New research shows “a sprawling online network tied to Chinese businessman Guo Wengui has become a potent platform for disinformation in the United States, attacking the safety of coronavirus vaccines, promoting false election-fraud claims and spreading baseless QAnon conspiracies,” the Washington Post reports.
Guo’s association with former Trump White House adviser Stephen Bannon “became a focus of news coverage last year after Bannon was arrested aboard Guo’s yacht on federal fraud charges.”
Vice News: “A group of Arizona citizens, including one Republican Congressional candidate, is asking the state’s Supreme Court to invalidate all election results since 2018 and remove all elected officials from their offices immediately.”
A Michigan legislative hearing to pre-emptively ban governmental “vaccine passports” in Michigan devolved into the realm of conspiracy theory, Michigan Bridge reports.
Author and activist Naomi Wolf told lawmakers that New York residents are being “discriminated against already” because of a voluntary Excelsior Pass system developed by the state government.
Said Wolf: “If you gather after this hearing with your friends in a bar to discuss opposition to the vaccine passport, your app will know who you’re meeting with because you’ll have to swipe a QR code.”
Michael Flynn botched the Pledge of Allegiance at a “Bikers for Trump” rally in South Carolina.
Flynn was in South Carolina to support Lin Wood’s bid for state GOP chair.
The Forward: “Multiple news stories have reported how Miami’s influential Spanish-language talk radio, the traditional bastion of anti-communist Cuba rhetoric, and conservative Hispanic social media groups have become dominated by far-right conspiracy theories, with frequent denunciations of George Soros as emblematic of a powerful Jewish cabal.”
“This shift toward insinuating Jews-as-communists arises from an intensive and successful branding of Democrats as socialists that has come to dominate Republican Hispanic political circles and messaging in South Florida.”
Vice: “A Republican operative who helped propel QAnon into the mainstream back in 2017 has just been elected to a leadership role in a local Republican party in South Carolina.”
“Tracy Diaz, also known online as Tracy Beanz, won a landslide victory Saturday in Horry County, a working-class coastal haven, where she was overwhelmingly voted onto the state executive committee.”
The keynote speaker at a Minnesota county Republican Party’s event told members that George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police was “planned since 2016,” the Bemidji Pioneer reports.
He also said more than a hundred Democratic members of Congress deserve to be investigated for espionage for “working with foreign governments and the communist and Islamic movements.”
A new HBO documentary suggests Q is probably Ron Watkins, the administrator of the internet image board 8kun, formerly known as 8chan, Slate reports.
Vice News: “On Tuesday, it sure seemed like the Storm had arrived, when the New York Times broke a bombshell story that Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz was being investigated by the Department of Justice for allegedly having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl and paid for her to travel with him.”
“But in the hours after the news broke, QAnon followers didn’t celebrate. Instead, they frantically scrambled to explain why he couldn’t possibly have done what he’s accused of doing.”
Family members of QAnon believers have told Vice News “that their loved ones are now telling them that QAnon doesn’t exist as a way to rebuff any arguments made against QAnon.”
“QAnon followers are also using the ‘there is no QAnon’ line as a way of excusing high-profile figures who appear to have disavowed QAnon.”
“For example, when Marjorie Taylor Greene kind-of-sort-of-not-really said she didn’t believe in QAnon, followers quickly claimed that she was speaking to them in code and only making the denial to appease her Republican colleagues.”
The Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C. has tripled its room rates for tonight — in line with the latest QAnon conspiracy theory that March 4 will mark the second inauguration of Donald Trump, the Washingtonian reports.
Vox: The future of QAnon, explained by 8 experts.
New York Times: “Even as Americans watched live images of rioters wearing MAGA hats and carrying Trump flags breach the Capitol — egged on only minutes earlier by a president who falsely denounced a rigged election and exhorted his followers to fight for justice — history was being rewritten in real time.”
“Within hours, a narrative built on rumors and partisan conjecture had reached the Twitter megaphones of pro-Trump politicians. By day’s end, Laura Ingraham and Sarah Palin had shared it with millions of Fox News viewers, and Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida had stood on the ransacked House floor and claimed that many rioters ‘were members of the violent terrorist group antifa.’”
Vice News: “For weeks, QAnon followers have been hyping March 4 as the date when Trump would return as the rightful president of the U.S. But in the last couple of days, virtually all the major QAnon figures and influencers have reversed course and dismissed the date, calling it a false flag event created entirely by the mainstream media to ‘make the whole movement look dumb.'”
“A faction of local, county and state Republican officials is pushing lies, misinformation and conspiracy theories that echo those that helped inspire the violent U.S. Capitol siege, online messaging that is spreading quickly through GOP ranks fueled by algorithms that boost extreme content,” the AP reports.
Vice News: “The basic outline of the theory is that President Joe Biden allowed China access to the U.S. power grid when he signed the Keystone Pipeline Executive Order, and by doing so somehow allowed China to hack the U.S. power grid and cause the blackouts that Texas has suffered over the last week.”
“Of course, this theory, which has no basis in fact, fails to mention that Texas’ power grid is operated and maintained by Texas, and not part of the two major federally-controlled power grids that service every other state in the country.”
Washington Post: “The gunman who terrorized a D.C. pizzeria is out of prison. The QAnon conspiracy theories he helped unleash are out of control.”
Fox News host Tucker Carlson went full conspiracy theory and told his viewers that the Capitol riot was a plot from “liberal America” to change the “old order” of the country, the Daily Beast reports.
Said Carlson: “The feds likely had paid informers in the ranks of the protesters.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.