Lea Feiger: Well, yes, no, in your reporting, you shared posts from people calling her the DEI candidate. That’s what’s happening, and it’s not just Trump in the public sphere who’s sharing that. These were conspiracies that were legitimately being repeated on Fox and everywhere.
David Gilbert: After these fringe platforms, we saw people like Laura Loomer, who would normally be called fringe.
Lea Feiger: Yeah, a very funny journey from Republican candidate in Florida for the congressional district to American far-right activist.
David Gilbert: But it has become more popular now because it has ties to Trump’s platform. It…
Lea Feiger: Oh my God, the thought of calling Laura Loomer something mainstream sends shivers down my spine.
David Gilbert: I know, but I think we have to do it because she’s now an integral part of the online discourse within the Republican Party and, from my perspective, at least, she’s now part of the GOP mainstream, rather than a fringe figure we can ignore.
Lea Feiger: Yeah, I mean…
David Gilbert: But yes, you were saying about Fox News, that it very quickly went from private Telegram channels to fringe chat rooms, to X, to, as you say, Fox News.
Lea Feiger: Mm-hmm.
David Gilbert: I think it was on a show called Outnumbered, which I had never heard of before, but it was a host named Julie Banderas, and she was talking about how her daughters were more eloquent than Harris, and then she went on to say, I think she said, “I’m sorry, just because you’re a minority doesn’t make you fit to be president.” I think the New York Post ran an editorial a day later that said, “America may soon be in the hands of its first DEI president.”
Lea Feiger: RIGHT.
David Gilbert: So this is a narrative that spreads almost overnight, from very fringe, pro-Trump, extremist forums, to the front pages of newspapers and mainstream television.
Lea Feiger: Is there content moderation? I mean, in your reporting, and we should talk about this, these were not small posts. In fact, as you said, they went from fringe to mainstream pretty quickly and were viewed millions and millions of times.
David Gilbert: Yes, as I said earlier, on platforms like Gab and Telegram, no racist or misogynistic content is removed or has been removed. In fact, that’s why people go there because they can post that kind of stuff.
Lea Feiger: RIGHT.
David Gilbert: On X, there’s a sort of façade that it’s a mainstream platform, in the sense that there are rules and some sort of content moderation in place. But as you said, some of the messaging around it, and one of the conspiracies that really took over on X more than anywhere else, was that she wasn’t eligible to run for president because both of her parents weren’t born in the United States. Now, that’s been debunked many times.
