About this episode
As Trump tried to subvert American democracy, he told DOJ officials that they were not “following the internet the way I do.” He was referring in part to ultra-rightwing conspiracy site Gateway Pundit—run by the so-called “dumbest man on the internet.” This week’s episode of Fever Dreams goes inside how the habitually wrong website so influenced the president that he carried print-outs of its articles around the West Wing as he pushed the Justice Department to declare a fraudulent election. (One official says he threw the printouts in the trash. Or maybe recycled them.) Hosts Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng also break down how new restrictions on anti-vaxxers are convincing some of them to finally get the jab, and how ISIS militants have infiltrated the alt-right’s new social media network Gettr. Elsewhere on the episode, Daily Beast reporter Kelly Weill talks about how all those conspiracies about Trump retaking power in August are now imploding, and reporter Steven Monacelli breaks down how a flyer purportedly from Black Lives Matter groups making the rounds in Texas—which asked white parents to pledge to not send their kids to Ivy League schools—was in fact the work of a conservative PR firm and was amplified by the right-wing media ecosystem.. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.