The Thread For New Republican Legislation

[lpetrich]

Former Republican Staffer Admits GOP Would Intentionally Spread Lies

The Republican Party uses right-wing media to knowingly spread lies, according to an ex-Republican political adviser and researcher who spoke with Newsweek.

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Higgins told progressive podcaster Aaron Rupar on Thursday that the conservative movement is predicated on selling lies to the American public for their own potential political gain.

He referred to the multiple indictments against Trump, including the former president's alleged role in spurring the January 6 Capitol riot, and how some outlets, in his words, have knowingly mischaracterized the allegations made by Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith and others as First Amendment violations.

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"You can basically make up your own reality in right-wing media," Higgins told Rupar.

Higgins reiterated similar statements in a phone conversation with Newsweek, recalling how other RNC staffers would openly admit to lying on social media websites like Reddit—and the now defunct subreddit dedicated to Trump—so outlets like Fox News or Breitbart would pick them and in turn cause the falsities or embellished reports to gain traction.

Mostly staffers, not the politicians themselves. I doubt that many politicians are very online-savvy. AOC and MTG are unusual.

It was more so RNC staffers generally engaged in the "behind-the-scenes, dark shadow stuff," he stated.

"I think what we are seeing [now] is an extension of the Tea Party movement from 2010 to 2015, and not only is it an extension of the Tea Party movement but of the media environment we now have," he said.

So the teabaggers became Trumpies.

Noting
A former RNC researcher on the RNC's reality distortion field

 

[lpetrich]

Ammon Bundy knows why Republican politicians lie: It works like a charm by Captain Cassidy

We’ve known for years that right-wing media outlets and social media bubbles have created a very strange new political and cultural landscape for everyone. Using evangelical Christian leaders’ strategies, Republican politicians have trained their target audiences to perceive reality itself through a fact-free filter. Nothing can get past that filter except what this audience’s leaders want the flocks to believe.

Most of the time, contradictory or challenging information doesn’t even reach that audience’s awareness.

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And researchers have noted conservatives’ alternate reality for years now.

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That world led to a Pew Research survey that found that “[m]isinformation and competing views of reality abounded throughout 2020.”

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Most critics of that alternate reality focus on Fox News, though. Scathing indictments of Fox’s various shows can be found aplenty. Most of it focuses on its viewers’ alternate-reality bubble.

Do any right-wing media critics complain about Fox News being biased?

 

[lpetrich]

Evangelical church leaders might be having a hard time persuading the flocks to plant their butts in the pews more often. But Republican politicians have far simpler needs. All they need is loyalty to the Republican Party and votes for Republican candidates and causes.

To get both of those things, Republicans task their audience’s media sites to push hard on viewers’ fear and outrage buttons. They dehumanize their viewers’ main outgroups and offer a steady drumbeat of shows and stories affirming and validating their self-image as the true rulers of America, temporarily-embarrassed billionaires, a put-upon and shrinking persecuted minority group, and America’s Designated Adults—preferably all at once.

More legitimate news sites have reported aplenty on Republican dishonesty.

Then about Ammon Bundy, would-be homesteader and right-wing hero.