Leah Feiger: Well, yes, no, in your reporting, you shared posts from people calling you a DEI candidate. That’s what’s circulating, and it’s not just Trump who’s sharing it in the public sphere. These were conspiracies that were legitimately being repeated on Fox and everywhere else.
David Gilbert: After those fringe platforms, we saw people like Laura Loomer, who would normally be called fringe.
Leah Feiger: Yes, a very entertaining journey from Republican candidate for Florida’s congressional district to American far-right activist.
David Gilbert: But now she has become more well-known because she has ties to the Trump platform. She…
Leah Feiger: Oh my god, the thought of calling Laura Loomer an ordinary person really sends shivers down my spine.
David Gilbert: I know, but I think we should because she is now an integral part of the online discourse in the Republican Party and, in my view, at least she is now part of the mainstream Republican Party, rather than a fringe character that we can ignore.
Leah Feiger: Yes, I mean…
David Gilbert: But yeah, you were saying that Fox News very quickly went from private Telegram channels to fringe message boards, to X, to, as you say, Fox News.
Leah Feiger: Mmmmm.
David Gilbert: I think it was on a show called Outnumbered, which I’d never heard of before, but it was a host named Julie Banderas, and she was talking about how her daughters speak more eloquently than Harris, before adding that, I think she said, “I’m sorry, just because you’re a minority doesn’t make you fit to be president.” I think a day later, the New York Post published an op-ed that said, “America may soon be subject to the country’s first DEI president.”
Leah Feiger: Good.
David Gilbert: So this is a narrative that is spreading overnight, virtually, from very fringe, pro-Trump, extremist message boards to the front pages of newspapers and on mainstream television.
Leah Feiger: Is there any kind of content moderation? I mean, in your reporting, and we should talk about this, these were not small posts. This really, as you said, went from being fringe to mainstream pretty quickly and had millions and millions of views.
David Gilbert: Yes, as I said before, on platforms like Gab and Telegram, no racist or misogynistic content is and has not been removed. In fact, that’s why people go to those platforms, because they can post that kind of stuff.
Leah Feiger: Good.
David Gilbert: On X, there’s kind of a veneer that it’s a mainstream platform, in the sense that there are some kind of rules and there’s some kind of content moderation. But like you said, some of the posts around this, and one of the conspiracy theories that really took hold on X more than anywhere else, was that she’s not eligible to be president because her parents weren’t born in the US. Now, this has been debunked many times.