Coming to (mid) terms
By this time next week, we'll know a lot more about how many anti-democratic candidates will be in place to subvert elections for Donald Trump. President Joe Biden decided to take one more crack at sketching the stakes this week, laying out the horror of the politically motivated attack on Paul Pelosi and urging Americans to vote like democracy is in the balance. No one I know has been covering the breadth of disinformation and extremism like VICE's David Gilbert, so I called him up to see where we are in this last weekend before Election Day. Our convo has been edited for length.
Ever since Paul Pelosi had his head beaten with a hammer, we've seen this concerted effort in right-wing media to cement disinformation around the attack. What does this episode say about the state of disinformation heading into the election?
Even for someone who tracks it all the time, the speed and ferocity of the disinformation surrounding the attack was remarkable. Within hours, there were wild conspiracies being shared on fringe sites. After a few more hours, those conspiracies had gone mainstream through GOP lawmakers like Ted Cruz and figures like Donald Trump Jr., and ultimately, Donald Trump himself. It just shows how willing Republicans and all the people in that orbit are to dismiss reality and accept something that is obviously and easily debunked, but helps push their own narrative, demonizing their opposition.
It seems to me there's also something stark and new on the violence part of it. Had the Speaker of the House been home, she could have gotten her head bashed in. And some Republicans were happy to simply enjoy and play with that.
What was so shocking was the conspiracies were almost immediately matched with jokes. Donald Trump Jr. and others were posting pictures of a Halloween costume with a hammer and a pair of underwear. At a campaign event this week, Kari Lake made a joke about the attack and it got the biggest laugh of the night. The callousness of that is quite terrifying. It's startling to see mainstream politicians being so callous and inhumane when an 82-year-old man is attacked in his home with a hammer and almost dies.
You've been reporting this week on intimidation and disinformation efforts around voting. What are you seeing?
Disinformation has been ramping up online, but now that the election is coming up we're seeing it transferring into the real world. We're seeing voters being intimidated in their houses and at polling places. In Texas, there were several reports of people standing outside polling stations and suddenly demanding voters hand over their smartphones or smartwatches, which is not required by law. Only for the voters people that realize that the people making demands were not even election workers. And a lot of those reports are related to Black voters voting in predominantly white areas.
I also reported on a local Republican precinct chair who was knocking on doors and alleging that residents were voting illegally by mail, which was completely inaccurate. By all accounts, this person was extremely aggressive when doing this, which again, is something that we haven't seen in previous elections.
What did you make of the joint DHS/ FBI bulletin on the potential for violence?
What surprised me most was that they specifically said they're worried about lone wolf or individual attacks, especially by individuals who have been radicalized online since 2020 by the lies about the stolen election. I reported on one person on the r/TheDonald subreddit posting the exact type of extremist messages the FBI is looking at. He said that anyone who turns up with a dropbox is going to be met with violence. That's all it takes for one person who has been radicalized online. Paul Pelosi's alleged attacker was radicalized online and became convinced that Nancy Pelosi was the devil incarnate. So how many more people are out there who believe that the election was stolen after two years of listening to this lie? And now they believe that it's going to happen again, because that's what they're being told. For me, that was the most troubling part of the DHS memo.
There have been limited reports of voter intimidation around the drop box monitoring activities in Arizona. How bad is the problem overall?
I think we have no idea. I agree, the ballot drop box watching stuff seems to be quite limited at the moment. But there was a Reuters report talking about non-sanctioned door knocking campaigns where people aggressively seek information about when people vote, how they vote. That's happening in 23 different states. There's been a huge increase in the number of people signing up to be poll watchers on Tuesday. But if you look at what's happening already in the early voting places in Texas, Arizona, Michigan, and elsewhere, there are already indications that those poll watchers are being aggressive and trying to intimidate voters. And if that does happen across the country, especially in swing states, then we could have a real problem.
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