slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

The advantages misinformation has.

By Philip Bump

Mike Lindell does not have any evidence that the 2020 e******n was tainted by significant v***r f***d.

He’ll argue with this, vociferously, claiming that he has indisputable electronic data showing interference from foreign powers. But on every occasion when he’s feinted toward allowing independent experts to review his purported evidence, it’s a dud. It was a dud last summer at a conference he held in South Dakota. It was a dud once again this summer.

I’ve long wondered why, if Lindell has all this evidence, he doesn’t simply turn it over to law enforcement. If he has any proof, anything at all, why not just make it public or hand it to the police? Lindell seems to think his data is unalterable (which isn’t true, but regardless), so why not loop in the FBI?

Well, there’s one good reason for that, as demonstrated to Lindell while he sat at a fast-food drive-through on Tuesday: The FBI works slowly. While he was at a Hardee’s grabbing food, FBI agents surrounded Lindell’s car and served him with a subpoena, seizing his phone, according to Lindell. The MyPillow CEO, warned not to discuss the encounter, readily announced that it was related to an investigation into a Colorado e******ns clerk’s alleged tampering with v****g machines. An act that (allegedly) occurred in the spring of 2021.

All of the checks our culture has on misinformation work too slowly to be effective. Mark Twain’s well-worn adage,
“A lie can travel around the world and back again while the t***h is lacing up its boots" was born in an era where getting halfway around the world took a few days. Now everything is faster, burrows deeper, spreads more widely than Twain could have imagined. But our processes for containing or counteracting false information haven’t changed much. It’s fighting the c****av***s with l***hes. It has been a particularly bad summer for some of the worst purveyors of misinformation polluting American politics.

Lindell’s encounter with the FBI was only the most prominent. He’s also still scrambling to figure out how he might defend himself in a massive defamation lawsuit brought against him by D******n V****g Systems, a suit that seems destined to end badly for the pillow salesman. Meanwhile, misinformation enthusiast Alex Jones was slapped with a massive punitive settlement by a jury in Texas, a result of false claims he made about the mass school shooting in Newtown, Conn.

Also this week, a company called K*****h filed a defamation suit against the group True the V**e. True the V**e is the organization that purports to have uncovered evidence of a massive b****t-moving scheme in the 2020 e******n, the claim at the core of Dinesh D’Souza’s film “2000 Mules.” But True the V**e has never provided any actual evidence of their claim and the film offers no evidence of people dumping b****ts in multiple drop boxes. So, at its own summit this summer, True the V**e tried to turn the page on “2000 Mules” — evidence still unseen — pointing its supporters instead at purported nefariousness from K*****h.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/watch-the-moment-when-the-2-000-mules-folks-admit-their-supposed-evidence-is-nonsense/ar-AA10JFjw?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=de7dfdd30bcf47e5b3a8e839e0d06453

The lag between True the V**e’s claims about K*****h and the lawsuit was remarkably short — but, then, it is also unresolved. The suit could d**g on for months; it could be thrown out. Meanwhile, True the V**e has been peddling its unproven claims about those b****ts for months, earning the embrace of the political right (and a lot of cash) despite the lack of demonstrated evidence.

This, of course, is a central point. There is no need to gin up theories about malfeasance. Take your pick: that the government is deeply corrupt, that the e******n was s****n, that the left can’t be trusted. Each of those is accepted as fact by millions of Americans. So there’s a market for purported evidence to bolster those points. Wild assertions about “false f**g” shootings. Claims about Chinese hackers changing v**es. Complicated-sounding analyses of cellphone data. There’s lots of misinformation that never moves an inch because there’s no fuel for it. But these claims are exactly what some people want to hear, so they take off.

The people questioning the claims, meanwhile, have a smaller audience. The tools for holding false claims in check work more slowly. D******n sued Lindell in February 2021, but, thanks to his pillow money, he has been able to keep the fight going. The shooting at the center of the Jones lawsuit happened nearly a decade ago.

True the V**e has kept pushing forward in part because of the vagueness of its allegations. It claims nonprofit groups were involved in the b****t-moving scheme, but which ones? D’Souza appears to have named some of them in a book he is selling as an accompaniment to his movie, but, after arriving in bookstores, the publishers pulled the first draft. NPR got a copy; it seems that D’Souza named specific groups who, understandably, object vociferously to the allegations being made. In response, True the V**e walked away from the filmmaker. In a statement, a spokesperson claimed that the group had no knowledge of “any allegations of activities of any specific organizations made in the book.” So, for the book, we’re asked to believe, D’Souza started freelancing on the data. (A question sent to D’Souza about the organizations was not answered by the time of publication.)

It’s vitally important that Americans be able to speak freely, of course. That free speech allows for the spread of false ideas is a hiccup in an essential system. The challenge is that we have no effective countervailing mechanism. Those who point out that misinformation is false or unsupported have no audience with the people who want to believe it. Legal tools for preventing the spread of falsehoods necessarily include stopgaps that slow the process down. So, misinformation spreads.

Speaking over the weekend, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas pointed to misinformation as a specific danger. The department was focused (as it has been even before President Biden’s inauguration) on the threat of “domestic violent extremists,” people who, among other things, embrace “an ideology of h**e, anti-government sentiment, false narratives propagated on online platforms, even personal grievances.” The department has issued bulletins identifying the danger of “an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories.”

Lindell is not a terrorist, of course. He doesn’t even appear to have been the direct target of the FBI’s search, though who knows? But he is pumping misinformation into the public discussion, misinformation centered on the idea that the federal government is illegitimate and the 2020 e******n flawed. It’s precisely the same misinformation that prompted hundreds of people to attack police as they sought to overrun the Capitol on J*** 6, 2021.

And here, 20 months later, Lindell is still amplifying the same idea without any immediate repercussions besides scolding newspaper articles.

Liberty Tree

If you lived in reality you would admit to the damage Biden and the Democrats are doing to this country.

Strycker Loc: The middle of somewhere else.

And none of that even remotely compares to the damage that Democrat misinformation, such as the Russian collusion h**x, has done to the country.

Tiptop789 Loc: State of Denial

You can't refute what slatt has said so you insult him? You're part of the problem, you accept Trump's lies as fact because it fits what you wish were true.

slatten49 Loc: Lake Whitney, Texas

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/548794-there-was-trump-russia-collusion-and-trump-pardoned-the-colluder/

Ending excerpt...'Ultimately, it took five years to finally learn that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.

While the Republicans and conservative media outlets that peddled falsehood after falsehood are dealt a decisive blow, one must wonder what other revelations will come to light in the months and years to come.'

Strycker Loc: The middle of somewhere else.

An opinion piece written by an Obama lacky a year and a half ago about information that was already known years earlier, known even during the Mueller investigation, is your big breaking news and a decisive blow to Republicans and conservatives about Trump and Russian collusion. Republicans and conservatives, years later, have yet to feel that decisive blow. However Democrats and the DOJ certainly have felt a decisive blow over their pushing that misinformation. They have felt the loss of their credibility with a major portion of the American public.

Rose42

Its an opinion piece. Lol

The t***h is the left is very good at pushing misinformation too and they swallowit right up. Also like the right they do nothing but point their fingers in the other direction

We are being played.

nwtk2007 Loc: Texas

We now know the source of the f**e information in the Steel dossier was actually paid for by the FBI, imagine that. The FBI now have negative credibility. It doesn't get any worse.

This argument is ended.

guzzimaestro

Big Kahuna

It looks like Lindell did turn over the results of the steal to the corrupt FBI. Why do you think they stopped him and confiscated his phone? They need 100% of the proof of the steal so that it never surfaces again. I hope Mike had back up to his records as you know the feds will do what Hitlery Rotten Clinton did with her 59,000 illegal and highly classified emails, destroy them all. Mike is a true Patriot but Slats you are a turncoat currently working for the Marxist party.

Big Kahuna

I keep telling Slats that the Agent Orange he was sprayed with in Vietnam has infected his brain. From his postings one has to assume that he could also be suffering from chronic PTSD or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. It's also possible that if he is a Texas boy that eating some tained bovine meat has produced a Mad Cow Disease Syndrome. The guy is definitely not wired right.

Tiptop789 Loc: State of Denial

What a joke, you swallow Trump's lies hook, line, and sinker. You better make a donation to him quickly.

Tiptop789 Loc: State of Denial

It's also likely you are dumber than a box of rocks?

RascalRiley Loc: Somewhere south of Detroit

He is going to be asking for a lot more donations. He just paid, in advance, 3m to Chris Kise to represent him in the espionage case. Kise knows if he works for Trump he might never be offered a decent job again and that Trump is a weasel when it comes to paying for services rendered. If he does what tells him to do he could also be disbarred.

Wonttakeitanymore

Is this a confession lefty? Nwr