'Flat-out lie': Analyst says Trump intel chief is encouraging violence on the MAGA circuit

Editor's Note: This story has been updated for clarity.

Salon Reporter Amanda Marcotte says director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard is knowingly cultivating violence from supporters of President Donald Trump by inflating the facts of a federal memo on the role COVID-19 disinformation played in domestic terrorism.

Marcotte says Gabbard declassified the memo and took it to the right-wing punditry circuit, pushing the “flat-out lie” that President Joe Biden was labeling Americans as "terrorists" because they opposed COVID-19 mitigation measures like masks and vaccines. The memo does not say this, and Biden did no such thing, says Marcotte, but by pushing this lie, Gabbard is encouraging the kind of radicalization “that does lead to domestic terrorism.”

“For those who bother to read the 2021 memo, the report isn't surprising, but simply stating the obvious fact that far-right extremists ‘threatened or plotted violence against the healthcare sector and state and local government officials’ in 2020,” Marcotte writes.

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The memo anticipated there could be a secondary round of threats in 2021 in response to the COVID-19 vaccine, but it did not equate the U.S. anti-vaccine movement with terrorism. Rather, the memo was careful to identify members of organized militias and white supremacist groups as using anti-vaccine sentiment as an excuse to foment violent threats.

“The average anti-vaccination MAGA rube is not part of this memo,” Marcotte said. “They may be disease vectors, but no, the FBI did not think they were terrorists.”

But that did not stop Gabbard from appearing on Fox News last week and telling entertainer Will Cain the memo was proof of an "ominous" plot by the Biden administration to target people for "using their First Amendment rights" and to label them a "domestic terror threat."

A footnote on Page 4 of the memo declared, "The mere advocacy of political or social positions, political activism, use of strong rhetoric, or generalized philosophical embrace of violent tactics may not constitute violent extremism and are constitutionally protected." Yet Gabbard “keeps shamelessly lying about this,” says Marcotte.

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“She retweeted right-wing pundit Michael Shellenberger's declaration that "the Biden administration viewed millions of Americans as a terrorist threat." She also retweeted Cain insisting that the Biden administration labeled ‘some COVID-19 opponents 'domestic violent extremists,' as if it was their views on COVID-19 alone that drew the label.

Marcotte argues the jingoistic wordplay gives cover to an administration declaring its own war on free speech as Trump moves “to arrest people who have broken no laws, simply because they voice opinions he doesn't like.” She is also encouraging more violent extremism by creating a victim narrative in the MAGA community “that extremists can use to justify violence.”

“Her story is that they are innocent people unjustly targeted by the nefarious Biden administration. Having been recast as victims, any violence they commit now can be narrated as 'self-defense' against the imaginary Democrats coming for their free speech rights,” Marcotte said.

Read the full Salon report here.