Leah Feiger: Well, yes, no, in your reporting you shared posts of people calling him the DEI candidate. That’s what’s going on, and it’s not just Trump who’s sharing this in the public sphere. These were conspiracies that were being repeated legitimately on Fox and everywhere else.
David Gilbert: After those fringe platforms, we saw people like Laura Loomer, who was commonly referred to as fringe.
Leah Feiger: Yes, it’s been a pretty funny journey from Republican candidate for a Florida congressional district to American right-wing activist.
David Gilbert: But now she’s more mainstream because of her connection to Trump’s platform. She…
Leah Feiger: Oh my god, the thought of calling Laura Loomer mainstream sends shivers down my spine.
David Gilbert: I know, but I think we have to, because she’s now an integral part of the online conversation in the Republican Party. From my perspective, at least she’s now a member of the mainstream Republican Party, not some fringe figure we can ignore.
Leah Feiger: yes, I mean…
David Gilbert: But yeah, you were saying about Fox News, it spread very quickly from private Telegram channels, to fringe message boards, to X, and then, as you said, to Fox News.
Leah Feiger: Yes Yes.
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 saying, I think she said, “I’m sorry, just being a minority doesn’t qualify you to be president.” I think a day later, the New York Post posted an op-ed that said, “America could soon be under the country’s first DEI president.”
Leah Feiger: Correct.
David Gilbert: So this is a story that is spreading, practically overnight, from very fringe, pro-Trump, extremist message boards to the front pages of newspapers and mainstream TV.
Leah Feiger: Is there any content moderation? I mean, in your reporting, and we should talk about this, these posts were not small. As you said, it went from the fringes to the mainstream really quickly and got millions and millions of views.
David Gilbert: Yes, as I said earlier, no racist or misogynistic content is removed or deleted on platforms like Gab and Telegram. In fact, people go there because they can post such content.
Leah Feiger: Correct.
David Gilbert: On X, there’s this kind of pretense that it’s a mainstream platform, that there are some sort of rules, and some sort of content moderation system. But as you said, some of the posts around it, and one conspiracy that really took hold on X more than anywhere else, was that he’s ineligible to be president because both of his parents weren’t born in the US. Now, this has been debunked many times.
