Despite the devastation the pandemic has inflicted domestically and across the globe, so-called "coronavirus truthers" continue to insist that the COVID-19 is exaggerated and isn't nearly as severe as the media says. And according to the Daily Beast, a popular pseudonymous truther known as "streiff" is actually William Crews — a staffer for Dr. Anthony Fauci and a public relations official at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
[UPDATE: On Monday a spokesperson for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases announced that Williams Crews has "retired."]
Crews, according to the Beast's Lachlan Markay, has been promoting coronavirus conspiracy theories on the right-wing website Red State. In June, streiff wrote, "I think we're at the point where it is safe to say that the entire Wuhan virus scare was nothing more or less than a massive fraud perpetrated upon the American people by 'experts' who were determined to fundamentally change the way the country lives and is organized and governed. If there were justice we'd send and (sic) few dozen of these fascists to the gallows and gibbet their tarred bodies in chains until they fall apart."
Fauci is one of the leading immunologists in the world and has been a valuable source of information during the pandemic, but far-right conspiracy theorists have been claiming that he was added to the White House coronavirus task force to undermine the president. And Markay reports that streiff has slammed Fauci as an "attention-grubbing and media-whoring…. mask nazi."
According to Markay, the Beast has confirmed that Crews is RedState's "streiff" by checking public records, social media posts, and internal records of the National Institutes of Health.
Markay explains:
William B. Crews is, by day, a public affairs specialist for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. But for years, he has been writing for RedState under the pseudonym. And in that capacity, he has been contributing to the very same disinformation campaign that his superiors at the NIAID say is a major challenge to widespread efforts to control a pandemic that has claimed roughly 200,000 U.S. lives.
Markay also reports: "The Daily Beast could not definitively determine whether Crews was writing for RedState, or posting to his Twitter account, while on the clock at his government job. But the vast majority of his writing at the site this year has been published during the work week, often during normal business hours — raising questions about the ethical use of taxpayer resources."
Homophobes, misogynists, bigots… what a wonderful world. Welcome to “This Week In Crazy,” The National Memo’s weekly update on the loony behavior of the increasingly unhinged right wing. Starting with number five:
5. Kim Davis
This is just getting ugly. The right of same-sex couples to get married in all 50 states, which was enshrined in the SCOTUS ruling in June, continues to be obstructed by a cluster of obstinate local government officials and the special interest groups that back them in court. And now — even after losing in court — a clerk in Rowan County, Kentucky named Kim Davis is doubling down on the “religious liberty” bunk and ignoring a federal judge’s order to begin issuing marriage licenses.
This is the same county clerk who was the subject of a video that went viral in July, showing a gay couple attempting to get a marriage license and getting blown off by the craven bureaucrat. The ACLU subsequently brought an action against Davis, and on Wednesday a federal judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, ordering her to resume issuing licenses — a ruling conservative Christians say “advances the homosexual agenda.”
Davis was represented by Liberty Counsel, a law firm that advocates for anti-gay, anti-abortion policies, and is considered a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. They issued a statement Thursday saying: “Kim Davis did not sign up as a clerk to issue same-sex marriage licenses. Her job duty was changed by five lawyers without any constitutional authority. At a minimum, her religious convictions should be accommodated.”
In his opinion, U.S. District Judge David Bunning said that Davis’ Constitutional right to practice her religion was not at all under threat from same-sex couples, writing:
[Davis] may continue to attend church twice a week, participate in Bible Study and minister to female inmates at the Rowan County Jail. She is even free to believe that marriage is a union between one man and one woman, as many Americans do. However, her religious convictions cannot excuse her from performing the duties that she took an oath to perform as Rowan County Clerk.
The Nuge said he was a “big fan” of Trump since he believes in “bold, aggressive, unapologetic truth,” and that he’s not a fan of Kelly since she pretends to be a member of the status quo — “either that or she’s just getting stupid.” Bottom line, quoth Nugent: “Donald Trump is the good guy, currently Megyn Kelly ain’t.”
Of course his remarks about Kelly were not at all limited to her journalistic competence or politics: “Sometimes when I’m loading my magazines,” he said, referring to ammunition, “I like to just look at her. And I usually sit naked on the couch dropping hot brass on my stuff.”
Naturally, Nugent wasn’t the only misogynist troll to weigh in on the Kelly/Trump row this week. But at least Nugent is consistent. Erick Erickson, editor-in-chief of the right-wing blog RedState, is a hypocrite.
First Erickson banned Trump from the conservative candidates’ summit he organized last weekend on account of the billionaire businessman’s comments, saying: “No legitimate candidate suggests somehow a female asking questions is doing it because she’s hormonal.”
RedState‘s response to Media Matters highlighted the central dilemma of calling attention to trolls — at the end of the day, you’re really just feeding them. (We suppose we are guilty of this too.)
Conservative televangelist Pat Robertson is blowing hard gusts of hate this week, calling same-sex marriage part of a “flood of evil” that threatens to overwhelm the United States.
In a recent edition of The 700 Club for the Christian Broadcasting Network, Robertson asked viewers:
Who would’ve thought, 30 or 40 years ago when we began, that the Supreme Court would’ve said that homosexuality is a constitutional right? Who would’ve thought that the Supreme Court would’ve said marriage between homosexuals was a constitutional right? Who would’ve thought that the slaughter of babies, over 55 million of them, would’ve been declared a constitutional right by the Supreme Court?
Who would’ve thought after 55 years of broadcasting at CBN, Robertson would still be spewing the same closed-minded trash?
Who would’ve thought nearly $57 million would be donated in 2014 to CBN, the same company whose founder and host questions whether members of the LGBTQ community have the right to live openly in the United States?
Who would’ve thought any person who has been alive as long as Robertson — 85 years — would still not have learned that love wins?
The mad would-be prophet of the airwaves also said this week that only the draconian Biblical laws in the Book of Leviticus dealing with homosexuality apply. God-fearing, heterosexual Christians, need not worry, Robertson says. Jesus fulfilled all the laws for Christians, and apparently paid all Christians’ tabs.
Just be sure to love God and love your neighbor as yourself, Robertson added.
But what if your neighbor is gay, Pat?
Since the Bible seems inconclusive, should we consult the Supreme Court?
Linda Harvey is the president of Mission: America, an Ohio-based conservative Christian, anti-gay, anti-trans advocacy group, which believes that “homosexuality is not normal and natural” and that America is a “gravely ill” nation that can only be saved by “the blood of Jesus Christ” Oh, and the Southern Poverty Law Center considers them a hate group.
Harvey’s not having any of that. In nearly 1,000 words of verbal ipecac, inveighing against “Christ’s enemies,” the “sexual anarchy lobby,” “homosexual advocates,” and “gender-bending people,” she describes the act as “tyranny” and a “weapon of revolution” against American Christians of conscience. “Christianity,” she says “is now a target to be obliterated.”
Unpacking her ignorance, she writes:
If you support religious liberty – or say you do – you cannot support the “Equality Act.” It kills religious liberty. And an amendment won’t fix it…
[…] “LGBT” pressure groups do not dictate Christian doctrine, first of all. Our Almighty God has already done that. And they define “discrimination” as any opinion they don’t like, even if the view is based on reality.
Homosexuality is not inborn – it’s not like race – and the behavior is harmful to individuals and societies. These identities and attractions do not characterize separate types of “persons” (as the Obergefell majority ruling incorrectly assumed). So they are not defensible under the 14th Amendment.
[…] We must not let them do this. This bill should be Priority No. 1 to defeat this year, next year and as long as it takes. Everyone needs to make it clear to congressional representatives that this fascist attempt to dismantle the First Amendment, to defy parental authority and to drive Christians out of jobs simply cannot happen.
Harvey concludes by saying that the “so-called ‘Equality Act’ is not about equality – we already have that. It’s about calling evil good, calling sin a right, and about punishing and silencing the voices of morality and faith.”
It is encouraging to hear that “we already have that,” Ms. Harvey. We’re not exactly sure who gets to be included in your particular “we,” but if you could just step down from that soapbox you think is Sinai, you might find that equality is actually a lot more elusive in this country than you think.
There’s this great scene from Law & Order where Detective Briscoe shows a victim’s picture to a prostitute. He asks whether she knew of anyone who had “dated” him.
“I didn’t, but he’s cute,” she says.
“You’ve been at this too long, honey.” Briscoe replies. “He’s dead.”
The political punditry seems unable to agree on whether Donald Trump’s candidacy will survive the billionaire’s latest barrage of rhetorical barbarities. We refer to his attacks on Fox News questioner Megyn Kelly and the infamous “blood” remark.
But all this presupposes that Trump is conducting a real, living candidacy rather than a mega-prank. By all appearances, he is using the Republican fringe’s high tolerance of — nay, appreciation for — off-the-wall comments to expand the Trump brand at no cost to Trump. The billionaire also seems to be whipping up the right wing’s hatred of establishments, including the Republican one, for fun and profit.
Face it. Some 24 million viewers didn’t tune in to the Fox News debate just to hear Trump say outrageous things. They wanted to see him make the other candidates suffer.
Trump’s performance led to his banishment from the subsequent RedState debate. Its organizer, Erick Erickson, explained, “I don’t want my daughter in the same room” as Trump.
Sounds chivalrous, but Erickson’s coat of armor is not without chinks. It was Erickson who attributed feminists’ anger to their “being too ugly to get a date.” And he called Michelle Obama a “Marxist harpy wife.”
That armor evidently needs repair, for Erickson now seems hurt by the pro-Trump blowback. “I have emails from people referring to Megyn Kelly as a ‘whore,'” he complained. “I have emails from people referring to me as ‘gay.’ I have emails referring to the president by the N-word and (saying) that Donald Trump is standing up to all of us.”
Imagine such sensitivity coming from the man who writes such blog posts as “Is Obama Shagging Hookers Behind the Media’s Back?” That’s when he’s not writing deep religious tracts.
This is the ballpark Republicans have been playing in. Trump may say things that are dumb and crude, but they’re no dumber or cruder than the musings of the right-wing spokesmen whom party leaders routinely court.
Erickson can portray himself as a bulwark against indecency, but he’s really been Trump’s warmup act. Without his and others’ normalization of lunatic statements, Trump would never have gotten as far as he has.
One feels for the respectable Republicans dragged into these environs. It was sad to see Ohio governor John Kasich pummeled at the Fox News debate for having humanely expanded Medicaid in his state. It was unfortunate but inevitable that someone (this time Rand Paul) would slam New Jersey governor Chris Christie for having publicly hugged President Obama. The context, some may remember, was the president’s visit and offer of federal help after the devastation of Superstorm Sandy.
On the other hand, Christie and other Republicans had no problem sharing the stage with the likes of Erickson.
The Huffington Post last month moved its Trump coverage to the entertainment section from politics. Jay Rosen, a well-known media analyst, praised the decision as “the work of fed-up and free-thinking adults.”
But the move has irked political writers at The Washington Post. Are they merely defending their turf? Or have they been at this too long?
Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.
Photo: Republican presidential candidate and businessman Donald Trump listens to a question at the first official GOP presidential candidates’ debate of the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign in Cleveland, Ohio, August 6, 2015. (REUTERS/Brian Snyder)
Hmm. Wasn’t it right around the time Fox News starting putting him on TV to demand the black guy’s birth certificate?
After the debate, Fox was determined to nail Trump’s coffin shut so he couldn’t get back into it before the sun rose and destroyed him. Frank Luntz’s focus/support group seemed designed to teach Fox viewers how to admit that you have a Trump problem and ask for help.
“The real story is the collapse of Trump in this debate,” Charles Krauthammer told the stragglers in the largest primary debate audience in history. “I thought this before I saw the Luntz group, but I think it is reinforced.”
The worm had turned, but Trump hadn’t fed his friends on the right enough rope yet. Trump’s willingness to turn against the GOP is a staple of empty conservative rhetoric. But they had planted the seeds of what they hoped was his demise by pricking his impossibly thin skin with the sharp tongue of a female interlocutor.
And on Friday night, Trump gave the right more than they could have prayed for: He attacked Megyn Kelly in an absurdly sexist way. Republicans who cheered Marco Rubio and Scott Walker insisting that women should be forced to have their rapists’ babies were suddenly very offended.
The raving misogynist who thinks “You’re a girl!” is a hilarious putdown disinvited Trump to his Lord of the Flies dance around the fire known as The Red State Gathering.
For this act of solidarity with the Founders — which is what conservatives call Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes — Erickson was told that “he’s on the side of women” by the hilariously misinformed Jeb Bush.
Trump leads the GOP primary from satire from parody faster than Marco Rubio veers from his own immigration reform bill. But if there’s any value from this farce, it’s that Donald Trump continues to accidentally reveal essential truths about the Republican Party. Here are five revelations about the GOP we should be grateful that he’s crystalizing for America to see.
1. It’s easy to act like a conservative on TV. Want to be a conservative? Deny climate change. Promise to repeal Obamacare and replace it with something that almost exactly resembles Obamacare. Say terrible things about Obama and Hillary. Deny the reality that the economy, health care and the deficit are all in far better shape than they were in 2008.
But most importantly, pick a scapegoat—a non-white scapegoat—to scare white America into believing you understand its fears.
2. The GOP’s decades of strategic racism make an actual racist look like a truth teller. Ronald Reagan began his 1980 campaign with a states’ rights speech attacking “welfare queens” in Nesoba county, which was famous for its white supremacism and the deaths of civil rights workers Michael Schwerner and James Chaney. The Reagan Revolution was so effective at turning the middle class against the government policies that girded the creation of the middle class that Democrats even adopted the rhetoric of “strategic racism.”
Using vaguely racial appeals is less about race than it is about power. Conservatives are on the verge of seeing decades of the Southern Strategy pay off with a chance to appoint four Supreme Court Justices who will shape America for the next half-century. They need a real ideologue to win. Trump just wants power and status. He isn’t appealing to conservatives, he’s appealing to the voters conservatives have been tricking into voting against their own interests for decades.
House Republicans have voted for mass deportations several times in the last few years. Every Republican candidate starts his or her immigration reform rap with, “Secure the border first,” knowing that after decades of scaring them about invaders, Republican voters will never feel secure enough to back any real reform.
When Trump skips all that and calls immigrants “rapists” and imagines a conspiracy where Mexico is sending its criminals into our country — because if there’s one thing Mexico knows how to do, it’s controling criminals — he seems like the only honest clown in the circus.
3. Campaign finance is a complete joke. Trump is a living argument for campaign finance reform. First, he’s a shining example of the sort of guy who is able to buy an election — arrogant, oblivious and comically absorbed in his own agenda.
But more important, as a large donor, he literally makes a mockery of the logic behind the Citizens United decision.
Conservatives on the Supreme Court justified unlimited corporate donations to campaign groups by arguing that doing so would “not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” Trump essentially says, “I give these fools money and they do what I say.” And none of the Republican candidates standing onstage with him dare to disagree.
4. America is not a business. Conservatives argue that rich people create jobs and America should be run like a business.
Trump inherited huge wealth from his dad and games the system to make himself much, much richer. The fact that the .01 percent are sucking up nearly all the gains of our economy is the greatest threat to our nation’s future. And when Trump stands there, we realize that what makes that possible isn’t his genius or the genius of the free market, it’s a political decision to aid the rich at all costs over the needs of the other 99.9 percent.
Recent Democratic presidents have kicked their Republican competitors’ butts on job creation because their policies treat workers as profit creators. When America is run for the sake of business, we get the crash of 2008 and Donald Trump — who was born on home plate and thinks he hit a home run — mocking those who leg out an infield hit as “losers.”
5. The “best Republican field in decades” is incredibly uninspiring. The GOP continually vaunts its huge field of candidates as the best in a generation. If that were true, why is Trump soaking them up like so much au jus?
Republicans may be inspired by governors whose specialty is creating wealth inequality and denying women health care — including one who shares DNA with the living personification of the failure of conservative policies. They may love first-term senators whose primary accomplishment is grandstanding. And they may be thrilled by candidates who have never won an election but are strategically aligned to attack President Obama and Hillary Clinton with a shield against charges of racism or sexism. But their party is truly swooning over a guy who learned how to be a conservative by watching Fox & Friends.
The right thinks it finally has Donald Trump on the run, and soon he’ll go the way of Herman Cain or Michele Bachmann.
But Trump has been a household name longer than the Clintons, is richer than the Romney and Bush families combined, and is crazier than Cain. He has nothing to lose and no TV show to go back to (which is a great reminder that the GOP frontrunner began his campaign by being fired by several corporations because they couldn’t stand by the racist rhetoric GOP voters loved).
What’s more likely is that Trump is on to performing his next public service, which is proving that saying horrible things about women doesn’t hurt you with conservative voters very much — if at all.
