outlet Breitbart News privately clashed over whether President Donald Trump was to blame for last week’s deadly Capitol riot, according to internal messages reviewed by The Daily Beast. “I am just not feeling charitable AT ALL,” international news editor Frances Martel posted to Slack the morning after the rioting that left five people dead, including a police officer. […]
Will Sommer
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Two weeks before thousands of Trump rioters breached Congress, “Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander said his group wasn’t violent—“yet.” “One of our organizers in one state said, ‘We’re nice patriots, we don’t throw bricks,’” Alexander told a crowd at a Dec. 19 rally at Arizona’s state capitol. “I leaned over and I said, ‘Not yet. Not yet!’ Haven’t you read about a little tar-and-feathering? Those […]
Trump allies eager to deflect blame for Wednesday’s attack on the presidential vote count have claimed that the rioters were “antifa” infiltrators, citing a Washington Times report on evidence compiled by a little-known facial recognition company associated with a far-right blog. But the company at the center of the story says the Times article is a hoax, and wants a retraction and apology. As Capitol Police […]
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Hordes of Trump supporters rallied across this city on Wednesday morning in a doomed effort to somehow negate President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, hours before Congress was set to certify the results and make Biden’s win even more fully irreversible. The rally marked the most desperate effort yet from disappointed and enraged Trump supporters, who have been leading a months-long campaign of disinformation and violence in […]
Former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn is going all in on the QAnon conspiracy theory, promoting an online store to sell QAnon hats and T-shirts, the proceeds of which will benefit his partnership with a prominent QAnon booster. Flynn’s drawn-out legal battle with former Special Counsel Robert Mueller turned him into a hero for QAnon believers. Many QAnon supporters, who rely on mysterious online clues […]
At a pro-Trump rally in Washington D.C. earlier this month, conspiracy theory magnate Alex Jones came face-to-face with a star of the pro-Trump far-right: former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn hasn’t shied away from the Republican Party’s fringes after the president gave him a November pardon, appearing on QAnon podcasts and calling for Donald Trump to impose martial law. But palling around with Jones, […]
On Saturday morning, aggrieved Trump supporters are set to rally outside the Supreme Court, Congress, and the Department of Justice’s headquarters. Their plan: to simultaneously march around and blow shofar horns in the hopes that the building’s walls will collapse, just like the biblical walls of Jericho. Taking tricks from the Old Testament is not the usual playbook for those engaged in piqued political fights. But […]
Pro-Trump attorney Lin Wood urged Georgia Republicans at a rally on Wednesday to sit out the state’s upcoming Senate runoff elections, arguing that the two Republicans in the running first needed to back demands for a special legislative session to investigate Donald Trump’s defeat in the state. “They have not earned your vote,” Wood said of Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. “Don’t you give it […]
Former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne left behind a cloud of confusion when he resigned in 2019 from the internet retailer he’d founded after panicking investors with his bizarre claims that he had romanced a Russian agent at the behest of “Men in Black” working for the United States government. Now he’s back, with what he has described as his own personal “army,” touting what he claims […]
Joe Biden isn’t president yet. But his incoming White House already has its first conspiracy theory to deal with. It goes by the tag the “Great Reset” and under its construct a wild dystopian future is in store. The coronavirus pandemic is merely a means to enslave humanity and end capitalism. Biden’s “Build Back Better” slogan is really a cover for nefarious plotting of a global […]
A once murky alliance forged in a world of internet conspiracy theories appears to have ended in murder this past Sunday, with an infamous QAnon mom accused of having shot a fringe legal theorist. Neely Petrie-Blanchard, a Kentucky resident, had long ago lost custody of her daughters for reasons that are unclear. And to help in that task, she turned to Chris Hallett, an amateur legal […]
Donald Trump’s last-ditch campaign legal efforts have centered on witnesses who allege that they witnessed voter fraud and other suspicious activity in battleground states across the country. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has brandished stacks of papers detailing what she said were hundreds of affidavits from allegedly aggrieved voters or poll-watchers in TV appearances, and the MAGA faithful have seized on the allegations as proof […]
As Donald Trump refuses to concede the election, some of his most loyal allies have become obsessed with a bizarre new conspiracy theory about the race, insisting that Trump only lost the election because a deep-state supercomputer named “Hammer” and a computer program named “Scorecard” were used to change the ballot count. The head of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has called the claim […]
Hundreds of Trump supporters gathered Wednesday night outside the Maricopa County elections office in Arizona as election counters inside tabulated the county’s ballots. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) rallied the Trump hardcore before introducing the next speaker. But rather than hand his megaphone to another Republican official or a Trump campaign lawyer, Gosar introduced former Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich. In his speech, Cernovich complained that no […]
Rep. Greg Gianforte (R-MT) made headlines in 2017 when he attacked a reporter on the campaign trail during a special election for the seat he now holds. Now one of Gianforte’s top campaign staffers in Gianforte’s bid for Montana’s governorship has allegedly committed a violent incident of his own, attacking a parked car, according to a police report. An incident report filed by the Montana police […]
With less than three weeks before Election Day and the coronavirus pandemic still raging, Donald Trump wants voters to consider some very important things. Like did Osama bin Laden survive the 2011 Navy SEAL raid on his compound by using a body double, and did former Vice President Joe Biden then order the murder of Navy SEALs to cover that fact up? Did Biden then order […]
Donald Trump refused to denounce the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory at his town hall on Thursday, instead praising the dangerous movement as people who “are very much against pedophilia.” NBC host Savannah Guthrie pressed Trump on previous praise for QAnon believers as “people who love our country,” and asked him to disavow QAnon believers’ claims that the world is controlled by a cabal of Satanic pedophiles […]
YouTube launched a new crackdown on QAnon videos on Thursday, dealing another major setback to the pro-Trump conspiracy movement one week after Facebook launched its own purge of QAnon accounts. In its announcement, YouTube said it would delete “content that targets an individual or group with conspiracy theories that have been used to justify real-world violence.” That description, the site notes, would apply to QAnon, which […]
President Donald Trump backed a budding conspiracy theory on Tuesday that four Americans were killed in the 2012 Benghazi attack to cover up the blood-sacrifice of Navy SEALs and the “fact” that Osama Bin Laden is still alive, marking what is perhaps the president’s strangest brush yet with far-right conspiracy theories. Trump’s promotion of the new Benghazi conspiracy theory, which is fast gaining traction on the […]
This is a preview of Right Richter, our newsletter about the extreme right wing. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox, sign up for it here. It’s hard to stress how much effort the pro-Trump media has devoted over the last year-and-half to John Durham. The top federal prosecutor in Connecticut with a bushy, meme-ready goatee, Durham was appointed by Bill Barr in May 2019 […]
Donald Trump hosted hundreds of people outside the White House on Saturday for his first in-person event since contracting COVID-19—but his administration wouldn’t say whether he’s still infected with the virus. “We gotta vote these people into oblivion,” Trump told the crowd of supporters in a brief 18 minute speech from a White House balcony. The in-person event marked Trump’s return to the campaign spotlight after […]
QAnon followers are scrambling for a new digital home after Facebook issued a blanket ban on the movement’s pages on Tuesday, in what looks likely to be the most significant social media crackdown in the history of the pro-Trump conspiracy movement. Faced with a wide-ranging purge, QAnon followers dreaming of the day Donald Trump orders the mass arrests of his opponents are faced with a choice: […]
Donald Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis early Friday morning presented his most loyal supporters with a challenge: how to square the president’s frequent claims that the pandemic would “disappear” with the fact that he ended up being hospitalized because of it. After more than six months of Trump downplaying the virus and a death toll that’s passed 200,000, Trump supporters have already developed some ways of rationalizing away […]
Seventeen Republican lawmakers declined on Friday to support a measure in the House of Representatives that condemned the pro-Trump QAnon movement as a “collection of unfounded conspiracy theories.” The resolution, which passed nearly unanimously, urged the FBI and intelligence agencies to focus on the threats from fringe conspiracy groups, which have grown in mass as the election has neared. All told, 371 members voted in favor […]
Donald Trump paid just $750 in annual federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017, according to tax records obtained by The New York Times. But even that low sum is more than Trump paid the government in other recent years, according to the Times. In 10 out of the last 15 years, Trump paid no federal income tax, citing mammoth losses. The bombshell report offers new […]
The FBI is investigating blundering conservative operatives Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman for a series of possible crimes, according to a document filed by federal prosecutors. Ironically, the document revealing the investigation was filed just days after Wohl and Burkman staged a fake FBI raid on Burkman’s home in a bid for media attention. The FBI investigation centers on Wohl and Burkman’s February release of confidential […]
This is a preview of Right Richter, our newsletter about the extreme right wing. To receive the full newsletter in your inbox, sign up for it here. The election is less than 40 days away. Donald Trump is refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. And now the Trumpworld hunt is on for material that can be used to discredit any election results that show […]
One-time QAnon supporter Lauren Witzke won the Republican Senate primary in Delaware on Tuesday, campaigning on a pledge to institute a decade-long moratorium on all immigration and beating a rival candidate endorsed by the state GOP by nearly 14 percentage points. Witzke’s win marks the second time a fan of the dangerous pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory has won a GOP Senate nomination this cycle, although Witzke […]
Fox News star Sean Hannity was once his network’s most prominent booster of conspiracy theories about murdered Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich, only stopping the rumor-mongering after Rich’s grieving parents publicly begged him to knock it off. Now, Hannity will have to answer questions, under oath, about Fox’s coverage of Rich’s death. Hannity, along with Fox Business host Lou Dobbs and a host of Fox […]
A Portland activist who had traveled to Washington, D.C. to protest the Republican convention says he was punched in the head by one of Donald Trump’s most ardent evangelical Christian allies. Video of the attack appears to support his claim. On Thursday, pro-Trump writer and talk radio host Eric Metaxas was among the roughly 1,500 attendees at Trump’s Republican National Convention speech on the White House […]
Michigan state officials are investigating a voter-suppression robocall allegedly tied to blundering conservative operatives Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman. The robocall was aimed at scaring Detroit voters away from using mail-in ballots, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson tweeted on Thursday. Benson announced that her office and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel would investigate the call’s origins and “seek justice” against the people behind it. The […]
Hours before she was set to speak at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night, Mary Ann Mendoza took to Twitter and urged her followers to investigate a supposed Jewish plot to enslave the world. “Do yourself a favor and read this thread,” Mendoza, who is a member of the Trump campaign’s advisory board, tweeted to her more than 40,000 followers early Tuesday morning. Mendoza, an […]
As Fox News scrambled to contain the damage from its discredited reporting on murdered Democratic staffer Seth Rich in 2017, a top editor at the network stuck by the retracted story, going so far as to predict that the baseless coverage of Rich’s murder would eventually be “vindicated.” That revelation comes via newly released emails from FoxNews.com’s then-deputy managing editor Greg Wilson, as well as others […]