2000 Mules, One Ass, A Couple of Weasels, and The One That Got Away

Sand in the Cogs of the Misinformation Machine

Some of the lowest of the lowest have made the news this week. Dinesh D’Souza, Alex Jones, and Steve Bannon are (we hope) headed toward America’s smoldering heap of serial liars. 

Outside of Donald Trump rallies, the biggest purveyor of lies alleging that the 2020 election was stolen is gone from the marketplace. I realize the retraction of Dinesh D’Souza’s movie 2,000 Mules won’t put those accusations back in the box. But seeing somebody who’s become famous as an asshole while sporting an intellectual veneer get taken down does prompt some happiness in my heart.

I thought that getting busted and serving time for fraudulent campaign donations would put him in his place. After all, the man served eight months in a halfway house in San Diego, received five years probation and a $30,000 fine for pleading guilty.to one felony count of making illegal contributions in the names of others.

I clearly underestimated MAGA’s need for grifters willing to frequently repeat Big Lies and conspiracy theories.

He turned his lawbreaking into a badge of honor, wailing “poor, pitiful me” to conservative media regularly. Once out of the hoosegow, there was a book to sell. Here’s a snip from a Daily Kos posting:

• But it was all for a good cause. For from this, the person who never saw a cockroach fart without believing it part of the Grand Liberal Design came away with the best present his government could ever give him: A brand-new conspiracy theory.

• D’Souza’s time spent with criminals has revealed for him a symmetry between the operations of gangs and those of progressives, particularly in proceeding through the stages of theft from plan, through recruitment and rationalization, and finally on to cover-up.

D’Souza’s crime and whine paid off: He was pardoned by then-president Trump in May, 2018.

And Trump was rewarded with a film claiming to document voter fraud in the 2020 election.

Via The Bulwark (which provided inspiration for today’s headline):

• When Dinesh D’Souza’s movie 2,000 Mules arrived on the scene in 2022, it was an immediate MAGA smash—a “masterpiece of meeting market demand,” as WaPo’s Philip Bump put it earlier this year. It purported to prove 2020 absentee ballot fraud on a massive scale. Its ridiculous claims were debunked almost immediately, but that didn’t matter—it became a tentpole of the 2020 MAGA mythology at once. Trump described it as “the greatest and most impactful documentary of our time.”

The film’s distributor, Salem Media Group, has pulled the film and related materials from its catalog, along with issuing an apology to the man falsely accused of voter fraud in the film. It seems that telling big lies can get you big sued, something Fox News learned last year with its $787 settlement with Dominion Voting Systems. 

D’Souza is probably already hard at work pounding the keyboard on a tome about how the Deep State censored him. It’s not like the fraud and the film were singular incidents. The guy’s Wikipedia entry is a little shop of horrors 

Despite claims I’ve seen on social media, Dinesh himself did not disclaim the accusations made in the film, which gave MAGAts a chance to deflect away from Trump’s lying aura if confronted with facts. 

Next up in the bad news department is Alex Jones, is liquidating his personal assets, in light of demands from the families of Sandy Hook victims whom he owes more than $1.5 billion in damages over his lies about the 2012 school massacre.

Lordy, this guy is a scumbag. There’s no conspiracy theory favorable to right wing nuts that hasn’t passed through his lips and lined his pockets. And there’s no herbal remedy he hasn’t hawked, especially those promising to enhance masculinity.

This liquidation of assets does not guarantee InfoWars will go silent. A friendly angel investor could step in, except that Jones’ behavior and history make any such investment more risky.

Trump’s Rasputin, aka Steve Bannon, will apparently get to sit out this year’s presidential election while he serves time for waving a middle finger at a congressional subpoena. 

His lil’ War Room podcast has given refuge to congressional liars and conspirators seeking to stoke hatred against faith-based groups for helping immigrants..

Via the New Republic:

• Bannon was found guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress in 2022 but delayed sentencing by appealing the decision. That appeal was rejected, and he was sentenced Thursday to report to prison on July 1. Bannon can still appeal the ruling to report to prison.

• The judicial system, which Gaetz declared is dead, typically sentences people held in contempt of court to prison time: Per the U.S. Penal Code, penalties for contempt of Congress include a jail term of a minimum of one month and a maximum 12 months per violation. Whistleblower Chelsea Manning served a two-month sentence for refusing to testify in a federal case investigating military secrets she handed to WikiLeaks in 2010. The judicial system, it seems, has continued operating as it always has when people refuse to testify. But if the meltdown helps the grift, might as well treat the codified consequences of refusing to testify as a sign of democracy collapsing.

It’s almost like the most extreme MAGAts tune in daily, waiting for marching orders via fearless leader in Mar a Largo.

Which brings me to the one who’s mostly gotten away so far, namely James O’Keefe. You might remember him as the man behind the fraudulent filming of local activists associated with ACORN community organizers. One of those workers sued O'Keefe for invasion of privacy, resulting in O'Keefe issuing an apology and agreeing to pay $100,000 in a settlement.

He’s also faced charges for entering the federal office of then-U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu  under false pretenses.

To make a long story short, O’Keefe set up Project Veritas, which became an outlet for heavily edited videos aimed at discrediting an assortment of organizations and individuals he deemed to be leftist or liberal. This setup drew funding from conservatives looking to play dirty to “win.”

After so many cries of “wolf,” many news organizations refused to engage with Project Veritas.

In February, 2023, O’Keefe got the boot from the organization after being accused of playing fast and loose with donor money. I don’t know why this was a big deal, since it would be silly to expect a guy so dishonest with his craft to be honest with money.

Today, the front page of the Union-Tribune has a story (picked up from the New York Times) revealing that O’Keefe is up to his dastardly deeds again. 

This time his targets are the religious organizations who take the word of their savior seriously and provide basic human needs for immigrants already on this side of the border and others in need of help. Faith-based organizations have played a crucial role helping federal authorities and local governments manage influxes of migrants and has been funded with bipartisan support in Congress.

As the right wing frenzy about the “invasion” of migrants has gained currency, various groups have taken it among themselves to engage in harassment of service providers. The completely unfounded rumors at the base of these actions involve allegations of human trafficking and assistance to terrorists.

O’Keefe is now seeking to cash in on those fears.

• A man posing as a pest exterminator tried to gain access to a San Diego hotel that operates as a shelter for migrant families. The next day, a woman showed up claiming to be an immigrant in need of help. Workers at the shelter, run by Catholic Charities, turned away both impostors.

• Three days later, menacing calls began pouring in to the staff. Voicemail left for the CEO called him “scum” and “not really Christian.” A woman left another staff member an expletive-laced message about Catholics. She claimed that the nonprofit was flying migrants all over the country and profiting from an illegal operation.

• The bogus exterminator was James O’Keefe, a right-wing provocateur who used to head Project Veritas, a group known for trying to entrap political opponents by using disguises and concealed cameras. The deluge of vitriol ensued after O’Keefe began posting videos on the social platform X in March claiming that the shelter was an illegal holding site for women and children and speculating, without evidence, that they had been trafficked.

It’s a sad day for this country when a political movement has opted to build its reputation on a foundation of lies and hate.

I’ll leave readers with one glimmer of hope, via the Washington Post:

• In the week after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, Twitter suspended some 70,000 accounts associated with the right-wing QAnon radicalized movement, citing their role in spreading misinformation that was fueling real-world violence.

• A new study finds the move had an immediate and widespread impact on the overall spread of bogus information on the social media site, which has since been purchased by Elon Musk and renamed X.

• The study, published in the journal Nature on Tuesday, suggests that if social media companies want to reduce misinformation, banning habitual spreaders may be more effective than trying to suppress individual posts.

Gosh, if all those billionaires that are in the tank for Trump wanted to, they could make this country a more civil place. A guy can dream…

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Friday Finds in the News World

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Clarence Thomas is far more corrupt than anyone knew—including his peers by Mark Sumner at Daily Kos

• Now we know why Clarence Thomas didn't jump on John Oliver's offer of $1 million dollars a year to step down from his position on the Supreme Court: It might mean he would have to take a pay cut.

• A new tabulation from Fix the Court shows the 17 justices who served on the court between 2004 and 2023 knocked down a staggering $4,755,147 in gifts. That’s an average of nearly $28,000 worth of freebies per justice per year.

• Except it’s not. Because a jaw-dropping $4,042,286 of that total went into just one pocket. That’s right, America’s biggest fan of Walmart parking lots went home with over five times more money than everyone else on the court combined. That’s not the appearance of corruption. It is corruption.

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‘We Ride at Dawn’: The Federalist Came For Dolly Parton, Now Her Fans Are Coming For Them via Mediaite

• When is The Federalist going to learn that it’s a mistake to go after intensely popular and beloved pop stars just for the sake of contrarianism?

• Not any time soon, going by their new attack on country music icon Dolly Parton. In an article published Thursday entitled “There’s Nothing Loving About Dolly Parton’s False Gospel” — which, it should be noted, is already based on a false premise because Dolly Parton does not preach a gospel as much as she just says things — contributor Ericka Anderson criticized Parton for declaring “love is love” when it comes to the LGBTQ+ community. She also took issue with Parton not wanting to judge others, calling it a “get out of jail free card”:

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Conservatives tied to Trump want to limit insurance coverage for abortions via the Washington Post

• Although data is hard to come by, thousands of women are accessing abortions by traveling out of state, and it’s likely that they are using private-employer insurance to do so, said Liz McCaman Taylor, senior federal policy counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, a legal advocacy group that supports abortion rights.

• Forcing private-employer insurance to exclude abortion coverage would have a “huge impact on women,” McCaman Taylor added, including “a chilling effect” on those seeking abortions even if they do not have employer-sponsored health care.

• “These changes make people very fearful because the real-life consequences are potentially jail, and people losing their freedom, losing the ability to come home to their children at night,” McCaman Taylor said.