Leah Fager: Yeah, well, no, in your reporting you shared posts of people calling her the DEI candidate, that’s what was trending, and Trump is not the only one in public who is sharing this, these were conspiracies that were being repeated on Fox and everywhere.
David Gilbert: After these fringe platforms, we saw people like Laura Loomer, who would normally be called fringe.
Leah Fager: Well, that’s a very interesting pipeline from Republican congressional candidate in Florida to far-right activist in America.
David Gilbert: However, she has become more mainstream now because of her association with Trump’s policies. She…
Leah Fager: God, the idea of calling Laura Loomer mainstream actually gives me chills all over.
David Gilbert: I know, but I think we need to, because she’s now such a fixture in the Republican online discussion that she’s at least a mainstream Republican figure, not just some fringe figure that we can ignore.
Leah Fager: Well, I mean…
David Gilbert: But, yeah, you mentioned Fox News, and it went very quickly from private Telegram channels to minority message boards to X to, as you say, Fox News.
Leah Fager: Yes Yes.
David Gilbert: Certainly, OutnumberedIt was a show I’d never heard of before, and the host, Julie Banderas, said, I think, “I’m sorry, but just because you’re a minority doesn’t mean you’re fit to be president,” after saying that her daughters speak more eloquently than Harris. I think the next day, the New York Post ran an editorial that said, “America may soon have its first DEI president.”
Leah Fager: right.
David Gilbert: So this is a story that has spread virtually overnight from a handful of extremist pro-Trump message boards to front pages of newspapers and mainstream television.
Leah Fager: Is there any content moderation going on at all? I mean, according to your reporting, and we should be talking about this, these posts weren’t small. Like you said, this went really quickly from minor to mainstream, with millions of views.
David Gilbert: Well, as I said, platforms like Gab and Telegram do not and have never removed racist or misogynistic content, in fact the reason people go there is because they can post that kind of stuff.
Leah Fager: right.
David Gilbert: On X, there is the pretense of being a mainstream platform in that there are some rules and there is some content moderation in place, but as you said, some of the posts about this, and one of the conspiracies that really took hold on X more than anywhere else, was that she was ineligible to be president because her parents weren’t born in the United States, which has now been denied many times.
