The skepticism didn’t keep in right-wing echo chambers however seeped additionally into the feeds of in style on-line personalities, together with Twitter’s new proprietor, Elon Musk.
“There’s a tiny chance there is perhaps extra to this story than meets the attention,” he wrote Sunday morning, pointing his 112 million followers to a sensationalist account of the episode revealed by a website identified for spreading right-wing misinformation.
The frenzy to sow doubt concerning the assault on Pelosi’s husband illustrates how aggressively influential figures on the precise are in search of to dissuade the general public from believing info concerning the violence, seizing on the occasion to advertise conspiracy theories and provoke mistrust. The Home speaker has lengthy been a bugbear for the right, which has intensified its rhetorical blitz on her lately — at the same time as excessive threats towards members of Congress have elevated.
These retailers of misinformation, mentioned Carl Cameron, a former longtime Fox Information political correspondent, deceive their huge audiences utilizing rumors and lies about every part from the integrity of elections to the small print of a police report.
“They’re making a dystopia whereby mendacity and bodily violence turn into a part of our politics,” he mentioned.
Dinesh D’Souza, whose current movie “2000 Mules” burnished his right-wing bona fides by pushing Trump’s debunked claims of widespread voter fraud, aired falsehoods and innuendo in a viral Twitter thread suggesting the assault on Paul Pelosi was a type of intentional misrepresentation typically known as a “false flag.”
The premise for his skepticism gave the impression to be mistaken reporting by a Fox affiliate, which later appended a correction to its article, that the assailant was in underwear on the time of his arrest. In reality, the suspect, recognized by regulation enforcement as David DePape, 42, demanded to know, “The place is Nancy?” — a name echoing the exclamations of pro-Trump protesters who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — earlier than bludgeoning her husband with a hammer.
Authorities mentioned they have been scrutinizing writings DePape seems to have authored that intersperse delusional concepts about fairies and the occult with Holocaust denialism and screeds towards Black individuals and transgender individuals.
D’Souza didn’t settle for these particulars. Nor did a lot of his 2.5 million Twitter followers, in keeping with their replies, which included calls of “amen.”
“The Left goes loopy as a result of not solely are we not BUYING the wacky, implausible Paul Pelosi story however we’re even LAUGHING over how ridiculous it’s,” he wrote early Sunday morning. “What this implies is that we’re now not intimidated by their faux pieties. Their management over us has lastly been damaged.”
Musk, who calls himself “Chief Twit,” additionally appeared unconvinced by the official story forming within the days after the assault. In response to a tweet from Hillary Clinton condemning the assault and claiming it resulted from “hate and deranged conspiracy theories” unfold by Republican politicians, he pointed as an alternative to a narrative within the Santa Monica Observer claiming with out proof that Paul Pelosi was drunk on the time of the assault and “in a dispute with a male prostitute.” Musk, who later deleted the tweet, didn’t reply to an e-mail in search of remark.
The web site of the Santa Monica Observer, described by fact-checkers as a low-credibility supply favoring the acute proper, was offline Sunday morning. However an archived version of the story promised to clarify “what actually occurred early Friday morning in San Francisco.”
It unspooled a lurid story about nudists and a tryst gone terribly flawed. It additionally speculated about Pelosi’s medical situation and the safety on the residence he shares with the Home speaker in San Francisco’s tony Pacific Heights neighborhood. And it featured tweets reposted by Sebastian Gorka, a former White Home adviser to Trump who attended a 2017 inaugural ball wearing the insignia of a Hungarian nationalist group traditionally linked to the Nazis.
Gorka didn’t reply to a request for remark. An e-mail despatched to an tackle for the Santa Monica Observer yielded no response.
The editorial board of the Los Angeles Instances has called the location “infamous for publishing false information,” highlighting its fantastical declare, in 2016, that Clinton had died and been changed by a physique double.
Equally deluded claims stuffed social media over the weekend in response to the assault on Pelosi.
Scores of tweets included claims that the assault was a false flag, together with some responding on to messages from the Home speaker. “@SpeakerPelosi Accountability is coming,” one person warned. “Bored with your Lies and False flags. Your Treasonous.” One other wrote, “I don’t know why the Paul Pelosi story falling aside is such a shock. False flag assaults are a typical device of the left.”
Many targeted on subsequent month’s high-stakes midterm elections, which is able to resolve management of Congress.
“This was approach too coincidental,” wrote a person whose bio included the “#MAGA” rallying cry. “Per week earlier than a giant election, to make Pelosi out to be a determine of needing sympathy, after being a mendacity, nasty, aggressive, vindictive, bullying b—- for many years. She doesn’t get a move.”
Twitter didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Elected officers and different in style figures on the precise additionally heaped mockery on Pelosi’s husband at the same time as he stays hospitalized for his accidents.
Wendy Rogers, a Republican state senator in Arizona who has set fundraising records in her state whereas aligning herself with right-wing extremists, shared a spurious Amazon itemizing for a “Paul Pelosi Pretend Assault Novelty Merchandise Headpiece.”
Garrett Ziegler, a former Trump White Home aide, directed his greater than 125,000 followers on Telegram to a meme sexualizing the assault.
Larry Elder, a conservative radio host who mounted a failed bid for governor of California within the recall election final yr, reacted to the assault by ridiculing Pelosi for a charge earlier this yr of driving underneath the affect. “First, he’s busted for DUI, after which will get attacked in his residence,” the commentator wrote on Twitter. “Hammered twice in six months.”
Republican leaders sidestepped questions concerning the position of misinformation in fueling political violence.
When requested Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” whether or not Republicans ought to “do extra to reject conspiracy theories and harmful rhetoric,” Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who chairs the Senate GOP’s marketing campaign arm, mentioned it was vital to “condemn the violence” and to persuade individuals making ready to vote that the upcoming midterm elections could be “free and honest.”
Molly Hennessy-Fiske contributed to this report.
