This Week in Misinformation: CDC Regrets, Election Machines Scooby-Doo Crew, Trump's Passports
18 August 2022
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Reliability scores for media outlets cited in the summary are in parentheses for each, courtesy of the terrific folks at Ad Fontes Media.
Now, on to our top stories.
Remember how we have had so much COVID misinformation, and no small portion of it was because CDC messaging was slow and contradictory? Well, they’re working on it.
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, addressed the “pretty dramatic, pretty public mistakes” the agency made in guiding the public during the pandemic (New York Times, 42.96). Everything from testing and data analysis to staffing played a part in the fiasco.
To do better next time the country needs the CDC, Walensky announced structural changes and a plan to improve the messaging that its experts put out to the public (Forbes, 43.36).
For me, this level of reflection and intention to do better is a hopeful sign. Best of luck to Director Walensky, and all of us, as she aims to make the agency more nimble (NPR, 44.42).
There were new revelations about how Trump’s allies tried to illegally mess with election machines in several states after he lost.
From Georgia to Michigan to Nevada, emails and other records obtained by the Washington Post (40.01) revealed an expansive effort by Sidney Powell and others on Trump’s legal team to have experts illicitly get and examine data from election machines. We previously didn’t have much at all on Georgia, and now it’s confirmed.
Meanwhile, attempts to inappropriately access voting machines have caused Colorado, Pennsylvania, and again Georgia and Michigan to investigate what seems to be a nationwide pattern of criminal activity trying to help Trump overturn Biden’s win (Washington Post, 40.01).
Could we fairly say that these efforts will have the backing of right-wing sheriffs who are planning to “monitor” the midterms (The Guardian, 43.74), or that more individuals who feel certain the election was stolen will threaten election officials, as one did this week in Maricopa County (@stephen_richer via Twitter)?
We also simply have to return to Mar-a-Lago, for better or worse.
The explanations Trump gave for why he didn’t give back what the government wanted before the FBI searched his home and seized them were legion, and contradictory (New York Times, 42.96). To take one example, Trump claimed that none of the documents were still classified because he had issued a “standing” declassification order that applied to any materials he took home out of the West Wing of the White House. Turns out, though, that 18 former top Trump administration officials say that this is completely made up and was never the case (CNN, 42.40). Besides which, the classification of the documents is far from the only thing making his possession of them illegal. Besides which again, for some nuclear documents in particular the President actually doesn’t have unilateral declassification authority (The Atlantic, 39.18). So, yeah. Distraction and deflection.
There was a spot of misinformation related to three passports that Trump said the FBI “stole” (New York Post, 32.68) even after officials had owned to the mistake and arranged to have them returned (CBS News, 46.07). After Trump’s initial allegation, CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell reported the FBI was not in possession of the passports, but a Trump spokesman swiftly debunked her by publicizing emails that proved it (@kyledcheney via Twitter).
Trump also tried to whatabout his predicament by claiming President Obama had taken tens of millions of documents, including nuclear ones, after he left office (PolitiFact, 45.22). The National Archives and Records Administration released a statement correcting the record saying it was properly in possession of those presidential materials (Washington Post, 40.01).
Over on Fox News, Brian Kilmeade filled in for Tucker Carlson’s primetime show and bizarrely broadcast a fake photo of the magistrate who signed the Mar-a-Lago search warrant (atrupar via Twitter). Kilmeade later walked back the photo and explained it wasn’t really Bruce Reinhart on a plane with convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell (Politico, 42.74), but that hasn’t stopped antisemitic Internet trolls from asserting that Reinhart legally represented and otherwise supported Maxwell’s partner in crime, Jeffrey Epstein (Anti-Defamation League, 44.24).
So sweet a grab bag: Liz Cheney’s Republican opponent lied about her not conceding, but the outgoing Congresswoman has receipts; the QAnon “Queen of Canada” tries in vain to have her followers arrest the police; a grand jury subpoenaed Trump White House documents about January 6th way back in May; the people behind “2,000 Mules” now say they won’t ever release evidence for their claims; things are going from bad to worse in Arizona as the conspiracy fringe takes over; the untimely death of actress Anne Heche spurs all manner of theories online; there are tons of intergalactic healing and 5G talismans being sold on Etsy; Facebook and Instagram ban the anti-vaccine organization run by Robert Kennedy, Jr.; Boston Globe Magazine (44.44) dives deep on Sandy Hook conspiracies and Alex Jones while a judge rules that another defamation case can proceed against Jones in Connecticut; Russian propaganda flourishes in unmoderated Internet spaces; a fake Donald Trump Jr. tweet throwing shade on Trump supporters makes the rounds; The New Yorker (40.27) looks back at Donald Trump and the Sweepstakes Scammers; and author Sarah Kendzior’s new book is all about how “conspiracy culture” is an American institution.
That, and a lot more, below. This is This Week in Misinformation.
-- Kevin