MAGA’s conspiracy theory fails to distract from Epstein
A concerted effort between Donald Trump s White House and the right-wing media ecosystem it effectively controls to distract the population s attention from the Epstein files appears by pushing a baseless conspiracy theory appears to be a flop After a - vote in the House on Tuesday the Republican-controlled Senate passed law forcing the Justice Department to release any remaining files it has on Epstein The votes came after the president s opposition to releasing the documents and contemporary sudden reversal left multiple in his MAGA coalition disillusioned The damage appears to be substantial as evidenced by how little traction the administration s fear-mongering a tried-and-true tactic has received MAGA influencer Tucker Carlson kicked off the attempted headfake on Friday after Democrats on the House Oversight Committee published emails from the estate of the convicted sex offender which included hundreds of references to Trump Carlson attempted to draw attention back to the president s would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks who died after shooting Trump in the ear at a Butler Pennsylvania campaign rally in July The -year-old also wounded two other Trump supporters at the rally and killed firefighter Corey Comperatore Related How Trump s MRI spurred the Epstein vote Since the assassination attempt Republicans have accused the FBI of withholding information about the probe Then-FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to Congress after the shooting that the agency could not find any online history that pointed to an ideological motive on the part of Crooks Wray s deputy also angered the right when he announced that comments from the shooter s social media accounts appear to reflect antisemitic and anti-immigration themes to espouse political violence and are described as extreme in nature Crooks reportedly went from being a pro-Trump to an anti-Trump ideologue but appeared to go dark online afterward It was an amazing transformation Carlson commented on his show The podcaster who claimed to have access to Crooks Google Drive account and a trove of violent comments the gunman left on YouTube between and accused the FBI of concealing his online footprint and downplaying anticipated radical motives Remarkably the FBI which is under the leadership of MAGA stalwart Kash Patel created a rapid response account to without delay deny Carlson s proposes On Monday as Epstein survivors traveled to Capitol Hill to lobby for the release of the files White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt sat with the New York Post s Miranda Devine to roll out the paper s bombshell assessment revealing Crooks account on the art social-network site DeviantArt and suggesting he might have had a furry fetish Crooks the Post communicated used they them pronouns They them appear to be the default settings on DeviantArt Several other right-wing media outlets briskly followed suit on Monday framing the shooter s announced exploration as a deeply destabilizing factor A window into a secret life that could explain the shooting Want more sharp takes on politics Sign up for our free newsletter Standing Room Only written by Amanda Marcotte now also a weekly show on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts Conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec of Pizzagate infamy wrote that young white men who have experienced the sharpest the majority psychologically disorienting fall from grace in modern American history and that precipitous drop is the single biggest driver of the online perversion-to-political-violence pipeline we re watching in real time According to Posobiec The same message board that hosts furry threads also hosts threads about dismantling white supremacy The same Discord server trading furry cub art is where Antifa plans real-world violence Sexual humiliation and racial political humiliation become indistinguishable The accusations became even more outrageous Megyn Kelly claimed Monday that the furry information revealed by Leavitt was definitely an FBI false flag meant to distract from Carlson s alleges This whole thing stinks Rep Tim Burchett R-Tenn narrated right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson that Crooks was likely groomed as part of a CIA mind-control experiment This strategy has become commonplace Mass shooters who make front-page news are often depicted as transgender by the right as part of their campaign to stigmatize trans Americans and strip them of their rights Seconds before Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk was shot and killed on Sept someone in the crowd at Utah Valley University urged if he knew how plenty of mass shooters over the last decade had identified as trans Too multiple the right-wing activist replied It s a myth designed to promote divisive far-right ideologies We need your help to stay independent Subscribe currently to help Sophia Tesfaye s commentary Research evidence shows that trans and nonbinary people a group that is estimated to be about of the population aged and older are more likely to be casualties rather than perpetrators of gun violence Additionally a overview from the Violence Prevention Project revealed that of mass shooters were male Less than identified as transgender Trump who came into office promising to stop the transgender lunacy sees inciting a trans panic following shootings as a way to dismantle so-called gender ideology In this matter though MAGA s outrageous attempts to distract attention from the president s long-standing connections to Epstein have fallen flat Limited are talking this week about the possibility that Thomas Matthew Crooks was a furry National attention remains firmly fixed on Jeffrey Epstein and on revelations that dirty Donald as the deceased sex offender called the president of the United States knew about the girls Read more about this topic Donald Trump s America First movement is fracturing Political violence has nothing to do with gender identity Gun violence is an epidemic and GOP transphobia won t cure it The post MAGA s conspiracy theory fails to distract from Epstein appeared first on Salon com
