The Lincoln Project really has turned into the herpes of trolls.
They’re annoying.
They’re painful.
And they just stick around forever.
You’d have thought after 2020 this batch of self-serving grifters would have figured out it was time to move on but nope, they’ve doubled and tripled down their efforts to try and hurt anyone and everyone they can tie to Trump in any way. Mainly because they know if they don’t find a new way to torment the Right, the Left will stop giving them their money.
This last stunt though in Virginia at a Youngkin campaign bus stop was their crappiest stunt yet. Granted, many of us still doubt they were responsible and took the fall to try and help McAuliffe since they were ‘coming for’ Youngkin, BUT for all intents and purposes for this thread, let’s go with the idea they did it themselves.
Drew Holden did an amazing job here:
🧵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.⤵️
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) November 5, 2021
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. https://t.co/3GEPmIthUK
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) November 5, 2021
Well, it did.
Unless the person in question was a complete moron and desperate for this to be real.
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 pic.twitter.com/dPiHaw27G4
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) November 5, 2021
As we said up there … yup.
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. pic.twitter.com/p4HMekx4p0
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) November 5, 2021
Recommended
Shakespearean, this is a brilliant way to look at this failure.
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. pic.twitter.com/uMY2xhPowH
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) November 5, 2021
David Corn.
Because OF COURSE.
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? pic.twitter.com/rczaxkAgJe
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) November 5, 2021
HA HA HA HA HA HA
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. pic.twitter.com/tQOAM0l1PF
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) November 5, 2021
C’mon, it’s Swalwell. Is anyone surprised this dunder-head bought into it?
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* pic.twitter.com/prQpwA31f9
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) November 5, 2021
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. pic.twitter.com/6NziWJmRek
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) November 5, 2021
Yeah, this was really really really bad.
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. pic.twitter.com/wPZBiPtN5o
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) November 5, 2021
Imagine if she had bothered to do a little actual investigative reporting before posting?
Silly us, expecting a reporter to do their job and stuff.
And of course, that led to other people presuming this was real news.
Here’s @themaxburns jumping all over the fake story. pic.twitter.com/fott8HwzPo
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) November 5, 2021
They so badly wanted Youngkin to be some crazed Nazi-supporting white supremacist alt-right hater.
Probably because they don’t really have anything to offer themselves …
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 pic.twitter.com/jdnYL75dIe
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) November 5, 2021
Yup.
And there were plenty more like these from @MattLesser (okay kinda funny), @prof_gabriele and @mcbyrne that helped amplify a fake story. pic.twitter.com/enNc7Fj2ke
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) November 5, 2021
What a bunch of dolts.
You’d think by now they’d know better … you know what, never mind. They don’t know better.
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? pic.twitter.com/Tfr5k7iWxa
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) November 5, 2021
Yeah, THIS was exceptionally poor.
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. pic.twitter.com/aM5HUz3EPu
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) November 5, 2021
Hey media, tell us you’re totally biased hacks without telling us you’re totally biased hacks.
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. pic.twitter.com/ITQn8PqPVM
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) November 5, 2021
Incredible.
In a horrible way.
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.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) November 5, 2021
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.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) November 5, 2021
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.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) November 5, 2021
Rick Wilson, Steve Schmidt, Stuart Stevens … they are the real deplorables.
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. https://t.co/GB9jmJdKgu
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) November 5, 2021
Staffers.
Virginia Democrats.
Yup.
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. pic.twitter.com/etC2ZVKoXd
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) November 5, 2021
Someone is definitely lying.
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.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) November 5, 2021
We are SO waiting for those shoes to drop.
Can’t wait!
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