This Week in Misinformation: J6 Committee Ugly Breakup, Trump Had COVID Real Bad, Tucker Now 'Deep State,' Real Fascists, Fake Birds
9 December 2021
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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 four stories.
Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows broke up with the January 6th Committee.
Meadows, who was the White House chief of staff in January and was around Trump throughout the day, suspended his cooperation with the House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol (Politico, 43.41). In a statement, his lawyer said that the breakdown occurred in part because he learned that investigators had issued a subpoena for his call records from a third-party telecommunications provider (@hugolowell via Twitter).
Mr. Meadows had already handed over to the committee thousands of documents (CNN, 43.70), including texts between himself and high-profile individuals and a slide deck detailing the plan to get Vice President Pence to facilitate “alternate” electors to swing the certification to Trump @AndrewFeinberg via Twitter).
He is also now suing the committee for his trouble (Politico, 43.41).
New details were reported, also by Meadows in his new post-White House role book, about how President Trump misled everyone about his bout with COVID last year.
Trump tested positive three days before the first and only debate he had with Joe Biden, a fact not reported at the time or at all until this week (Newsweek, 39.37). President Trump did, however, claim that he tested negative after the first test, still before the debate, but the timing of the positive test was consistent with Trump’s announcement two days after the debate that he and the First Lady had COVID, and with the onset of his serious symptoms and hospitalizations shortly after (Washington Post, 43.82). Trump took no precautions after his positive test to avoid infecting the 500 or more people he interacted with (The Hill, 44.81), and looked only slightly better on the day of the debate than on the day of the positive test, according to the book.
Trump isn’t pleased that Meadows revealed the positive test, perhaps betraying that he did not read the book for which he authored an approving blurb (The Independent, 41.74). Chris Christie isn’t pleased, understandably, that Trump gave him COVID (Axios, 45.66).
Separately, the Meadows book also revealed that Trump’s blood oxygen level was dangerously low, at 86 percent, before his doctors sent him to Walter Reed hospital for treatment (New York Times, 44.72). This fact was not included in any official briefs by the President’s medical team at the time, and Trump has denied suggestions that his illness was worse than the perception he had created.
Q personality Lin Wood fired back at Tucker Carlson, then added several more ideological friendlies to his very public enemies list.
Wood attacked the Fox host, who was the interviewer for Kyle Rittenhouse when the young man called Wood a liar last week, and threatened to file suit against Carlson and anyone who republished Rittenhouse’s account (2021_Karma via Twitter). The attorney then took the additional step of posting a screen shot of an email in which Tucker supplicates Hunter Biden, of all people, for help getting his son into Georgetown (VICE, 41.42).
Lin also took aim at several other GOP politicians and conservative media heavyweights, calling them either Communists or Deep State: Mike Flynn, Flynn’s brother Joe, Dan Bongino, Sean Hannity, Charlie Kirk, “the guy with the fake accent Sebastian Gorka,” Clay Clark, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, among others (@RonFilipkowski and @2021_Karma via Twitter).
Somewhat incongruously, Wood furthermore called for a “peace summit” at his estate (@hottub_twin via Twitter) to bridge the divides he helped create, but with Rittenhouse still calling Wood a liar, this seems unlikely to materialize (@LinSpeaksLies via Twitter).
Some nutty things were said about some fascists who marched through the nation’s capital, and the fascists also tricked a lot of people on Twitter into publicizing the event for them.
The right-wing, openly fascist group “Patriot Front” staged a show of force in Washington, D.C., as they have done in other cities, marching through the city wearing masks and waving flags (Washingtonian, -).
Some Republicans seemed keen on distancing the right wing from this display of extremism, and attempted to suggest these demonstrators were actually federal officials trying to make conservatives look bad, for example Wendy Rogers, Arizona state legislator, and Dinesh D’Souza (@RonFilipkowski via Twitter). Marjorie Taylor Greene separately called the men “movie characters” (@RonFilipkowski via Twitter).
A video of the early part of the march was reshared widely on Twitter, and after it went viral the profile image—which had been an AI-generated fake—changed and pro-Patriot Front content was appended to the popular post (@travis_view via Twitter). Then the account was suspended.
Later, a video circulated online of the Patriot Front being chased out of D.C.—except the footage was not from this week in that city, but rather from a separate incident in Philadelphia last July (WUSA 9, -).
The grab bag, always a good way to wrap up: Birds aren’t real; Reuters Institute study on trust in the media; TRUTH social, Devin Nunes, and Q world making it make sense to them; fake Mar-a-Lago Christmas card; Pentagon generals lied about January 6th; House bill to prevent future presidential abuses; Sidney Powell Kraken cash grab; armed canvassers in Utah; Mike Lindell Supreme Court “bombardment”; fake arm for vaccine evasion; Myanmar genocide victims sue Facebook for $150B; and Twitter Spaces is filled with misinformation.
That, and a lot more, below. This is This Week in Misinformation.
-- Kevin