Leah Feiger: Yes, yes, no, in your reporting, you shared posts from people calling her the DEI candidate. That’s what’s going on, and it’s not just Trump in the public sphere who’s sharing this. These are conspiracies that have been repeated on Fox and everywhere.
David Gilbert: After those foundations, we see people like Laura Loomer, who is commonly referred to as fringe.
Leah Feiger: Yes, a very interesting path from Republican candidate in Florida for a Congressional district to an American far-right activist.
David Gilbert: But now she has become more popular because of her connection to the Trump platform. She …
Leah Feiger: Oh man, the idea of calling Laura Loomer mainstream really gives me goosebumps.
David Gilbert: I know, but I think we have to because she’s such an integral part of the online Republican conversation now. In my view, at least she’s a mainstream Republican now, not some extremist figure we can ignore.
Leah Feiger: Yeah, I mean…
David Gilbert: But yeah, you talked about Fox News, it very quickly went from private Telegram channels to side message forums, then to X and as you said, Fox News.
Leah Feiger: Um, um.
David Gilbert: I think it’s in a program called Outnumberedwhich I’d never heard of before, but it was a host named Julie Banderas, and she talked about how her daughters were more articulate than Harris, before adding, I think she said, “I’m sorry, just being a minority doesn’t make you fit to be president.” I think a day later, the New York Post ran an editorial saying, “America could soon be saddled with the country’s first DEI president.”
Leah Feiger: Right.
David Gilbert: This is a story that is spreading rapidly, practically from extreme, pro-Trump forums to the front pages of newspapers and on mainstream television.
Leah Feiger: Is there any content moderation? I mean, in your reporting, and we should talk about this, these posts are not small. This really, as you said, went from the fringe to the mainstream pretty quickly and had millions and millions of views.
David Gilbert: Well, as I said before, platforms like Gab and Telegram, no racist or misogynistic content is taken down or has been taken down. In fact, that’s why people go there, so they can post that stuff.
Leah Feiger: Right.
David Gilbert: On X, there’s a veneer that this is a mainstream platform, that there are some kind of rules and there’s some kind of content moderation. But as you said, some of the posts around this and one of the conspiracy theories that actually affects X more than anywhere else is that she’s ineligible to be president because neither of her parents were born in the United States. Now, that’s been debunked many times.
