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US presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump shook hands at a September 11th memorial event in New York City the morning after a contentious televised debate between the two.
Published On 11 Sep 2024
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are neck-and-neck in a new poll of swing states.
The former president appears to be gaining on the vice president in Wisconsin at 49 percent to 48 percent and in Pennsylvania at 48 percent to 47 percent, an Emerson College poll conducted between September 15 to 18 has shown.
However, his lead still lies within the margin of error for both states, of three percent for Wisconsin and 3.2 percent for Pennsylvania, making it too close to call.
The latest New York Times/Siena College poll shows that the two presidential candidates are tied nationally at 47 percent as of September 19.
Morry Gash/AP
If Trump is able to win Wisconsin, he might not need to gain the support of Pennsylvania, Michigan or Nevada, given the state’s importance in previous elections.
The state of Wisconsin counts for 10 electoral votes in the election, according to Britannica, which situates it in the middle of the U.S. states in terms of how many votes each provides for the presidential election.
This doesn’t detract from the state’s sway in the election, as in four of the past six presidential elections the victorious candidates have been decided by less than a percentage point difference there, as U.S. News reported.
The encyclopedia of American politics, Ballotpedia, also noted how between 1900 and 2016, Wisconsin decided the outcome of an election 76.67 percent of the time.
In 2016, Trump narrowly won the state against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with a 0.7 percent margin, but in 2020, only just lost it to Joe Biden again with a 0.7 percent margin.
Reflecting on the poll, Cornell University’s Professor Richard Bensel told Newsweek that while the polls are “remarkably similar” to those in 2016 and 2020, “Harris might be a little weaker than either Clinton or Biden.”
He stressed it was still “hard to say” how the current election poll compared to those this time in previous elections, as the pollsters have “changed their techniques” in order to “account for a persistent reluctance of Trump supporters to publicly acknowledge their position.”
Speaking to Newsweek, Johns Hopkins University Professor Paul Weinstein also agreed and said that both Biden and Clinton “had better polling numbers at this point in the race,” and also raised the point that the “polls were not as accurate as they could have been, as both races proved to be much tighter at the end of the day.”
Bensel concluded that “this will almost certainly be a very close election,” but he “would place my wager on the Democrats, but would expect even odds from the Republicans.”
Weinstein agreed, telling Newsweek, “This election is definitely too close to call. While Harris has moved up a little in the national polls since the debate, she still is not where Biden was at this point four years ago.”
He explained that if forced to make a call on the outcome of the election, he “would say Harris has a little bit more momentum right now.”
Donald Trump’s spokesperson Steven Cheung told Newsweek, “These professors are Democrat donors and sit on boards of liberal organizations. Their opinions are useless.”
Responding to Cheung’s claims, Weinstein informed Newsweek that he was on the board of the Progressive Policy Institute, a center left U.S. public policy think tank.
Bensel denied that he had ever donated money to a party candidate, and said, “I am a registered Democrat and sometimes vote in the party primary. However, I have never voted for a major party candidate in a general election since 1972 when I voted for George McGovern.”
He added he does not sit on the board of “any organization whether public, private, charitable, political, or religious.”
If Trump loses Wisconsin, he would need to win Pennsylvania and take back Georgia and Arizona in order to have a chance at claiming the presidency.
Trump could also win by holding North Carolina, where his lead is currently one point ahead of Harris, which is within the margin of error.
In Georgia, his lead has increased to three points ahead of Harris, and in Arizona it has decreased from a 3-point lead to a 1-point lead, which makes it too close to call given the margin of error.
If Harris is able to win all three Midwestern states, she would not need another state to be elected president in November.
Update, 09/20/24, 08:13 a.m. ET: This article was updated with new information and comment from Professor Paul Weinstein.
Update, 09/20/24, 10:50 a.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from Trump’s spokesperson and responses from Weinstein and Bensel.
Do you have a story we should be covering? Do you have any questions about this article? Contact  [email protected].
BACKGRID
Amber Rose is doubling down on Donald Trump‘s pet-eating conspiracy … she says Haitian immigrants are absolutely eating people’s cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio.
Photogs got Amber at LAX on Thursday and asked her about Trump pushing the conspiracy at the debate and on the campaign trail, even though officials in Ohio say it’s nonsense.
ABC
Amber says she’s seen videos on social media of people claiming their pets were taken and eaten by Haitian immigrants in Ohio, so Trump’s claims must be true … at least in her eyes.
As we’ve reported … Springfield’s Mayor says pet-eating isn’t an issue with Haitian immigrants there, and Ohio wildlife officials say a viral image of a man holding geese isn’t the conspiracy Trump says it is.
FOX
Amber’s not having it though … and she’s going one step further, saying cats and dogs are a staple on menus in some Haitian families.
Lots of folks think Trump’s conspiracy is steeped in racism, but Amber says bluntly … “That is not racist when something is true and people are saying it online.”
Cat’s definitely not got Amber’s tongue.
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From political fundraisers to the presidential debate to a September 11 commemoration, far-right influencer Laura Loomer has become a staple in former president Donald Trump’s political entourage. WIRED’s David Gilbert and Tim Marchman join Leah to discuss Loomer’s history of conspiracies and Islamophobia, and how she ended up in Trump’s orbit.
Leah Feiger is @LeahFeiger. David Gilbert is @DaithaiGilbert. Tim Marchman is @timmarchman. Write to us at [email protected]. Be sure to subscribe to the WIRED Politics Lab newsletter here.
Mentioned this week:
Laura Loomer Is MAGA at Its Most Extreme—and She’s Closer to Donald Trump Than Ever by David Gilbert
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Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.
Leah Feiger: In New York’s Central Park in 2017, a crowd was enjoying a production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar when a woman stormed onto the stage. She was upset that the theater company decided to recreate Caesar as a Donald Trump–like figure who was then bloodily stabbed to death. She disrupted the show shouting, “Do you want Trump to be assassinated? Stop the normalization of political violence against the right!” The woman was escorted off stage and arrested. Later, she appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show to talk about the experience.
Laura Loomer [Archival audio]: Yeah, look, this is assassination porn, right? So, the left is taking pleasure in watching an assassination attempt on President Trump. Shakespeare once said that violent delights lead to violent ends, right? And so when you’re going to delight in the assassination of our president, it’s going to have a violent end.
Leah Feiger: That woman would later ingratiate herself with the real Donald Trump and go on to become a megastar of the far right. Her name was Laura Loomer. This is WIRED Politics Lab, a show about how tech is changing politics. I’m Leah Feiger, the senior politics editor at WIRED. You might’ve heard Loomer’s name over the past few weeks. She’s become a fixture in Trump’s entourage. She flew with him to Philadelphia for the presidential debate. Then, he ranted about one of her favorite recent conspiracy theories on Springfield, Ohio.
Donald Trump [Archival audio]: They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that lived there.
Leah Feiger: Loomer was also at Trump’s side during a September 11 memorial, even though she has claimed that 9/11 was an inside job. And after the second attempted assassination on Trump on Sunday, Loomer raced to West Palm Beach to cover it and has been posting conspiracies about it on X ever since. So, who is Laura Loomer? And how much influence does she have over Trump? Is Loomer a mirror for Trump’s worst tendencies or is she fueling them? We at WIRED have been following Laura Loomer for a very long time now, especially WIRED senior reporter, David Gilbert, who is joining me from Cork, Ireland. Hey, David.
David Gilbert: Hey, Leah.
Leah Feiger: And also here with me in the studio is WIRED’s director of politics, science, and security, Tim Marchman. Hey Tim, welcome back.
Tim Marchman: I’m so glad to be here.
Leah Feiger: All right, let’s get into it. This has been a banner week for anyone who has heard of Laura Loomer before and, unfortunately, that includes all three of us. David, you’ve been following Laura Loomer for years at this point, and you just put out a profile of her on WIRED.com. Why do we keep seeing her with Trump all the time right now? Why are we talking about her at all?
David Gilbert: It’s a very good question. I guess we’re talking about her now because last week at the debate, she was pictured coming off his plane. And the day after the debate, she was pictured alongside the former president at a 9/11 memorial event, which many people found egregious given that she has, in the past, promoted the idea that 9/11 was an inside job.
Leah Feiger: Sure.
David Gilbert: That kind of kicked off a lot of discussion about Loomer and why she was with the president, even though she has been on his plane before, and he has talked about her ad nauseam for months now, but this seemed to ratchet it up a bit. And then, we saw GOP figures like Lindsey Graham and other senators come out and criticize her as a wild, crazy conspiracist, and claiming that her rhetoric is disturbing and suggesting that Trump should distance himself from Loomer.
Leah Feiger: Right.
Tim Marchman: I think there are three reasons why this boiled up, and they’re all pretty material. One is, she was on the plane with him right before he went into what is proved to have been a pretty disastrous debate, especially because he started ranting about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs, which of course they’re not doing, and this has dominated the news cycle for a week now, so—
Leah Feiger: And led to some very dangerous bomb threats at elementary schools in the area.
Tim Marchman: Yeah. It’s really harming real people. And everyone in a position of authority in this town is begging for it to stop, and the campaign just keeps doubling down on it. It’s really ugly and that kind of extremity of rhetoric matches him being around an extreme person like Loomer.
Leah Feiger: Well, the ideas and conspiracies she’s pushing are coming straight out of his mouth basically.
Tim Marchman: Yeah. The 9/11 bit definitely forwarded this to people. We work in One World Trade, which overlooks where this event was held. This is literally families of victims of 9/11 coming together for a memorial occasion. Former presidents are there. It’s a very solemn occasion, and you have this conspiracist provocateur clown there. It is just not fitting the solemnity of the occasion, and I think that was going to draw people to it. And three, as you wrote about it, David, and we have to be candid about this, there have been rumors of an affair between the two, which she has strenuously denied, and I want to emphasize that, but there has been, as Trump might say, many people have been saying things about this, and that obviously is going to get people talking.
Leah Feiger: For sure.
Tim Marchman: There is no avoiding that part of it.
Leah Feiger: And I mean at the very least, they’re clearly spending a lot of time together, and she clearly has his ear. David, you mentioned all of these GOP politicians coming out against her. What have people been saying? And what had Trump say in response?
David Gilbert: I think the 9/11 thing really brought it home to people when it was pointed out that she was there, and she had previously pushed these conspiracies, which she has since denied, by the way. She’s come out randomly to say that she’s not a 9/11 intruder even though the posts that show that she’s still on it, so the cognitive dissonance is strong there. As Tim said, the fact that there was family members of people who had died in this tragedy there, it really resonated with people. And as a result, we saw people coming out and criticizing her and criticizing Trump for being so close her. And we even saw figures like Marjorie Taylor Green who likes a conspiracy herself. She has pushed QAnon conspiracies and conspiracies about the attack on the Capitol and others over the years, she came out and she called Loomer extremely racist. So, it’s clear that even for someone who’s on the far right of the MAGA group in Congress is not willing to put up with what Loomer said. And she was specifically calling out a tweet that Loomer posted a deeply racist tweet about Kamala Harris and what would happen if she won the White House. And so, it very quickly became clear that there was a push to get Trump to distance himself from her, but he just didn’t. He just no longer cares, I think, about what the establishment says and even the people who would be seen as his strongest supporters are saying. Because in California on Friday, he said, “Oh, I don’t agree with some of her statements.”
Donald Trump [Archival audio]: Laura is a supporter. I don’t control Laura. Laura has to say what she wants. She’s a free spirit.
Leah Feiger: A free spirit. That got me. That really, really got me.
David Gilbert: As if that explains everything. And he posted on Truth Social a little bit later that day to say officially she doesn’t work for the campaign. And that may be the case, but it’s clear if you look over the last six months that she is an unofficial advisor to him. And she has been at his rallies, at his Mar-a-Lago resort, on his plane—
Leah Feiger: Getting shout-outs.
David Gilbert: … several times, getting shout-outs. So, she’s very, very much part of this campaign whether it’s a paid position or not. As Tim said, the rumors are brewing that the pair of them are having an affair, and she has denied it. Trump hasn’t made any reference to it, but it’s clear that she is a person who Trump values as having her own no matter what anyone else in the GOP is saying.
Leah Feiger: I want to push back a little bit though on everyone Trump figures in the GOP, including Lindsey Graham who called her out for her racism and Islamophobia, and even The Atlantic coming out with an article about how she’s really not good for Trump’s campaign, and this is not going to end up going well for him. I don’t don’t know if I actually buy any of that. This is actually not that wildly markedly different from a lot of stuff that’s been accepted in the party over the last couple of years.
Tim Marchman: Yeah, I agree. I don’t think people are pushing back on Loomer because what she says is so much worse, if at all worst, than what lots of people around Trump have been saying and what he himself has been seeing for many years. What we’re really seeing is a factional split over which wing nut has Trump’s ear and who gets to tell him about what crazy made-up nonsense or conspiracy theories that they want them to promote because, without wanting to get too deep into the weeds here, one of the foundational causes of tension here that we’re seeing split-out is a feud between this purportedly ex-gay, right-wing provocateur, Milo Yiannopoulos, who was formerly associated with Breitbart, the Gamergate movement—
Leah Feiger: Former intern to Marjorie Taylor Greene?
Tim Marchman: Yeah. He goes back ways in the relatively small group of people who are the fringe of the fringe of the online that’s coalesced around Trump. And he’s now, yes, aligned with Marjorie Taylor Greene. He was an unpaid summer intern for her a couple of years ago. He used to be close with Loomer, has referred to himself as her ghostwriter, and the two have had a vicious feud going for a number of years now.
Leah Feiger: It’s been amazing to watch, honestly.
Tim Marchman: And she is, to some extent, the protege of Roger Stone, the Nixon-era dirty trickster who is probably, in a lot of ways, more responsible than anyone for Trump.
Leah Feiger: I could listen to you describe every single person in this room. I want to say names and just have you describe them to me.
Tim Marchman: And so, you’ve got this feud that I don’t think is about anything particularly extreme, and it’s not just to put this on the two of them—
Leah Feiger: Sure.
Tim Marchman: … but I think you’re seeing this with other factions.
Leah Feiger: I mean, it’s a larger feud about who has Trump’s ear.
Tim Marchman: Yeah, I don’t really think there’s any value in buying into this kind of electoral critique where lots of Republicans are clutching their pearls because someone close to Trump is saying untrue, inflammatory racist stuff.
Leah Feiger: Right.
Tim Marchman: I mean, JD Vance is doing that.
Leah Feiger: JD Vance is saying the exact same stuff and continuing.
Tim Marchman: And he’s a vice presidential candidate.
Leah Feiger: Yeah.
Tim Marchman: I don’t think that substance—
Leah Feiger: A hundred per cent.
Tim Marchman: … is the issue here that anybody is saying, “This is what’s going to cost him the election.”
Leah Feiger: Right.
Tim Marchman: I don’t buy it.
Leah Feiger: Obviously though, there’s also concerns that she’s going to continue mattering in this election cycle because she’s going to possibly join the campaign in a more official capacity or even the administration in a more official capacity. The New York Times reported a year ago that Trump tried to hire Loomer to be part of his reelection campaign. His aides reportedly talked him out of it, but obviously she’s back and she’s around. Don Jr. suggested her as a press secretary. When we look ahead to a possible Trump White House, what does that mean?
David Gilbert: I think that the idea that Loomer could be part of Trump administration 2.0 is not outlandish. I think Trump is positioning himself to have people around him who are going to tell him exactly what he wants to hear. He no longer wants to have the adults in the room that stopped him doing all the crazy stuff that we’ve heard about him trying to do over the four years that he was in power. I think the role will not be public facing necessarily because I think she’s just too unhinged to have a role as press secretary or something like that, but I think she will be there in some capacity advising him, feeding him the types of information that we’ve seen him repeat in recent days. Post debate, we saw him talking about the earring conspiracy, where there was a claim that Kamala Harris was wearing an earring that doubled as an audio headphone, which Loomer posted on X. She was one of the first to boost it significantly to her audience. And hours later, Trump mentioned that during one of his rallies. So, I think she is not going anywhere. We’ve seen her be in Trump’s orbit for the last seven or eight years. And no matter what she’s done or what she said, she is not going anywhere. And he clearly likes her. He clearly thinks she brings something to the table that no one else does. She has his ear for now, and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to change.
Leah Feiger: Is Loomer a mirror for Trump’s worst tendencies or is she fueling them?
Tim Marchman: I don’t think there’s a huge distinction. One of the conflicts in Trump world, ever since he came onto the national stage, has been … There are advisors who want to make him a more or less normal candidate who’s just focused on marginal corporate tax rates and not allowing anyone to come into the country, and they want to make him recognizably normal Republican candidate. And there’s this other coterie of advisors who seemingly always get the upper hand for probably obvious reasons. Their mantra is always, “Let Trump be Trump.” And Loomer is the ultimate expression of “letting Trump be Trump.” She has no qualifications for no political advantage.
Leah Feiger: Raw loyalty.
Tim Marchman: Yeah, there is nothing but sycophancy and repulsing his enemies. She’s pure id. So, I think she is a product of Trump’s worst impulses, and she probably feeds Trump’s worst impulses. And it seems really toxic to people bringing out the absolute worst in each other. And you see that with a lot of his aides who flit in and out of the inner circle. This is not someone, I think we can safely say at this point, who surrounds himself with sober advisors who are well-qualified and are looking to give him the best information and the truth no matter the consequences.
Leah Feiger: Well, I guess it’s a difference between deciding how you want to lead. Do you want to scare your populist? Do you want to scare your supporters or follow what your more straitlaced advisors say? It’s a tricky one. We’re going to take a quick break. And when we’re back, more on how Laura Loomer became Laura Loomer.
[Break]
Leah Feiger: Welcome back to WIRED Politics Lab. I mentioned this incident at the top of the show about how Laura Loomer disrupted a production of Julius Caesar in 2017. This really is when she became Laura Loomer.
David Gilbert: It was and, up until that point, while she had been on the fringes of the far right, this was the point where she was catapulted into the mainstream. The fact that Trump watched so much TV during his presidency, it’s likely that he could have seen Loomer’s interview at the time and would’ve seen her, and that really put her on the road to infamy within the far right.
Leah Feiger: And at this point, right, David, she’d already been working for Project Veritas for a couple of years? What was she doing there?
David Gilbert: She got her start when she was still in university in 2015 when she decided to secretly record a college official, trying to get the college official to say that it was okay for her to have a pro-ISIS student organization on campus, which the official clearly wasn’t doing if you watched the video, but they still tried to claim it. And that kind of got her the attention of James O’Keefe from Project Veritas. And over the next couple of years, she took part in a lot of these so-called undercover sting operations, which were just really badly filmed crude videos to try and make the people look bad. For example, during the 2016 election on polling day, she went to a polling station and dressed in a burqa, decided to go in and try and get a ballot claiming to be Hillary Clinton’s campaign advisor. So, these videos where they’re trying to get gotcha moments from people on the left, which is what Project Veritas is all about, that’s what she was doing for several years after she got her first start in kind of the right-wing MAGA-sphere.
Leah Feiger: She took all of that, and she took the stage that she got from Hannity after Central Park, and she ran with it. She promoted conspiracies about school shootings, 9/11. She got actually banned from Twitter in 2018. And her final straw was a super Islamophobic post attacking Ilhan Omar, who had just been elected to Congress. Loomer called her pro-Sharia, anti-Jewish. It was pretty horrific, and Loomer was also banned from Instagram and has also been banned from services like Uber and Lyft, which is, I don’t know, comical to me.
David Gilbert: It’s just part of her whole shtick that she claims she’s the most censored woman on the Internet, even though she has multiple avenues of expressing herself on the Internet. She was banned in 2018 when she had, I think, just over a quarter million followers, but she’s back on it now, and she’s got 1.3 million followers. So, to call herself censored is a bit of a stretch really.
Leah Feiger: How has she managed to build such a large following online? And what is she even talking about that’s worth following?
David Gilbert: That’s a very good question. I think she’s willing to say the things a lot of people aren’t willing to say, and that possibly is part of the appeal that Trump sees as well. And so, she’s extremely provocative. She is outlandish, she is outrageous, and she is tapping into a cohort of people who just don’t see that being said by anyone else. Well, there’s lots of dog whistles and coded language being used online by a lot of far-right grifters. There’s very few who will say the kind of things that Loomer will say. You’ve got Nick Fuentes obviously who’s willing to go there, but Loomer is also just … There is zero filter on what she says. If you look at her social media feed, it is just endless hatred and vile and conspiracies and it’s just, it’s tiring just to read her tweets because it’s constant. I’m not sure how she functions as a human being because she posts so much content online all the time.
Tim Marchman: There’s not actually a lot of distance between her views and the expressed views of plenty of people in the MAGA-sphere, even the mainstream Republican Party. She is just unfiltered about it, and she doesn’t go in for genteel euphemisms. She is pretty forthright that she thinks America was founded as a white Judeo-Christian ethnostate, and she doesn’t recognize the validity of the American citizenship of many American citizens. And that, not technical discussions about the number of H-1B visas that are being issued is really at the root of a lot of the popularity of Trump. Right?
Leah Feiger: Sure. Yeah. It just sounds like it’s a feedback loop. There’s a constant incentive for her to be more and more extreme, so her audience continues to tune in and continues to share it. Obviously, she has tried over the years to be more than a pundit, a right-wing agitator. She ran for Congress in Florida in 2020 and 2022. In 2020, Trump gave her quite a bit of support, and she displayed that prominently on her website. What stood out to you about her campaigns? I mean, even by virtue of the fact that she is taking herself seriously and some people that matter are taking her seriously, we need to as well.
David Gilbert: Yeah, I agree. And I think the fact that she won the GOP primary in 2020 is significant because it means that she was seen as a credible candidate. And while she lost pretty decisively in the general election, it still signaled that her style of politics was where the Republican Party was headed. She moved districts in 2022. She tried in a different district and lost to the incumbent when she didn’t have Trump’s endorsement at that point. But I think the thing about her campaign, that stood out to me, was that she didn’t moderate or modulate anything that she was saying. She continued to push the exact same ideas and conspiracies that she had been doing for the previous half a decade online. So, it’s kind of interesting that she got to the point where she was, even though she was continuing to be such a hateful and Islamophobic and racist candidate.
Leah Feiger: We got into this a little bit earlier, but obviously the infighting within the far right has been a fascinating part of the cycle with Marjorie Taylor Greene coming out and calling what Loomer said about a possible Harris victory, extremely racist which, for Marjorie Taylor Greene to do that, is kind of wild and everything involving Milo and Nick Fuentes and that whole crowd, are we watching it eat itself? Or what are we seeing take place here?
Tim Marchman: It’s a freak show. I mean, it’s a reality show, candidate and fake entrepreneur who made his fortune licensing a brand that he cultivated to other people and through being on TV continuing what has been a freak show that’s been going on for many decades. It’s not that much different from people agitating for screen time on Survivor in a lot of ways, just with a lot worse consequences for everybody.
Leah Feiger: Someone’s very excited for the premiere this week.
Tim Marchman: That is right.
David Gilbert: And you can’t really take, like Marjorie Taylor Greene calling as extremely racist, you just can’t take that seriously because of what she had said and done in the past and then denied again. She’s just saying that because she thinks that’s where she can maybe make a mark or people would pay attention. We’re paying attention now, so it’s just part of needing to be part of a conversation, needing to be heard. And because Loomer has kind of ratcheted everything up to a different level, everyone else is going to have to raise their game as well, and that’s a terrifying prospect.
Leah Feiger: On one hand, we can look at this, the freak show, the dumbest timeline, how is this, what we’re talking about right now in this election cycle, but not to quote your Slack messages to me. Back to you, David, when you set out starting to write this piece and be like, “All right, we really do have to talk about Loomer and her impact on the cycle and influence on Trump, et cetera.” Tim, what you said was this piece and this conversation is actually really about almost the battle for Trump’s soul right now. It’s who has his ear, who has the directive, and we have the next two months to see how that plays out, and we’re already seeing it play out in horrific ways. The couple of conspiracies that she’s spread in the last two weeks alone, you look at the horrific ones coming out of Springfield, Ohio that are unequivocally untrue about Haitian immigrants eating pets, and you have the earring one from the debate where she said that Kamala Harris was basically in cahoots with ABC and had these earrings that were doing this, and even more recently after the attempted assassination on Trump, she immediately started to point fingers to the left. And so, that’s three in quick succession that Trump ended up repeating himself. So, even if this is parts of this are kind of funny or kind of not, at the end of the day, this is officially a big part of the campaign cycle, and we unfortunately can’t turn away from it.
Tim Marchman: I just don’t see any reason to think it’s not going to get worse over the next couple of months, especially as this is a guy who got shot and came fairly close a few days ago to getting at least shot at again, that’s a pretty unmooring and traumatizing experience to go through. And from what we know about him, I don’t see why that wouldn’t cause him to revert to his baser instincts. And that goes to why we’re talking about Laura Loomer is it’s like the physical manifestation of his baser instincts urging him on.
Leah Feiger: On that incredibly happy note, which is just to summarize, it’s only going to get worse. We’re going to take a quick break. And when we’re back, it’s time for Conspiracy of the Week.
[Break]
Leah Feiger: Welcome back to WIRED Politics Lab. It is time for Conspiracy of the Week, where our guests bring me their very favorite conspiracies that they’ve come across recently, and I pick my favorite. And because I want to continue punishing you all, this week is Laura Loomer–themed. Guys, what do you have for me?
David Gilbert: I think my conspiracy this week is one that Loomer has herself pushed this week. It’s in relation to a claim that there was a whistleblower who signed an affidavit before the debate last week claiming that ABC was in cahoots with Kamala Harris and provided her the questions and decided not to fact-check her and only fact-check Donald Trump. This is something that we see all the time, but I think this one I just want to talk about because it’s just so absolutely bizarre. It was based on an account called Black Insurrectionist, who has been on Twitter for about 10 months, has posted 32,000 posts in that 10 months, which is …
Leah Feiger: God, that’s so much.
David Gilbert: … is 110 posts per day every single day, seven days a week, which is a lot of posting. So, this account, just out of the blue, two days after the debate said an ABC whistleblower is about to publish an affidavit. I have got access to what I need to redact as I’m talking to my lawyers. Just completely out of the blue. No one should pay any attention to it. Everyone on the far right did a couple of disinformation. Outlets picked it up. Ran with it. Suddenly, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who’s back in the podcast again, she posted a tweet a couple of days later, saying that the ABC whistleblower had been killed in a car crash. Her source for this was some AI-generated garbled, rubbish news source, which she eventually admitted was false, but it didn’t matter. It had spread everywhere again. And a couple of days later, Black Insurrectionist published a redacted affidavit that claimed it was a real affidavit, except the affidavit was weirdly formatted, had a number of mistakes, like it called Kamala Harris, the Attorney General in San Francisco, which isn’t the thing. It just had huge numbers of typos and grammatical errors and spelling errors and was clearly fake. And yet, the right-wing ecosphere just picked it up and ran with it, kind of calling out ABC for not responding to it even though it was clearly rubbish. And Loomer, obviously, was one of the main people who’s been pushing this for the last few days.
Leah Feiger: And it also just plays into the entire media is out to get us.
David Gilbert: Absolutely, yeah.
Leah Feiger: This is the end, yeah. So, that’s a fun one.
David Gilbert: It reinforces the idea, which Trump has said that, “Oh, ABC are going to give Kamala the questions.”
Leah Feiger: Right, right, right, right. Yeah, no, that was his big conspiracy going into it. All right. That’s a bummer, but a good one. Tim, what do you got for us?
Tim Marchman: Mine is Loomer’s expressed belief that the policy aim of the Democratic Party is to murder Jews.
Leah Feiger: Love this. Say more.
Tim Marchman: So, in an interview she gave earlier this year, she said, “If you’re a Democrat and you’re voting as a Jew or a Democrat, then you kind of deserve what’s coming your way.” These are like the Jews during the times of the Holocaust who assisted the Nazis because they thought that they were going to be the last to go. They’re like the Kapo Jews of the Holocaust who’ve helped shovel Jews inside the gas chambers. That’s what these people are.
Leah Feiger: Lovely.
Tim Marchman: As lovely as that is, it’s hard to engage with conspiracy theories this way, but you almost want to take a step back and ask what steps elected Democrats have taken towards this apparent goal—
Leah Feiger: Sure.
Tim Marchman: … of destroying Jews in America and elsewhere. I’m not seeing a lot of evidence of it, but this is a driving and fundamental theme for her that I find a little irreconcilable with her avowed white nationalism, but she is the one who is directly making these comparisons. And I think that qualifies as a conspiracy because, to my eye at least, the Democratic Party has kept it pretty well hidden.
Leah Feiger: Both of those were sad and terrible, and I pronounce no one a winner this week. I refuse to reward either of these with a win.
David Gilbert: That’s a good resolution.
Tim Marchman: I want to push back. I want to push back against that by saying that I was specifically prohibited from crafting a bespoke MK-ULTRA-Laura Loomer conspiracy for the purposes of winning best Conspiracy of the Week.
Leah Feiger: Also, I told you that you could not share specific conspiracies about Laura Loomer that would get us sued, so …
Tim Marchman: Well, if you’re going to leave us to fight with our hands tied behind our backs.
Leah Feiger: Thank you both so much for joining us this week.
David Gilbert: Thank you.
Tim Marchman: Thanks for having me.
Leah Feiger: Thanks for listening to WIRED Politics Lab. If you like what you heard today, make sure to follow the show and give us five stars. We also have a newsletter, which Makena Kelly writes each week. The link to the newsletter and the WIRED reporting we mentioned today are in the show notes. If you’d like to get in touch with us with any questions, comments, or show suggestions, please, please write to us at [email protected]. That’s [email protected]. We’re so excited to hear from you. WIRED Politics Lab is produced by Jake Harper. Pran Bandi is our studio engineer. Amar Lal mixed this episode. Steven Valentino is our executive producer. Chris Bannon is Global Head of Audio at Condé Nast. And I’m your host, Leah Feiger. We’ll be back in your feeds with a new episode next week.
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