What is going on at Newsweek?
It’s not so much a news organization anymore as it’s a weird fever dream blog, publishing weird fever dream anti-Trump conspiracies.
Take, for example, a doozy of a report published this week titled “How an alt-right bot network took down Al Franken.”
Former Sen. Al Franken was taken down by his predilection for unwanted touching and kissing of women around him. He was taken down by the seven women who stepped forward to accuse him of various sexual improprieties. He was taken down by the photographic evidence of his inability to grasp appropriate boundaries with women. Sen. Franken took down Sen. Franken, and his unwillingness to fight the charges, if anything, appears incriminating.
Now, what is this Newsweek article on about, then?
Well, according to reporter Nina Burleigh, one of the former senator’s accusers, Leeann Tweeden, deserves to be shamed as some sort of sleazy model.
“Analysts have now mapped out how Hooters pinup girl and lad-mag model Leeann Tweeden’s initial accusation against Franken became effective propaganda after right-wing black ops master Roger Stone first hinted at the allegation,” Burliegh wrote.
That’s a curious passage, considering Tweeden’s bio also includes radio broadcaster and television host. But those roles aren’t salacious and suggestive enough, now are they? When Democrats are accused, it’s time for nuts and sluts.
The Newsweek article also includes these lines: “[O]n November 20, right-wing provocateur Charles Johnson tweeted, ‘Thinking of offering money to people who go on tv and say Al Frank is a predator.’” Except that Charles Johnson tweeted no such thing on Nov. 20, on account of the fact that his Twitter account was suspended permanently in May 2015.
That’s not all. As it turns out, the Newsweek story hinges entirely on an op-ed that was published after 40 Democratic senators had already called on the Minnesota lawmaker to resign.
“On December 7, a day after Democrats started calling for Franken to step down, the freshly minted Japan-based fake sites went to work and re-published an article by Ijeoma Oluo, a liberal writer, urging women and activists to stop supporting Franken,” Burliegh writes.
She added, “Oluo had posted the opinion piece, titled ‘Dear Al Franken, I’ll Miss You but You Can’t Matter Anymore,’ on a much smaller website, with a reach of 10,000 followers.”
So … wait. If I understand this correctly, Burliegh’s claim here is that a network of trolls took down Franken by retweeting an article that was published after his Senate colleagues had already told him to beat it.
Also, Dec. 7 was the very day that Franken announced his resignation from the U.S. Senate. An army of bots got Franken to resign on the very same day they shared an obscure blog post? Wow, those Russians really are effective!
Trolls are real. Russian troll farms are real. Attempts by hostile foreign powers to spread disinformation in the U.S. are real.
This Newsweek article, however, is a steaming heap of you-know-what.
(h/t Alex Griswold)
