Drew Holden Profile picture
Nov 5, 2021 24 tweets 17 min read Read on X
🧵Thread🧵

In the closing days of the VA election, @ProjectLincoln sent a group of fake white supremacists to a Youngkin rally.

Turns out, it was originally meant as an obvious joke that spiraled when too many Dems took it seriously.

Let’s unpack how the hoax spread.⤵️
First some context, @theintercept & @ryangrim wrote up internal LP emails to confirm this, story below.

Maybe it should’ve given people pause that one of the supposed proud boys was a girl & one of the “white supremacists” was black.

It didn’t. theintercept.com/2021/11/03/lin…
Unsurprisingly, a lot of folks on one side of the political aisle were quick to jump on the story.

One viral tweet calling it a “disgusting” reference to Charlottesville got retweets from @RexChapman, @RachelBitecofer, @rolandsmartin & @TheDemCoalition
That also included @ProjectLincoln who, again, originally planned this thing as an obvious stunt before their supporters bought into the hoax, which is a nearly Shakespearean thing to have happen on the eve of Election Day.
But they weren’t alone. We had a whole outrage cycle for this one.

Here’s @DavidCornDC, who has been repeatedly duped by the most extravagant claims tied to “Russian collusion,” swallowing this one hook, line and sinker.
There was an interesting level of insistence that Youngkin denounce something that people supporting his opponent (if not his opponents own team, more on that later) had done.

Care to explain that one, @joelockhart or @USJewishDems?
If I were a member of Congress who had fallen for not just the Russiagate hoax but was also the victim of a Chinese honeypot, I simply wouldn’t rush to push out unconfirmed and dramatic reports that align with my priors. @ericswalwell.
In retrospect it is enormously rich that @MattNegrin would use this stunt to blame the media for not being tough enough on Republicans *over an obvious hoax*
Even members of @TerryMcAuliffe’s own campaign got involved in pushing this disinformation.

Seems hard to claim that “this is who Glenn Youngkin’s supporters are” when it’s your own team, @christinafreund. And “disqualifying” seems a stretch, @jengoodman75.
The original reporting on this one...wasn’t ideal. Despite this pretty obviously not passing the sniff test, @holmes_reports, tweeted out a picture of the fake proud boys without additional context (or bothering to ask questions), which kicked off the firestorm.
And of course, that led to other people presuming this was real news.

Here’s @themaxburns jumping all over the fake story.
For a lot of very online people, the hammer of “Republicans are evil” is the only tool they’ve got, and so things like racial hoaxes are too tempting a nail to pass up.

@Blackamazon
@AndreaChalupa
@NormEisen
@ThePeterPaige
And there were plenty more like these from @MattLesser (okay kinda funny), @prof_gabriele and @mcbyrne that helped amplify a fake story.
I mean, this guy, @glennkirschner2, was a prosecutor for thirty years.

If he could fall for this, what else might he have believed without evidence simply because it fit his priors?
I don’t like to include local news outlets - they have a tough and mostly thankless job as it is - but this story from @NBC29 in VA *after* an enormous amount of pushback perfectly captures why these hoaxes keep happening.
But the real cherry on top came later, when @ReutersWorld ran an objectively false story calling the Lincoln Project Republicans, which led at least @SethAbramson & @aaronbergcomedy to conclude that this was a false-false flag.

Just incredible.
Now, you’ll notice that these tweets were never flagged for disinformation or anything of the sort.

Something tells me that if the parties were reversed, some outlets may call this an organized attempt to spread lies days before an election to suppress the vote.
The takeaway here should be clear: as I’ve said many times before, if a story perfectly, hilariously and inexplicably confirms all of your priors, it may well be too good to be true.

It never hurts to wait for more details to come out.
And it should go without saying, but it’s despicable behavior from @ProjectLincoln at a time when racial relations are, by any metric, bad and trending worse.

Using that as a way to score cheap retweets on Twitter is shameful.
This story isn’t over, though. What I want to know is who these tiki torch wielding Dems are and what their affiliation with the VA Dems or McAuliffe campaign are.

As @alec_sears has pointed out, many of them look oddly identical to staffers affiliated with one or the other.
If that’s the case, it wouldn’t just be an obvious embarrassment, but it would mean someone is lying.

Both the VA Democratic Party and the McAuliffe campaign have denied involvement on the record.
My gut tells me that there are more shoes to drop on this story, and more information to get to the bottom of.

But in the meantime, we should remember that actual disinformation is bad no matter who does it. As this event makes clear, that includes folks on the left, too.
These threads have always been yeoman work, something I do because I think it’s important.

But for those who’ve asked, I finally set up my account to receive tips, so if you’d like to throw me some beer money (Venmo or Bitcoin), you can click this icon on my page.
Sorry, didn’t realize that feature was just on mobile. If easier, Venmo is Drew-Holden-1. But, please, don’t feel obligated, and thank you to the folks who have already been incredibly generous.

and for folks who have asked, I’ve got a patreon, too. It’s: patreon.com/drewholden360?…

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Drew Holden

Drew Holden Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @DrewHolden360

Jun 11
🧵Thread🧵

The coverage of the anti-ICE riots in LA is perhaps the clearest example of advocacy “journalism” in Trump’s second term.

Reading the reporting, you would never know the most significant fact: the American people support Trump’s deportations.

Follow along ⤵️
First, the facts about the riots.

You’ve seen the burning cars, looting & clashes between police & protestors.

Demonstrators blocked the freeway, attacked ICE agents, all in an effort to prevent the deportations of illegal aliens. Trump deployed troops to allow ICE to operate. Image
Image
As @MarkHalperin and @seanspicer discussed, the situation in LA is so tranquil that the mayor has instituted a curfew for the city.
Read 25 tweets
May 29
🧵Thread🧵

The new book “Original Sin” from Jake Tapper & Alex Thompson recounts the effort to cover up Biden’s cognitive decline ahead of the election. The authors point to many guilty parties.

The one glaring omission? Their colleagues in the corporate press. Follow along ⤵️ Image
There are numerous dramatic reveals. The Biden team considered condoning him to a wheelchair? Maybe in his fog he forgot about the border?

But as I worked on a review for @commonplc, the one thought that I kept coming back to was that you can’t tell this story without the press.
Perhaps no one was more vital to the continued fiction that Biden had it together than the media.

Tapper and Thompson even highlight some of the telling moments.

Did they forget what the media reported?
Read 21 tweets
May 20
🧵THREAD🧵

Biden’s cancer diagnosis is a tragedy I know first-hand.

But our sympathy can’t silence questions about Biden’s cognitive decline, clarified just days ago by the Hur tape.

The media tried to bury the story then. They’re trying again now.

I’ve got the receipts. ⤵️
When the report first came out in 2024, outlets rushed to demean Hur, accusing him of serving as a Republican hatchet man.

Just look at this take from @USATODAY, who assembled sympathetic voices to make the case that Hur “crossed the line.” They found an expert to call it a “disgrace” and then featured the obviously unbiased Eric Holder to lead a section titled “Way too many gratuitous remarks.”

The audio makes clear that Hur, if anything, played down how alarming the claims were.Image
Image
Image
Image
(If you haven’t listened to the Hur audio yet, you should.)
Read 26 tweets
May 15
It should go without saying, but the media cultivating this type of baseless hysteria about an admin for partisan reasons is much more of a threat to the underpinnings of our democracy than anything Trump has actually done.

Quick 🧵⤵️ Image
A couple quotes:

“If you think that there’s this thing out there called America, and it’s exceptional, that means you don’t have to do anything” to stop fascism.

What? What does that even mean??

That if you, like millions of Americans!, believe in American exceptionalism…you’re a fascist?

Really?
“The powers that be can do whatever they want to you”

Trump can’t even deport people who have deportation orders against them without a federal judge stepping in.

This is firmly out of touch with reality.
Read 13 tweets
May 13
Wow what a potentially valuable insight worth sharing with the American people when it mattered rather than saving for your book!
This conversation started in June *2023* so if you believe the media wasn’t aware of it before the election I have a bridge to sell you.
I’m going to write a book about this book.
Read 5 tweets
Apr 29
🧵Thread🧵

Many in the media are trying to claim that the press was merely duped by Biden’s White House about the former president’s cognitive decline.

That simply isn’t true. The media actively took part in the coverup.

Don’t let them forget. I’ve got screenshots. ⤵️
I’ve done a number of threads on this but putting some of the most egregious stuff in one place.

Perhaps the most damming: Two weeks before the debate made Biden’s cognitive decline inescapable, @washingtonpost gave “Four Pinocchio’s” to allegedly edited videos showing Biden clearly displaying cognitive problems, dismissing them as “pernicious” efforts “to reinforce an existing stereotype” while quoting the White House to say the videos were “cheap fakes” — all to defend Biden against criticisms about his age and well-being.Image
Image
Image
Image
That story came four days after a previous effort from @washingtonpost to write off these videos as Republican efforts to mislead voters: proof, the Post claimed, that “the politics of misinformation and conspiracy theories do not stop at the waters edge.” Image
Image
Read 24 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(