At last Tuesday's press briefing, Press Secretary Sean Spicer gave the first question of the day to a "news" outlet you've probably never heard of. LifeZette is a website founded by conservative talk radio personality Laura Ingraham, herself a prior contender for a White House job. And LifeZette's approach to the news is, like that of a host of other new websites to pop up in the last few years, conspicuously crooked.
In a video titled “Clinton Body Count,” released in April 2016, a LifeZette correspondent, over an ominous music track, suggests without evidence that the Clinton family may have had some role in John F. Kennedy Jr.’s plane crash, as well as deaths of various Democratic operatives. [...]LifeZette also promoted the conspiracy theory — based on a leaked exchange from Wikileaks — that Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta participated in occult rituals involving blood sacrifice.
In other words, LifeZette is a fake news hub. You will recognize that last allegation as the cornerstone of what would soon go on to be known as PizzaGate, a conspiracy theory that sent an armed man into a Washington restaurant to "self-investigate" internet claims that Clinton allies were using the basement of the small basement-less eatery to house victims of their supposed child trafficking ring. It would not be the first gunman to take it upon himself to save America from the target of a conservative radio host's hoax-riddled ire—Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly both have notches on that post as well—and it will likely not be the last.
At the same news conference, Spicer casually mentioned that the White House would soon be including other unusual news outlets via Skype, the video streaming service. This would open the White House briefings to other outlets that could not afford the trip to Washington; there is of yet no word on what criteria those alternative outlets might be required to meet, but presumably the standards would be no higher than those that allowed LifeZette to knock the Associated Press from its long-held traditional position of opening each press briefing.
Conspiracy crackpot Alex Jones made a bit of news this week with his insistence that he would soon be getting a White House press pass. The White House denied it, which is worth whatever the word of Sean Spicer is worth. Also blustering that he will soon have access to the White House press room, courtesy of the Trump administration? The proprietor of the conservative website so reliably hoax-filled and error-riddled that even a Google search will agree: The Dumbest Man on the Internet, "Gateway Pundit" Jim Hoft.
Hoft's website is one of the worst purveyors of false information on the internet, having repeatedly fallen for fake stories, published numerous articles with factual inaccuracies (later pulling some, but leaving others uncorrected), and pushed fact-free conspiracy theories about a wide range of topics including President Obama’s birthplace.
It is impossible to fully catalog the lunatic theories that Hoft has promoted. He assured readers that Obama's released birth certificate was a forgery, because reasons; he peddled the notion that a clearly and absurdly poorly doctored tape was evidence Hillary Clinton was having a "seizure"; he insists, with Trump, that invisible "illegal" votes are responsible for Clinton's popular vote victory; he insisted Obama was photoshopped into a White-House released photo of the president's team during the raid that finally dispatched Bin Laden; his gullibility in promoting obvious hoax stories is, at this point, legendary. But he has good reason to believe the White House will follow through with his new press status: Donald Trump is a personal fan of his work, retweeting "Gateway Pundit" stories on the campaign trail over a dozen times. (Sean Spicer, too, has promoted the site.)
What's clear, then, is that the Spicer-led White House press room will be moving toward more relaxed definitions of "news" than even Facebook is currently comfortable with. Will LifeZette use their new status to inquire of Sean Spicer as to whether the "Clinton Body Count" will be a topic of White House investigation, or if Jim Hoft's team wishes to re-litigate Obama's birth certificate yet again, or if one of those Macedonian teenagers we have heard so much about during the last campaign will get the opportunity to insist that the president re-examine whether that children murdered in the Sandy Hook shooting were truly dead, or—as some gun advocates believe—the whole thing was staged by the federal government.
But there's another catch here too. It won't just be conspiracy theorists squeezing their way into the White House press room. As Sean Spicer works to ensure the administration's preferred hoaxers make it into one room, Trump's ex-Breitbart chief strategist is attempting to fill the offices elsewhere in the building with staff members known more for their propaganda efforts than for their accuracy.
Sebastian Gorka, the Breitbart national security editor and a Fox News contributor, is expected to join President Donald Trump's White House, a source familiar with the matter told Business Insider. [...]On Sunday, it was reported that Julia Hahn, a hardline immigration writer for Breitbart, was also expected to join the Trump White House as a special assistant to the president.
Breitbart came to national attention during the 2016 campaign as the dominant voice of the "alt-right," a rebranding of white nationalist and white supremacist beliefs that saw a dramatic upwelling of support and interest during Trump's xenophobic campaign. Among the movement's longstanding tactics is the "tracking" and "documenting" of supposed crime waves by non-white Americans towards white Americans; the Bannon-led White House is embracing this particular tool of propaganda and will be moving it in-house with the creation of a new list of crimes committed by "undocumented workers."
It's unclear where we go from here. It's quite clear where the Trump White House is heading, and it's quite clear that whatever Republicans think of it, they are preoccupied primarily by working out how to distance themselves from announced administration hoaxes and irrationality while still working with those hoaxers to adopt the policies the hoaxes are meant to prop up.
The national response is less clear. The more staid press is already chafing at the absurdities they are being asked to repeat with a straight face—but have a track record of willingly doing so, and so may adapt more readily to the gaslightings than they themselves expect. Even if the free press by and large begins to identify administration lies as lies, the administration will have no shortage of more compliant outlets willing to promote the falsehoods. And if the press room and administration alike are filled with liars, will the public truly care? Will they care after a year? After two?
That's where we are, and what needs asking. It's clear that this administration will be more willing to promote public falsehoods than any other in our lifetimes. But we don't know if America has changed enough to tolerate such things. It may have.
Comments are closed on this story.