The Trump Family's exemplar of "real news:"
President Trump has frequently derided the news media as “fake news,” and on Tuesday his son, Donald Trump Jr., told the world there was one person he wants to see win the Pulitzer Prize, the highest honor in American journalism: Mike Cernovich.
Those who do not closely follow the world of Conservative social media might be moved to ask, who?
Fair question.
Who is Mike Cernovich?
Mr. Cernovich is a blogger, author of books, YouTube personality and filmmaker with a far-right social media following. Much of his online persona is driven by two mottos: “conflict is attention” and “attention is influence.”
He told The New Yorker, “I use trolling tactics to build my brand.”
Before this week, he was perhaps best known for promoting false claims that Hillary Clinton was part of a pedophile ring located in the basement of a pizzeria. He describes himself as an “American nationalist” and has been involved in shaping alt-right messages on social media, according to The New Yorker. But he has denied being part of the alt-right movement, calling it “too obsessed with gossip and drama for my tastes” in a blog post.
“Until the right wins for once, I have no interest in arguing with the alt-right or disavowing anyone,” he wrote. “Once the right has some actual power, then it will be time to have an ideological civil war.”
This has been a busy few days for Mr. Cernovich, who lately has been promoted by people close to the president more than once. A day before the younger Mr. Trump’s tweet, for example, Kellyanne Conway, an adviser to the president, shared a link to an interview Mr. Cernovich recently gave to CBS’s “60 Minutes.”
Mr. Cernovich started out several years ago as a men’s self-help writer whose work disdained feminism and promoted a message of men’s empowerment that often dwelled on the question of how to meet women (He is now married with an infant daughter). His advice to straight men, the subject of a book and video talks: Men should be dominant alpha males and embrace a “gorilla mindset” when dealing with the opposite sex.
He has long been criticized for his argument that date rape is a liberal fiction. In a blog post published last October, he called it a “harmful concept for men and women” that leads to false rape accusations.
“Lying about being in love to sleep with someone isn’t rape,” he wrote. “Getting played isn’t rape. Regret isn’t rape. Thinking, ‘I might have been date raped,’ means you weren’t raped.”
What about his role in politics?
Mr. Cernovich now focuses mainly on politics. From his base in Southern California, he has become influential in parts of social media, helping to shape the far-right narrative. He uses a steady stream of tweets and videos to promote conspiracy theories and factually incorrect claims that he bills as hard-hitting journalism.
During the presidential campaign, for example, he doggedly promoted false stories that claimed Mrs. Clinton had serious ailments like Parkinson’s disease. He also argued that she was linked to a nonexistent pedophile sex cult located in the basement of a pizzeria in Washington, D.C.
That conspiracy theory, known as #PizzaGate, spread widely online and inspired a gun-wielding man to show up at the restaurant to investigate the claims (he was arrested). Mr. Cernovich insisted the conspiracy was true in an hourlong YouTube video that also claimed most people employed by the news media and “every A-list actor” in Hollywood were also pedophiles.
During his recent “60 Minutes” appearance, Mr. Cernovich said that he never named the pizzeria at the center of the #Pizzagate conspiracy theory and called the shooting a “very unfortunate thing.” He also said his claims about Mrs. Clinton’s health were based on an anonymous tip sent to him by a doctor who had never examined Mrs. Clinton before and had no access to her medical records. Nevertheless, he stood behind his claims.
“They’re definitely not fake,” he said. “They are not lie at all. 100 percent true.”
Why is he in the news this week?
In a blog post published on Sunday, Mr. Cernovich wrote “the White House Counsel’s office identified” Susan E. Rice, President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, “as the person responsible for the unmasking” Trump associates who were caught up in the electronic surveillance of foreigners. Similar reports were published by other news organizations.
“Unmasking” is the process by which a high-ranking official, such as a national security adviser, requests the identity of a person whose name has been blacked out in an intelligence report. It does not mean leaking that information to a third party.
Donald Trump Jr. praised Mr. Cernovich’s post on Twitter and said he was the first person to publish this information. In an email on Tuesday, the president’s son declined to answer questions on the record about Mr. Cernovich or his blog post.
Ms. Rice denied any wrongdoing in an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday. She said she sometimes asked the identities of American citizens whose names had been redacted from intelligence reports because she needed that information to properly understand the context of the reports. She said it was part of doing her job and was “absolutely not for any political purpose, to spy, expose, anything.”
“I leaked nothing to nobody and never have and never would,” Ms. Rice said in the interview.
How does Mr. Cernovich respond to his critics?
After the president’s son tweeted about him, Mr. Cernovich said he was inundated with media requests, which he gleefully rejected one by one in a rambling live YouTube monologue. Holding his infant daughter in his arms, Mr. Cernovich derided the media as a cabal of “trust fund kids” and “trash.”
Mike Cernovich Press Conference to address fake news Video by Mike Cernovich
“They have no idea what it’s like to struggle the way I struggle and the way the working class struggles, and that’s why I am a hero of the working class,” he said.
He added that he would not respond to media requests. “I don’t want to be your friends. I don’t respond to your emails.”
But Mr. Cernovich did respond to a direct message from me on Twitter asking about the Susan Rice blog post on Tuesday evening. In the reply, he denied that the White House Counsel’s Office had been the source for his blog post about Ms. Rice, even though it said as much in the second paragraph.
“I never mentioned sources in my original report and disavow any reports that I have sources within the White House,” he said.
He also twice suggested that I buy his book “Gorilla Mindset.”
In that exchange and subsequent public tweets that included screen shots of his direct-message replies, he also criticized The Times and some of its reporters by name, implied that the Mexican billionaire and Times shareholder Carlos Slim has a role in news coverage (he does not), and generally attacked the integrity of its journalists, living and dead, and its journalism, past, present and future.
During his YouTube broadcast on Tuesday, Mr. Cernovich denied accusations from critics that he is a misogynist, a rape apologist or a white nationalist. He said his past statements had been taken out of context and called some of them “obvious satire” that had been misinterpreted in bad faith.
“Nobody tells you how to be famous,” he said.
Later, shortly before appearing on a talk show hosted by Alex Jones, another far-right conspiracy theorist, Mr. Cernovich said he did not care if the media portrayed him positively or not.
“Look at me,” he said, speaking into the camera. “I did this to Susan Rice. I did this to Hillary Clinton. I’m doing real journalism. I’m destroying your fake news outlets. Look at me. Look at my face. I’m the media now.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/...bio-who.html&eventName=Watching-article-click
President Trump has frequently derided the news media as “fake news,” and on Tuesday his son, Donald Trump Jr., told the world there was one person he wants to see win the Pulitzer Prize, the highest honor in American journalism: Mike Cernovich.
Those who do not closely follow the world of Conservative social media might be moved to ask, who?
Fair question.
Who is Mike Cernovich?
Mr. Cernovich is a blogger, author of books, YouTube personality and filmmaker with a far-right social media following. Much of his online persona is driven by two mottos: “conflict is attention” and “attention is influence.”
He told The New Yorker, “I use trolling tactics to build my brand.”
Before this week, he was perhaps best known for promoting false claims that Hillary Clinton was part of a pedophile ring located in the basement of a pizzeria. He describes himself as an “American nationalist” and has been involved in shaping alt-right messages on social media, according to The New Yorker. But he has denied being part of the alt-right movement, calling it “too obsessed with gossip and drama for my tastes” in a blog post.
“Until the right wins for once, I have no interest in arguing with the alt-right or disavowing anyone,” he wrote. “Once the right has some actual power, then it will be time to have an ideological civil war.”
This has been a busy few days for Mr. Cernovich, who lately has been promoted by people close to the president more than once. A day before the younger Mr. Trump’s tweet, for example, Kellyanne Conway, an adviser to the president, shared a link to an interview Mr. Cernovich recently gave to CBS’s “60 Minutes.”
Mr. Cernovich started out several years ago as a men’s self-help writer whose work disdained feminism and promoted a message of men’s empowerment that often dwelled on the question of how to meet women (He is now married with an infant daughter). His advice to straight men, the subject of a book and video talks: Men should be dominant alpha males and embrace a “gorilla mindset” when dealing with the opposite sex.
He has long been criticized for his argument that date rape is a liberal fiction. In a blog post published last October, he called it a “harmful concept for men and women” that leads to false rape accusations.
“Lying about being in love to sleep with someone isn’t rape,” he wrote. “Getting played isn’t rape. Regret isn’t rape. Thinking, ‘I might have been date raped,’ means you weren’t raped.”
What about his role in politics?
Mr. Cernovich now focuses mainly on politics. From his base in Southern California, he has become influential in parts of social media, helping to shape the far-right narrative. He uses a steady stream of tweets and videos to promote conspiracy theories and factually incorrect claims that he bills as hard-hitting journalism.
During the presidential campaign, for example, he doggedly promoted false stories that claimed Mrs. Clinton had serious ailments like Parkinson’s disease. He also argued that she was linked to a nonexistent pedophile sex cult located in the basement of a pizzeria in Washington, D.C.
That conspiracy theory, known as #PizzaGate, spread widely online and inspired a gun-wielding man to show up at the restaurant to investigate the claims (he was arrested). Mr. Cernovich insisted the conspiracy was true in an hourlong YouTube video that also claimed most people employed by the news media and “every A-list actor” in Hollywood were also pedophiles.
During his recent “60 Minutes” appearance, Mr. Cernovich said that he never named the pizzeria at the center of the #Pizzagate conspiracy theory and called the shooting a “very unfortunate thing.” He also said his claims about Mrs. Clinton’s health were based on an anonymous tip sent to him by a doctor who had never examined Mrs. Clinton before and had no access to her medical records. Nevertheless, he stood behind his claims.
“They’re definitely not fake,” he said. “They are not lie at all. 100 percent true.”
Why is he in the news this week?
In a blog post published on Sunday, Mr. Cernovich wrote “the White House Counsel’s office identified” Susan E. Rice, President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, “as the person responsible for the unmasking” Trump associates who were caught up in the electronic surveillance of foreigners. Similar reports were published by other news organizations.
“Unmasking” is the process by which a high-ranking official, such as a national security adviser, requests the identity of a person whose name has been blacked out in an intelligence report. It does not mean leaking that information to a third party.
Donald Trump Jr. praised Mr. Cernovich’s post on Twitter and said he was the first person to publish this information. In an email on Tuesday, the president’s son declined to answer questions on the record about Mr. Cernovich or his blog post.
Ms. Rice denied any wrongdoing in an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday. She said she sometimes asked the identities of American citizens whose names had been redacted from intelligence reports because she needed that information to properly understand the context of the reports. She said it was part of doing her job and was “absolutely not for any political purpose, to spy, expose, anything.”
“I leaked nothing to nobody and never have and never would,” Ms. Rice said in the interview.
How does Mr. Cernovich respond to his critics?
After the president’s son tweeted about him, Mr. Cernovich said he was inundated with media requests, which he gleefully rejected one by one in a rambling live YouTube monologue. Holding his infant daughter in his arms, Mr. Cernovich derided the media as a cabal of “trust fund kids” and “trash.”
Mike Cernovich Press Conference to address fake news Video by Mike Cernovich
“They have no idea what it’s like to struggle the way I struggle and the way the working class struggles, and that’s why I am a hero of the working class,” he said.
He added that he would not respond to media requests. “I don’t want to be your friends. I don’t respond to your emails.”
But Mr. Cernovich did respond to a direct message from me on Twitter asking about the Susan Rice blog post on Tuesday evening. In the reply, he denied that the White House Counsel’s Office had been the source for his blog post about Ms. Rice, even though it said as much in the second paragraph.
“I never mentioned sources in my original report and disavow any reports that I have sources within the White House,” he said.
He also twice suggested that I buy his book “Gorilla Mindset.”
In that exchange and subsequent public tweets that included screen shots of his direct-message replies, he also criticized The Times and some of its reporters by name, implied that the Mexican billionaire and Times shareholder Carlos Slim has a role in news coverage (he does not), and generally attacked the integrity of its journalists, living and dead, and its journalism, past, present and future.
During his YouTube broadcast on Tuesday, Mr. Cernovich denied accusations from critics that he is a misogynist, a rape apologist or a white nationalist. He said his past statements had been taken out of context and called some of them “obvious satire” that had been misinterpreted in bad faith.
“Nobody tells you how to be famous,” he said.
Later, shortly before appearing on a talk show hosted by Alex Jones, another far-right conspiracy theorist, Mr. Cernovich said he did not care if the media portrayed him positively or not.
“Look at me,” he said, speaking into the camera. “I did this to Susan Rice. I did this to Hillary Clinton. I’m doing real journalism. I’m destroying your fake news outlets. Look at me. Look at my face. I’m the media now.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/...bio-who.html&eventName=Watching-article-click
