Know Your Right Wing Conspiracy Memes, Part 376

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


I was chatting with a friend the other day about the different universes that liberals and conservatives inhabit these days. It’s not just that partisans become constantly obsessed with new shiny objects, but that their shiny objects are so wildly different. And very often, folks on one side have no idea that the shiny objects on the other side even exist.

Take today, for example. Here’s the home page at Drudge:

Spoiler alert: He’s the lead Secret Service agent on Hillary Clinton’s detail. The Secret Service confirmed this a month ago during yet another shiny object hunt, when they wearily explained that an object seen in his hand was a flashlight, not a diazepam injector in case Clinton had a seizure.1 Now, though, we’ve apparently moved on: the Drudge story—from the same lunatic who peddled the diazepam idiocy—suggests that the guy isn’t even a Secret Service agent. “Do you think the media will ever ask the campaign about this guy?” he asks in boldface, knowing they never will because they all know perfectly well who he is.

And just as Sean Hannity gleefully picked up the fake diazepam story, Drudge is now picking up the fake “not a Secret Service agent” story. It is this week’s conservative shiny object, and most people will never even know it’s making the rounds. But it is. This is your conservative media at work.

1This was—and still is—part of the crank conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton having some mysterious disease that she’s hiding from the public, presumably to ensure that Tim Kaine becomes president when she keels over and dies.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate