The far right’s response to reporting that Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore repeatedly pursued teenage girls while in his 30s, molesting one 14-year-old, has been fast and furious. For his part, Moore says the Washington Post, which ran the carefully sourced piece, “will be sued.” Presumably by him? Meanwhile, his allies at Breitbart News and among the pizzagate wing of the Republican Party are trying frantically to discredit the piece, and Moore’s victims, through typically sleazy means.
Steve Bannon has sent two of Breitbart News' top reporters, Matt Boyle and Aaron Klein, to Alabama. Their mission: to discredit the Washington Post's reporting on Roy Moore's alleged sexual misconduct with teenagers.
And, no doubt, to make any of Moore’s victims who haven’t spoken out yet think twice before doing so. But that’s the less desperate end of the far right’s response, believe it or not. Gross, evil, and cruel, but in a way that’s all too common when a powerful man faces sexual misconduct charges.
What the conspiracy theorists of the far right are doing with this is extra special. They’ve seized on a tweet by an account that’s been shown to lie repeatedly about the user’s supposed military record while promoting birther lies and blaming the Texas church shooting on antifa. The Twitter user, @umpire43 and going by Doug Lewis #MAGA, is now claiming that “A family friend who lives in Alabama just told my wife that a WAPO reporter named Beth offered her 1000$ to accuse Roy Moore????” Because the way real Americans from the heartland write dollar amounts is with the dollar sign after the number. Despite that little glitch in national identity, and the raft of known and blatant lies from this “person,” Infowars has run with the story and:
According to social tracking tool BuzzSumo, a post parroting the Twitter user's claim on the far-right website, the Gateway Pundit, has already received more than 7,500 likes, shares, and comments on Facebook, and nearly 4,000 engagements on Twitter.
In other words, there are an awful lot of people who will take the word of an obvious Twitter troll over the word of four women and their friends and families, because it’s just that important to prop Roy Moore up and women matter just that little.
Can you chip in $3 to help Doug Jones defeat Roy Moore?