Finally someone is doing something about the false claims of election fraud.
This ‘Pillow Guy’ Mike Lindell’s ranting had to be cut off by News Max.
There is one point these false claims ignore: The ballots were recounted manually and the results of both manual and machines agreed. How can the Trumpsters claim that the voting machines were wrong when they were the same as manual counts? The Trumpsters’ claims are plainly false.
The Dominion voting machine company has sued Giuliani for a huge amount and that has scared the right wing newsmedia. Dominion says they have been threatened and harassed by Trumpsters.
Smartmatic has sued Fox News and its pundits for $2.7 billion for defamation. This is serious, it’s a lightning bolt that should wake up these trash talking news companies.
What I find incredible is the Trumpsters, encouraged by the right wing newsmedia, have made the most outrageous claims and gotten away with much of it. Except for one instance, the father of a victim of Sandy Hook killings sued Alex Jones’ Infowars for insisting that Sandy Hook was fiction and the shooting victims were acting.
Now, the Trumpsters are claiming that there was election fraud in the ‘swing states’ Trump lost. And the right wing newsmedia gave them lots of time to tell this false narrative that the voting was rigged. But after Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems sued for more than a billion dollars, the right wing newsmedia realized there was going to be severe legal and financial consequences for letting the right wing freely tell false narratives. So now the newsmedia is cutting off the Trumpsters to prevent being sued.
The first amendment protects the ‘press’ newsmedia, but that doesn’t protect newsmedia from being sued for falsely accusing innocent victims. It’s something that everyone has to thoroughly understand: you can’t make false claims that cause others harm without having to answer for your lies. If you open your mouth and slander, the legal system is going to rip your rosy red lips off. You will have to “put up or shut up” — you’ll have to defend your false narratives in court or you’ll lose and be heavily indebted for the rest of your life.
What is puzzling is that the has been going on so long without being stopped in its earliest stages. Hillary Clinton was defamed by the Russians and others in the US during her election campaign in 2015-16. Before that, Trump and all the other ‘birthers’ were falsely claiming that Obama was not a US citizen, and Obama was a Muslim.
I remember Hulk Hogan sued the Sun news for publishing secret sex tapes, and he won. In the past there have been other slander lawsuits in the news. The newsmedia has always had protection, by the first amendment, from government interference, but the first amendment does *not* apply to private citizens and businesses.
There are protections for whistleblowers against revealing illegal actions by businesses. But that’s not the case with a person or business telling false narratives about someone else.
The extremists, both right and left, have used false information to gain political advantage. Political action committees have built their influence on promoting false narratives, and hundreds of millions of $$ have been spent in elections to gain political advantage. Much of this negative campaigning has been false information. The Russians call this “active measures” where they get bogus articles published in newsmedia that are later used to back up their “credible” claims. Sometimes others use for credibility an article in newsmedia that is not for, but against their claim, knowing that most readers will not read the article that was referenced. Very seldom do the false narrators get caught and have to retract their claims. That’s one reason why the newsmedia have brought online fact checking websites to debunk the myths put out by “fake news” newsmedia.
Update Feb 22 –
Dominion Voting Systems is suing Mike “My Pillow” Lindell for $1.3 Billion for defamation. In December Lindell claimed Dominion machines caused voting fraud. Lindell said he welcomes the lawsuit. I think it’s going to cost him a lot of $$.
