Conspiracy theory nation
By 
The combination of popular alt-right bro podcasters and alt-right social media moguls bent on amplifying right-wing misinformation to the greatest extent possible is bad indeed:
Shawn Ryan built one of the country’s most popular podcasts, interviewed US President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance, and attracted more than a million followers on X. It was there, on Monday morning, where he shared a conspiracy theory about the governor of Pennsylvania with one piece of commentary: “Wow.”
That theory implicated Gov. Josh Shapiro — with no evidence — in the July 13, 2024 assassination attempt on Trump. Nonetheless, it went on an amazing journey — from a pro se litigant who posted TikTok videos about her multiple anti-Shapiro complaints, to a Facebook page that posts about explosive crime stories, to millions of shares on Elon Musk’s microblogging site. It got enough traction on Monday for Dan Bongino to urge his conservative radio audience to “hold on this” and be skeptical unless his sources could verify it.
Before she went viral, Hadassah Feinberg had shared a rejection letter from Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger, highlighting the prosecutor’s refusal to follow up on the “thousands of crimes” she’d linked to the governor. Her affidavit referred to Shapiro as a “defendant,” who had been “laundering funds in Ukraine” and colluding with former US President Joe Biden and investor Alexander Soros.
“The allegations were, to say the least, preposterous,” said Goldinger, a Republican serving his fifth term as DA. “The complaint was not approved for filing.”
Shapiro’s office did not respond to the posts, and urged social media networks to help refute them. That didn’t have much of an impact. No one at X responded to a request for a community note; later in the day, a note added to Ryan’s post clarified only that Feinberg’s “charge” was not a criminal charge. Meta, which announced last month that its fact-check system would be replaced by community notes, did not append anything to the Pennsylvania Arrest Warrants item that helped the story get traction.
Not that Democrats can completely ignore messaging, but the much bigger problem is that marginal voters generally tend to either pay attention to shit like this or just don’t consume any politics-related media at all.
Having said that, what if I told you that EVERY SINGLE MEMBER OF THE WARREN COMMISSION HAS BEEN KILLED? We’re through the looking glass here, people!
That only makes it more of a challenge.
[image or embed]— Ron Filipkowski (@ronfilipkowski.bsky.social) February 11, 2025 at 1:58 PM