THE DAILY NEWSLETTER - THURSDAY, MAY 12, 2022

Media Winners & Losers

MEDIA WINNER:
Philip Bump

Philip Bump with the Washington Post watched conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza’s 2020 “election fraud” film 2000 Mules and offered a fact check for viewers.

The film tries to convince audiences there was nationwide conspiracy to steal the election from former President Donald Trump.

D’Souza touts it as making an irrefutable case. Trump's rave reviews say it shows ballot boxes were "stuffed like never before.”

According to Bump, the film relies on flawed cell phone geolocation technology, asking viewers to take leaps of faith and using hyperbole to spin a wide web.

Central to 2000 Mules’ message is that phone-tracking can be used to retrace the steps of individuals. The technology was displayed in a scene where it was implied it had been used to solve a homicide in Atlanta. It was not.

After D’Souza shows how the tracking technology works, he claims to highlight people who were used as “mules” to traffic fraudulent ballots moved from one place to another and were tracked. Their final stops were ballot drop boxes in battleground states.

Bump wrote after watching the film that the geotracking info — which is the "crux' of the film's claims — is being presented in a way that's "wildly misleading."

"In other words," Bump writes, "D’Souza is elevating shaky, misrepresented, incomplete claims to bolster his rhetoric."

"There’s huge demand for proving that Trump didn’t lose in 2020, and this film provides just enough of a veneer of authority to let people collapse comfortably into that belief," he adds.

Watching the film so we don't have to is a service. Soberly fact-checking it is practically a bonus.

MEDIA LOSER:
Candace Owens

Candace Owens suggested Wednesday that billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates is behind the nationwide shortage of baby formula.

She also floated a theory the billionaire Microsoft co-founder was behind the Covid-19 pandemic and the vaccines.

John Rich, of the country music duo Big & Rich, shared a CNBC article reporting a firm owned by Gates is “targeting infant nutrition by attempting to reproduce mother’s breast milk in a lab.”

Owens shared her take on the story through a retweet.

“Doesn’t Bill Gates just have the best luck?” she asked her followers. “Just like with the COVID vaccine— he makes an investment, and then suddenly there is a pandemic or shortage and everyone must line up for his product. Of course he’s invested in lab produced breast milk!”

There is no evidence Gates or anyone affiliated with him is behind a nationwide shortage of formula for infants.

Time reported the shortage has been caused by a number of factors, including the temporary closure of a factory which produces infant formula.

Just recently, Owens claimed that hospitals and the government were murdering covid patients in order to "fluff' fatality rates as part of a vast vaccine-wing conspiracy.

The author and MAGA commentator's remarks have over 4,700 retweets at the time of this newsletter.

Conspiracy theory king Alex Jones threw a rage fit this week over his customers not shopping hard enough at the Infowars store. With Candace giving the milk away free, maybe it's no surprise nobody's buying the tin foil cow.

The A-Block

The Great MAGA King

President Joe Biden declared former President Donald Trump “The Great MAGA King” during a speech in which he continued to rip “Ultra-MAGA” Republicans.

President Biden delivered a speech to the International Brotherhood Of Electrical Workers 40th Annual Conference at the McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago, Illinois Wednesday afternoon to talk about his support for unions and plans to help the economy.

But Biden also spent a good chunk of time ripping Republicans as “the MAGA crowd” and “Ultra-MAGA” — a strategy that has emerged over the past several weeks.

Defending his decision to pump cash into the economy, Biden invoked the food lines that were rampant at the height of the pandemic, and said “And what did the MAGA crowd want to do? Forget it. Forget it.”

“God, this is the United States of America. The idea that people would have to wait in line an hour or hour and a half to get a box of food in their trunk — it’s just unbelievable,” Biden said, the first of several MAGA references.

Biden went on to defend his economic stimulus against the charge they contributed to inflation — crowning Trump with a derisive moniker along the way

"Under my predecessor, the great MAGA king, the deficit increased every single year," he said.

Just a few hours later, Trump and his supporters have already embraced the title.


🇺🇦 FOR LATEST UKRAINE COVERAGE CLICK HERE


In Other News...

Joe Biden Goes Off on 'Brutality' of Leaked Draft Overturning Roe v. Wade During DNC Speech

Joe Rogan Defends the Term ‘Groomer’: How Many Are Doing it Under Guise of 'I’m An LGBTQ Educator!'

LUCIANO: Martha MacCallum Tells Viewers Not to Worry About Crime and to ‘Get Out There’ After Fox News’ Nonstop Fear-Mongering About Crime


Industry News...

Senate Confirms Bedoya To Be Federal Trade Commissioner

Johanna Fuentes to Exit as Warner Bros. Communications Chief

RATINGS: May 10 - Fox News Utterly Sweeps Demo

Must See Clip

Wild Bodycam Footage

Bodycam footage of Ezra Miller’s Hawaii arrest has been made public.

Miller, who goes by they/them pronouns, was arrested in March at a karaoke bar in Hawaii after being the subject of 10 police calls that month.

Footage of the karaoke bar arrest was released Wednesday, and shows Miller claiming they were assaulted twice and that they filmed the incident.

The video begins with police speaking to another person outside of the bar, who claimed that the actor triggered the incident by spitting in his face.

The footage shows Miller getting searched by police, during which they claim an officer touched their penis.

The whole thing is nuts.

Links We Like

Why You Should Never Protest Outside Someone’s Home
- Brendan O'Neill, Spiked
Musk Is The One Who’s ‘Flat-Out Stupid’ About Trump On Twitter
- Nicholas Goldberg, Los Angeles Times
What The Kids in the Hall Taught Me About Feminism
- Tabitha Vidaurri, Slate
How the New York Times Helped Keep People in the Closet
- Jack Shafer, Politico
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