Only the 'crazies' and 'lizard people' left after Trump purges the press corps: analysis

When Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth demanded journalists agree not to report anything without formal authorization from the Defense Department, he sent a mass evacuation of legitimate media from the press corps.

What’s left, writes Slate reporter Molly Olmstead, is … really something.

“The Pentagon has remade its press corps, and we’re starting to get an understanding of which people now are allowed access to the halls of power,” said Olmstead, who included a list of the “top hits” that Hegseth’s considers “valid journalism of interest to the public.”

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell “peddled his 2020 election conspiracy theories through a number of avenues, including his video streaming site,” wrote Olmstead. “As a result, LindellTV has been subject to the same defamation lawsuits that Lindell himself courted, but it carries on with a host of right-wing shows, including the signature Mike Lindell Show.”

LindellTV’s reporters frequently pester Democrats with MAGA lies dressed up as legitimate questions, prompting Nancy Pelosi to publicly snap at them for churning nonsense and MSNBC hosts to blast them for spreading lies to a LindellTV audience that is “too stupid to know the truth.”

And when their reporters are not spouting lies, Olmstead says they’re fawning over President Donald Trump’s “fitness plan” and asking press secretary Karoline Leavitt when Trump plans to go public with it.

Another sycophantic organization still hanging around is The One America News network, which Olmstead describes as “about as extreme as it gets without tipping fully into Alex Jones lizard-people territory.”

“It has promoted hydroxychloroquine as a ‘miracle cure’ for COVID; spread ominous conspiracy theories about George Soros; speculated that Michael Cohen, not Donald Trump, had an affair with Stormy Daniels; and declared that Roy Moore was innocent and actually won his election,” said Olmstead. “It has also hired Matt Gaetz as a host.”

“Human Events” is another example of the lingering press corps flotsam, said Olmstead.

“This is the latest home for Jack Posobiec, a content creator so inflammatory that being seen as cozy with him — as Hegseth was, in inviting Posobiec on an overseas trip — can lead to major scandal,” said Olmstead. “Posobiec, who has connections to various hate groups, is known primarily as the man behind Pizzagate. … He remains extreme: “Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely,” he said at last year’s Conservative Political Action Conference.

The Navy revoked Posobiec’s security clearance as a U.S. naval intelligence officer on reserve, after his involvements with the Unite the Right white supremacist rally.

The list continues with spurious far-right networks like the National Pulse, whose leader was so inflammatory that Australia’s Labor Party asked to ban him from the country, Olmstead reports. Another is The Epoch Times, which Olmstead points out has been charged with money laundering and is “a dedicated promoter of right-wing conspiracy theories, going so far as to create a network of YouTube channels amplifying hoaxes and election misinformation.

The list goes on, and Olmstead said all will “inevitably benefit from a veneer of legitimacy from the credentialing and from the ‘scoops’ they’re given.”

Read the Slate report at this link.