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Donald Trump Jr. Loves Far Right Internet Trolls — And They Love Him Back

Donald Trump Jr. Loves Far Right Internet Trolls — And They Love Him Back

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters.

Donald Trump Jr., son of President Donald Trump, frequently uses his prominence on Twitter and proximity to the White House to promote right-wing media trolls who defend his father and smear mainstream media.

Key voices in the incestuous right-wing alternative media ecosystem have found an ally in the younger Trump, who often retweets and favorites tweets from the echo chamber’s loudest voices, and who is rumored to serve as a White House source to at least one far-right personality. Like the far-right trolls he expresses admiration for, Trump spends his time on Twitter spreading debunked conspiracy theories, smearing mainstream media outlets, promoting bogus “alt-right” videos, and amplifying messages with white nationalist undertones. Trump’s behavior, in effect, validates the larger alternative media ecosystem and attempts to bring the fringe worldview into the mainstream.

Mike Cernovich

Trump has repeatedly indicated an affinity for right-wing troll and Infowars contributor Mike Cernovich. Cernovich gained notoriety during the 2016 election for promoting fake conspiracy theories such as the “Pizzagate” narrative, accusing Democratic officials of operating a child sex trafficking ring in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizzeria. Infowars’ Alex Jones told his audience that the president’s “sons, especially Donald Jr.,” are Cernovich’s sources on White House affairs. And earlier this year, Trump claimed that “in a long gone time of unbiased journalism” Cernovich would “win the Pulitzer” prize for his faux scandal story that alleged Susan Rice, who served as national security adviser to then-President Barack Obama, was responsible for improper unmasking of Trump associates caught in surveillance of foreign officials.

Stefan Molyneux

The younger Trump also frequently retweets Stefan Molyneaux, a prominent far-right blogger who promotesright-wing trolls and conspiracy theories about “globalism.” Trump closely follows Molyneaux, boosting many of his tweets and favoriting one that featured a depiction of CNN reporter Andrew Kaczynski in a Nazi uniform.

Infowars’ Alex Jones and Paul Joseph Watson

Infowars’ top conspiracy peddlers, Paul Joseph Watson and Alex Jones, also have Trump’s attention. During the 2016 election, Trump shared an Infowars article that falsely accused Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton of wearing an earpiece during the first presidential debate. Trump has also liked tweets from Watson and recently attacked CNN while Infowars was pushing a “meme war” against the network.

4chan

While he was sharing anti-CNN memes, Trump also favorited a tweet from a Twitter account connected to the internet cesspool known as 4chan’s “politically incorrect” message board (/pol/). The tweet contained a list of companies that advertise on CNN and encouraged people to tweet at the companies and ask them to stop advertising on the network. Alongside far-right ideologies, the board often features anti-Semitic, racist, sexist, homophobic, and white nationalist content.

Jack Posobiec

Trump also promotes right-wing troll Jack Posobiec on Twitter. Posobiec’s publicity stunts and bogus talking points have duped mainstream media sources and public officials. On July 8, Trump shared a video Posobiec posted that depicted protesters setting fires in Germany in response to the G-20 summit. Posobiec is a media troll who got “temporary White House credentials” to attend the press briefings. He is responsible for peddling hacked emails that were likely sourced from Russia, spreading the “Pizzagate” conspiracy, and orchestrating smear campaigns against people who opposed the senior Trump.

Trump’s affinity for these far-right media personalities and his active promotion of their half-baked theories about the day’s news validates the alternative media ecosystem to its audience and furthers the far-right’s attempt to delegitimize longstanding journalistic institutions. By emulating and affirming these fringe figures, Trump furthers his father’s disdain for the press and stokes public distrust of legitimate news outlets.

Header image by Sarah Wasko / Media Matters

 

A Big Issue For Small Minds

A Big Issue For Small Minds

Everybody’s got something.

Maybe it’s something you were born with, maybe something that happened to you, maybe something you did to yourself through bad habits or neglect. But everybody’s got something, some physical or emotional blemish measuring the distance from you to perfection.

Maybe you’re a short guy or a gawky woman. Maybe you’re ugly. Maybe you’ve got cellulite, depression, anorexia, alcoholism, gingivitis, psoriasis or a big nose. Maybe you’re fat.

Gabourey Sidibe is fat. Morbidly obese, to be exact.

One doubts this comes as news to the 30-year-old actress, best known for her starring role in 2009’s Precious. Everybody’s got something. More to the point, everybody is dealing with something. That’s what makes us human.

But although Sidibe surely knows this, once in a while someone — who apparently struggles with nothing — will take it upon themselves to remind her of her weight, usually in the coarsest and cruelest manner they can.

In 2009, for instance, some individual online dubbed her a “gorilla.” Sidibe was photographed last week at the Golden Globes and sure enough, here they came again: jibes via Twitter to tell her, in case she has forgotten, that she is fat. One called her “the GLOBE.” Another said she missed the “hour-glass look” by 10 hours. And et cetera.

To which Sidibe shot back that she cried about those comments “on that private jet on my way to my dream job.” Obviously, the lady doesn’t need me to defend her. So this is not a defense, but simply a question: How did this kind of cruelty — meaning not the occasional fat joke on Letterman, but this sort of truly sadistic and personal meanness — become acceptable? Indeed, commonplace?

The instinct is to blame Internet anonymity, cowards emboldened by the knowledge that they can’t be identified. But the critic who savaged Melissa McCarthy as “tractor-size” signed his name. As did the pundit who called Chris Christie a “fat nightmare.”

And with due respect to Christie, the ridicule of McCarthy and Sidibe seems especially harsh — an arrow aimed at a vulnerable spot — given that women and girls are already more susceptible to body-image fears and far more likely to suffer eating disorders as a result. But you get the sense the cruelty of it is the entire point.

Everybody’s dealing with something, and more than one in three of us are dealing with the same thing Sidibe is. Fat is unsightly and unhealthy. But it is not uncommon. It is also, when you get right down to it, not the point.

I don’t know why Sidibe has a weight problem. Maybe it’s emotional, maybe it’s medical, maybe it’s too many bon-bons and too few sit-ups. I do know none of that is my business and none of it makes her anything other than human and entitled to be treated as such.

But we are a people who spend half our days gazing down at screens and that, I think, has changed us. We’ve become unused to interacting with one another and we’re not very good at it anymore. We have, many of us, lost the knack of treating people like people.

You get some sense of this when a polarizing political figure — Ted Kennedy, Robert Novak — passes away and people cheer as if this were not a real person who just died. You get it when a man holds a sign calling for the president’s children to be killed. Or when Bill Maher calls Sarah Palin a c–t. Or when some individual likens Sidibe to a zoo animal.

Too many of us have forgotten a basic rule of what used to be called home training. There are some things you just don’t say to or about another human being in a public forum. Saying the thing anyway tells us less about the person you’re talking about than about you and your lack of class.

Everybody has something. Gabourey Sidibe is fat. But some of us are trolls.

And she can always diet.

Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via e-mail at lpitts@miamiherald.com

Image: Bob Jagendorf via Flickr