Donald Trump spent most of the election ranting about how the system was rigged against him. We already knew that was a lie. But now it turns out that this classic Trump line may have been a textbook case of projection. It turns out that a large number of the fake news Websites that sprung up like weeds during the campaign have very close links to the Donald.
The Intercept discovered that one of the most notorious fake news traffickers may be on her way to Trump’s staff. You may know Laura Ingraham as a right-wing talk show host and Bill O’Reilly’s permanent guest host on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor.” But she has a very lucrative sideline–a network of fake news Websites. One of them, LifeZette, was notorious for peddling conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton being responsible for whacking numerous prominent Democrats. It racked up over 14 million views.
Another LifeZette story falsely claimed that the Obama administration was taking over local police departments with United Nations support. In truth, she was only referencing numerous consent decrees requiring police departments to deal with misconduct. Still another claimed that one of Hillary’s aides engaged in occult rituals.
And yet, despite all of this, Ingraham is reportedly in contention to become White House press secretary. Then again, considering that Trump has Steve Bannon on his payroll, it’s no surprise that Trump’s hiring standards are almost nonexistent.
Ingraham isn’t the only fake news merchant with close links to Trump. Two of the largest and loudest fake news Websites, Western Journalism and Conservative Tribune, are owned by Floyd Brown, a close friend of Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway. Before going into Web “journalism,” Brown was best known as the creator of the Willie Horton ad.
Brown’s Websites are among the most-visited Websites in the nation, as measured by Alexa. Conservative Tribune ranks 50th, Western Journalism is 81st. They get more traffic than CBS News, the Wall Street Journal, and NPR. But they have rocketed up the rankings on the strength of bogus stories. For instance, Western Journalism touted a story claiming that Obama had changed the American flag on the White House logo to a flag of truce. Not so, says Snopes; the white-flag version actually dates back to at least 2003, under George W. Bush.
Long before Bannon left Breitbart News for the Trump campaign, Trump’s allies were funneling money to the previous king of the wingnut Web, WorldNetDaily–best known as one of the main purveyors of the biggest fake news story of all, the rumor that Obama wasn’t born here. Campaign finance records show that one of the major pro-Trump super PACs, Great America PAC, paid WND for “online voter contact” in June.
Then again, it’s not all that surprising that Trump has close links with this pigweed. After all, he spent the entire campaign trafficking in the kind of conspiracy theories floating around these Websites. His transition has been no different. It turns out that Trump’s now-infamous claim that Hillary owes her popular vote lead to fraud comes from one of the most infamous fake news traffickers of all, Alex Jones. Media Matters notes that Trump’s claim that Hillary has more than three million fraudulent votes in her column was copied almost verbatim from a story run on Jones’ Infowars site.
Recently, NPR tracked down the creator of some of the more notorious fake news Websites, Jestin Coler–a registered Democrat who claims he got into the business to turn the hot lights on the idiocy the fringe actually swallows. But if NPR actually dug a little deeper, it would have discovered that some of the biggest purveyors of this dreck now have a direct line to the president-elect. That should send a chill down anyone’s spine.
(featured image courtesy Gage Skidmore, available under a Creative Commons BY-SA license)
