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I like to call myself that, because it really triggers people when I do, Mike Cernovich said, his voice tinny but robust with wry satisfaction, when I asked if he thinks of himself a journalist. People get angry, he added. I consider myself a writer, foremost a nonfiction writer. And I write about whatever interests me, and lately, the drama of all the things happening in D.C. interests me. So, in that regard, Im definitely a journalist in the sense that I am breaking news and writing news that other people dont have.

Had Cernovich said that a year ago, there would have been reason to laugh.

Back then, he was a mens-rights activist and self-help guru beloved by the alt-right trolls populating social media with Pepe the Frog memes and anti-Semitic, racist, and misogynistic missives. His major contributions to the political discourse included run-of-the-mill pro-Trump propaganda, like labeling the presidential debates rigged, as well as more creative messaging, like perpetuating rumors that Hillary Clinton (who remains alive as of press time) was near death due to some unholy combination of Parkinsons and syphilis. On his blog, Danger and Play, Cernovich promoted the conspiracy that would become known as Pizzagate, the story that prominent Democrats connected to Clinton were part of a child sex-trafficking operation headquartered in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant that does not have a basement. There was a map to probably, probably child trafficking or something like that, probably the sex cult shit. Thats why it was coded, he speculated on Periscope on November 4, 2016, after studying a leaked email to Clintons campaign chairman John Podesta that included a puzzling reference to a map. These people are fucking sick, man.

But Cernovich is taking a different, arguably savvier approach to expanding his profile and influence in Donald Trumps America. Hes become less reflexively pro-Trump and denounced the alt-right, preferring the term new right while acknowledging that his ideology is a complex terrain that can mostly be defined as a hybrid of populism and nationalism. Hes distanced himself from Pizzagate, claiming in our discussion that hes not responsible for how, in his words, that thing went off the rails, because I never named a pizza parlor. And hes refocused himself on using his substantial platform more than 325,000 Twitter followers, plus millions of viewers on Periscope and YouTube to break news that mainstream journalists are forced to chase, confirm, and, increasingly, cite.

A question you hear often in Washington these days isWho, exactly, is talking to Mike Cernovich? Among the D.C. press corps there is a palpable curiosity about his sources inside the West Wing and on the National Security Council. In just the past few weeks he broke the news of Reince Priebuss firing and was the first to report on and obtain a memo outlining Anthony Scaramuccis White House press strategy.

Ive been playing a tighter game, Cernovich told me. People keep their distance and I respect that. But I think now that when I tweet things out and people actually go and chase down what Im tweeting, especially with national security stuff, they find out that there is at least something there. Sometimes it might be an unconfirmed rumor, but Im not sitting here thinking, Oh, what can I write on Twitter that I made up in my mind? It is actual, real stuff that people are talking about within the intelligence community, or whatever people want to say. You have to earn credibility, you have to earn respect, you have to earn trust.

But who is trusted these days, and who gets to be a Real Journalist? The president got elected after a campaign that was as much about rebranding the monolithic media as fake news as it was about rejecting his political opponent. According to a June 28 Gallup poll, only 27 percent of Americans have a great deal of confidence in newspapers. Television and digital news fared even worse. Yet the numbers are bleaker for the White House. According to an August 7 CNN poll, just 24 percent of Americans trust what they hear from officials, while 30 percent say they trust nothing at all. It makes sense, then, that personalities have become more popular than institutions, and that someone like Cernovich has found a grassroots audience for the information he collects that contributes to their shared beliefs about the world. The minor outrage when he was granted a pass to enter the White House briefing room missed the point entirely.

Cernovich explained a rather cinematic process by which he obtains his tips and information, like if Inspector Gadget, not Robert Redford, had walked into the dimly lit garage inAll the Presidents Men. Most of the stuff I do is shadowy anyway: Meet people in parks, nobody brings a cell phone, which is important, he said, because deep state can detect if you and I are in the same room, thats all shown by a cell phone. They know right away whos meeting. So, when youre meeting with really top sources or whatever, you dont want your cellphones to ever be within range of each other because that can be found. And all of that is being monitored, of course, but theyll deny that never, never spy on journalists. Bullshit! Thats all being monitored.

We were having this conversation on what he called his main number, which is not the number his sources contact him on. Thats a device that doesnt have any association to me or my phone records or anything. So, if somebody found that phone, whats the proof? And people are calling me from burner cell phones. And its all on Signal. So, good luck with that, people!

He admitted, My op-sec is fucking paranoid. When I tell people about it, at first they dont believe it because it sounds so elaborate or whatever.

His sources within the White House and the administration more broadly, he claimed, number in the dozens. He repeated himself for emphasis, duhhhzenz.

A lot of people are afraid to lie to me, he said, because they know that if they lie to me and they burn me, that I would seek revenge. And I would seek revenge in a way that maybe a traditional journalist wouldnt seek revenge. He added that he would do so, legally, lawfully, I wouldnt break any laws or anything. I would start snooping around in that persons life, man.

Still, bullshit tips do fall into his lap. But his process for vetting a source tends to weed those out quickly. This amounts to asking the source to tell him information until he feels hes heard enough to determine if theyre credible, something he says he does sometimes without even learning the persons name.

Cernovich claims that on April 2 an anonymous source called him on Signal to tell him that former national security adviser Susan Rice had requested the disclosure of the identities of Americans including many related to the Trump campaign and transition in raw intelligence reports, a process known as unmasking. He wrote up the tip on Medium, and then watched as it took off on social media, with help from the Drudge Report, Kellyanne Conway, and Donald Trump Jr., the presidents son, who suggested that were the media not rigged, Cernovich would receive a Pulitzer Prize.

The press, however, didnt give him much credit for his scoop. A single anonymous source does not typically meet the threshold for publishing news at most media outlets, for starters. And then there was the issue of taking Cernovich seriously at all, given that his earlier work included stuff like a video where a sickly muppet rendering of Clinton collapsed and rose from the dead repeatedly. So when Bloomberg Viewreported the same news on the morning of April 3, citing U.S. officials familiar with the matter, it was treated differently with total legitimacy.The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal,the New York Post, andthe Washington Times, either unaware or dismissive of the fact that Cernovich was first, wrote that Bloomberg had broken the story.And when Cernovich was cited, byNBCfor instance, it was typically within the context of stories that downplayed the newsworthiness of Rices actions the implication being, if the Pizzagate loon is the one with the intel, perhaps the intel isnt all its cracked up to be.

But by late July, everything had changed, both in how Cernovich perceived the Trump White House, and in how the press perceived Cernovich.

At 3:29 p.m. on July 28, Cernovich took to Twitter to report that a source close to POTUS informed him, Reince has been told hes out. The president himself would not announce the decision until 4:49 p.m., while sitting aboard Air Force One on a tarmac in Washington. And although other reporters would go on to say theyd heard rumors of the decision before it came down, Cernovich had the advantage of operating without the barrier of an editor or publisher or any other organizational structure that might inhibit speed but also lower the odds of a fuck-up.

The reason that Im so fast at what I do is Im not saying that Im getting stories that nobody else has the difference is that if a tip goes out to five people, and I know that its a reliable source, I just tweet it out, he told me. If youre at a respectable news organization, that would be considered irresponsible. So, me, Im just like, Oh. Sounds good. This is a vetted source. Im rocking and rolling. Lets get out and get the conversation going.

On August 2, when he reported the details of what he called The Mooch Memo a document created by the erstwhile White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci before his firing, detailing his plans for a comms strategy other reporters hurriedly confirmed the news and obtained their own copies of the document. CNN noted, It was first published by right-wing media personality Mike Cernovich on Medium. As did Slate, Newsweek, and the New York Daily News, among many others. After Cernovich reported last week that Scaramucci was planning to hold some kind of press event in the wake of his firing, Bloomberg backed up the rumor before CNN reported the specifics of the online town hall scheduled for last Friday (which Scaramucci eventually canceled).

Would you want to go work in the Trump White House after what happened to Mooch today? Cernovich asked his internet audience on July 31, after Scaramucci was fired. If you say yes, youre telling me that you dont really have any options in life. Youre telling me that youre desperate for power, or you dont really have options in life. Otherwise, why in the world would you give up anything for the White House?

Criticizing the president in terms like that is part of his evolution. One way that Ive changed is that if six months ago I had gotten a big story that wouldve hurt Trump, I probably wouldnt break that story, he said. I would have given that story to somebody else to break. But now, Id probably break that story. He told me his decision to be less pro-Trump than I was is about trust, and his realization that although he has a political agenda, being truthful will necessarily mean disagreeing with the president sometimes. This means trust from the public and the rest of the media. I want people to know, Hey, if youre reading my stuff, I do have an agenda. I do have a bias. But what you read is gonna be within the realm of truth, he explains. It also means trust from his sources, who believe he is acting genuinely, and, in a way, transparently.

He added, I wouldnt say all journalism is activism, but I would say most journalism is activism and he includes in that assessment his own work, the objective of which is to get out stories that advance my view of the world. Even with his shift toward a kind of professionalism, that worldview does still include what you might call conspiratorial beliefs, like that some all-powerful they installs pedophiles into elected office as a means of controlling their actions through blackmail.

Recently that has meant leading the charge against National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster. To Cernovich and those of his new-right-whatever-we-are-calling-it-now ilk, McMaster is a globalist warmonger who stands in opposition to the Trump ethos including the surgical removal of National Security Council officials allied with his predecessor, Michael Flynn, and the chief White House strategist, Steve Bannon (whom McMaster removed from the NSC principals committee earlier this year).

Cernovichs reporting on the NSC has concerned McMaster, according toThe Atlantic. During a meeting last month,The Atlanticreported, McMaster mentioned Cernovich by name. He did bring it up and said, This guys been targeting our people, he is posting personal information that has to have come from the inside, a source close to McMaster told the publication.

In our conversation, Cernovich elaborated on what he meant by reporting on things within the realm of truth by pointing to a rumor about McMasters personal life. Because this rumor is so pervasive, according to Cernovich, nobody would accuse him of making it up out of thin air. He said he believes its acceptable to report on a rumor if its a reliable source, because in that case, I dont consider it a rumor. I consider it true. If anything, that might be too tabloid, and I dont have an issue with tabloid-style journalism at all. He does have what he called a platform rule that amounts to: If youre nobody, Im not gonna make you somebody.

I wont do that kind of journalism, he said, But if youre a public figure and youre in the game in the way McMaster is, thats a little bit different. Even lower-level staffers, he said, could be saved by the platform rule, because at a certain point, its just kind of fucking with a persons life with no good reason. Thats bad karma.

The Senate Majority Leader suggests Trumps impatience led to Trumpcares defeat. Trump thinks McConnell is just making excuses.

Subtle.

It may be just a small straw in the wind, but a Democrat won in one of those midwestern small town districts Trump won, despite GOP culture-war ads.

He has a brain tumor right now that vote occurred at 1:30 in the morning, some of that might have factored in, Senator Ron Johnson said.

The president nearly blunders into war completely by mistake.

Two LGBTQ legal organizations filed a lawsuit on their behalf.

At a time when the president could use some calm, pacific advice in dealing with North Korea, one leading spiritual counselor is egging him on to war.

The home, which was recently bought at auction, is now listed on Airbnb with amenities such as a giant cut out of Donald in the Living Room.

Robert Mueller apparently convinced a judge that there was probable cause to believe Trumps excampaign manager had committed a crime.

The president shook up a tight three-way race for the GOP Senate nomination by endorsing Mitch McConnells candidate just days before the primary.

Trumps suggestion comes as he rejects his drug commissions recommendation to declare a national emergency.

A standoff with no good options is made worse by the unpredictability of Kim Jong-un and the American president.

Meanwhile, Sebastian Gorka announces that were living through a modern Cuban Missile Crisis, and so all criticism of the president must cease.

The U.S. and China have different goals, and Russia is happy to take a back seat.

The Truman Show solution.

That probably wont stop President Trump from going after the special counsel and the other prosecutors on his team.

Even if he wasnt planning to escalate a dangerous situation, that was the effect.

The alt-right favorite is distancing himself from Trump and rebranding as a journalist because it really triggers people.

While many people think Congress is enriching itself, its actually too poor in policy knowledge and resources to do much more than take orders.

Tensions are ramping up on the Korean peninsula.

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Mike Cernovich Pivots From Pizzagate to Not-So-Fake News - New York Magazine

Members of 4chan's /pol/ board, the hotbed of the alt-right, are pretty active in Britain, as the conspiracy theories around Grenfell Tower fire and the terror attack at Ariana Grande concert show.

But this time they have stepped up their game.

Hackers from /pol/ claimed responsibility on 4chan for breaking into a billboard in the heart of Cardiff's busy shopping district and using it to broadcast swastikas, images about Islam, a Big Brother message from George Orwell's 1984 and a photo of Donald Trump as alt-right meme Pepe the Frog.

Members of the channel boasted about the op in several posts, saying they'd be "broadcasting images of your choice" and inviting people to "post memes you want to be on the big screen in the thread".

As you can see, a fake declaration that the area was under Sharia Law ended up on the billboard:

South Wales Police said they received a number of calls related to the incident. "We alerted the city council and will investigate any crimes which may have been committed," a spokesman said.

The council then reached out to BlowUP Media, the company that runs the billboard, and it has since been turned off.

See more here:
Alt-right hackers take over billboard to broadcast swastikas and Trump as Pepe the Frog - Mashable

With bright yellow tape, scattered bullets and blood-spattered fabric, the Bemis Library looked like a crime scene. And for all intents and purposes, last Thursday, it was.

For the eighth year, area teenagers gathered at the library for a three-day CSI police program hosted in collaboration with the Littleton Police Department.

In the first two days, participants explored the science of solving crime and learned about fingerprints, shoe prints, crime-scene diagramming and photography, bloodstain analysis and more. On the final day, they put their skills to the test when they paired up to work an mock crime scene.

Kathy Le, 18, first participated in the CSI program when she was a freshman at Littleton High School. Le enjoyed it so much she came back as a sophomore and again as a recent high school graduate.

Ive learned something new every single time, she said. The community is always just very nice and welcoming and helpful.

Teen librarian Mark Decker initially came from Jeffco Public Libraries, where he hosted a two-hour presentation in conjunction with the Sheriffs Office. When he came to Bemis, he contacted the Littleton Police Department, hoping to start a similar program at his new location.

In his discussions with Littletons crime scene investigation team, the idea morphed into a more intensive multi-day program. Decker said the program is a great opportunity for students to learn about their local police department.

They get positive interaction with the police department. They get to see how hard cops have to work and stuff that they have to deal with everyday, he said.

The CSI police program can be beneficial for those interested in law enforcement, since it provides real-world experience and a practical idea of what a police job would entail. But its not intended solely for those aspiring to join the force. For others, Decker said, its just a cool program where one can get hands-on experience.

Le knows this firsthand. Next year, she will attend the University of Colorado at Denver and study biology on a pre-med track. Though she doesnt plan to work for a police department, Le considers her experiences with the CSI police program invaluable and recommends it for all.

Go for new experiences and try out for it whether you end up liking it or not, Le said.

The Littleton Police Citizen Academy Alumni Association provided volunteers who helped out with the event. Karen Wojdyla was one of those volunteers and said she came on the first day of the program to help set up.

Its nice to come back and actually do the crime scenes with the students, Wojdyla said as she watched two teens investigate a drug deal gone wrong outside the library during their final exercise. Its a great program.

Decker tipped his hat to Cheri McAlister and Bob Silvas, the LPD crime scene technicians who lead the program and volunteer their time to share what they do.

The two CSI people that are here theyre still working, and theyre the only CSI people in Littleton. We had one year when they got called on a case the night before, and we had to adapt, Decker said.

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Teens get real-world experience in crime scene investigation - Columbine Courier

World Net Daily announced that it had dropped Ann Coulter from the speaking roster of its upcoming ultra-conservative Taking America Back conference. WND is an online news source that regularly features editorials from right-wing pundits like Pat Buchanan, Pat OReilly, and Chuck Norris in addition to news articles of interest to conservatives. Coulter has been writing for WND for more than a decade, and was lined up to be the keynote speaker at Taking America Back in Florida.

But last night, the website broke a story about the ousting of Coulter from the conference (can you break a story about yourself?), citing her involvement with another conference as the reason. Coulter (who has used derogatory, homophobic language publicly) is booked to speak at GOProuds upcoming HOMOCON. GOProud has even gone so far as to call Coulter the right wing Judy Garland.

None of this sits well with WND. The article includes the follow excerpt of the dialog with Coulter regarding HOMOCON:

WND founder Joseph Farah asked: Do you not understand you are legitimizing a group that is fighting for same-sex marriage and open homosexuality in the military not to mention the idea that sodomy is just an alternate lifestyle?

Ann Coulter responded: Thats silly, I speak to a lot of groups and do not endorse them. I speak at Harvard and I certainly dont endorse their views. Ive spoken to Democratic groups and liberal Republican groups that loooove abortion. The main thing I do is speak on college campuses, which is about the equivalent of speaking at an al-Qaida conference. Im sure I agree with GOProud more than I do with at least half of my college audiences. But in any event, giving a speech is not an endorsement of every position held by the people Im speaking to.

So shes relieved of keynote duties. The upside for Coulter? According to WND, they are going to retain her as a weekly columnist.

Read the full article here: WND dumps Ann Coulter from Miami due to Homoconflict.

Read the original here:
Ann Coulter loses conservative speaking engagement due to involvement with HOMOCON - Wisconsin Gazette

Liberals only wish.

Last week, the president joined Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.) to announce legislation that would make seminal changes to our immigration laws for the first time in nearly half a century, profoundly affecting the entire country.

The media have chosen not to cover the RAISE Act (Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment). This bill is their worst nightmare.

Instead of admitting immigrants on the basis of often specious family ties, the bill would finally allow us to choose the immigrants we want, based on merit, with points granted for skills, English proficiency, advanced degrees, actual job offers and so on.

Most Americans have no idea that we have zero say about the vast majority of immigrants pouring into our country. Two-thirds of all legal immigrants get in not because we want them or even because Mark Zuckerberg wants them but under idiotic family reunification laws.

The most important provision of the RAISE Act would define family the way most Americans think of it: your spouse and minor children.

Unfortunately, thats not how the Third World thinks of family. In tribal societies, family means the whole extended clan adult siblings, elderly parents, and brothers-in-law, plus all their adult siblings and elderly parents, and so on, ad infinitum.

Entire tribes of immigrants are able to bully their way in and, as legal immigrants, are immediately eligible for a whole panoply of government benefits. Suddenly, theres no money left in the Social Security Trust Fund, and Speaker Paul Ryan is telling Americans theyre going to have to cut back.

At some point, American businesses are going to have to be told they cant keep bringing in cheap foreign labor, changing the country, and offloading the costs onto the taxpayer. But thats not this discussion. Business owners want cheap workers not the disabled parents of cheap workers.

In a sane world, merely introducing such an important bill with the imprimatur of a president elected on his immigration stance would force the media to finally discuss the subject they have been deliberately hiding from the public.

Has Trump personally endorsed any other legislation like this? He harangued congressional Republicans on Twitter to pass some Obamacare replacement, but he never endorsed a specific bill.

But, you see, theres a reason the media dont want to talk about immigration.

With a full public airing, Americans would finally understand why recent immigrants seem so different from earlier waves, why income inequality is approaching czarist Russia levels, why the suicide rate has skyrocketed among the working class, and why all our government benefits programs are headed toward bankruptcy.

As Stephen Miller, the presidents inestimable speechwriter, said, some legislative proposals can only succeed in the dark of night and some can only succeed in the light of day. This is a light-of-day bill.

So, naturally, the media refuse to mention it, except to accuse Miller of being a white nationalist for knowing hate-facts about the Emma Lazarus poem not being part of the original Statue of Liberty. (Its theStatueof Liberty, notStatute of Liberty,media.)

They ignore this bill so they can get on to the important business of Trumps tweets, whos up and whos down in the White House, and Russia, Russia, Russia.

According to my review of Nexis archives, there was only a single question about the RAISE Act on any of the Sunday morning shows: Chris Wallaces last question to his very important Republican guest. Unfortunately, his very important Republican guest was amnesty-supporting nitwit Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who sniped about Trump employing foreign guest workers at Mar-a-Lago.

However that may be, guest workers have absolutely nothing to do with the RAISE Act, which, as Miller heroically tried to explain to clueless reporters, concerns only green-card holders, i.e., lawful permanent residents not guest workers, not illegal aliens and not a poem Scotch-taped onto Lady Liberty in 1903.

At least the media arent deluded about the popularity of their position. Discussing immigration is a total loser for them. They know what they want is not supported by anyone.

Low-wage workers dont want hundreds of thousands of low-skilled immigrants being dumped on the country every year. Employers dont want the deadbeat cousins of their cheap workers. Americans on public assistance dont want foreigners competing with them for benefits. Boneheaded Scandinavian communities that welcomed refugees dont want to turn their entire town budgets over to various foreign tribes.

In a recent Numbers USA poll of voters in 10 swing states with vulnerable Democratic senators up for re-election next year, only 22 percent of respondents thought immigrants should be allowed by right to bring in family other than spouses and minor children.

Make the senators vote, Mr. President!

Donald Trump was elected president, beating the smartest, most qualified woman in the world, by proposing to put Americans first on immigration. This bill makes good on that promise.

Theres a reason the media wont discuss it. If Trump were smart, hed talk about nothing else.

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Ann Coulter: Trump Got Your Tongue, Media? - Breitbart News