MAGA’s comeuppance
It looks like yet another conspiratorial MAGA figure’s hand has been forced. This time, it’s Dinesh D’Souza, who produced the widely discredited film 2000 Mules, a cornerstone of conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. After years of insisting that voter fraud was a crisis, D’Souza has now apologized and admitted that his claims, which fueled election deniers like Donald Trump, were baseless, according to a report from the New York Times.
While this development is significant, it is not an isolated incident. MAGA has a history of stubborn insistence that eventually leads to quiet retractions, if not legal comeuppance. Not long ago, for example, J.D. Vance, joined the MAGA chorus falsely claiming that Haitians coming to the United States were eating pets. Later, after much damage was done, Vance casually suggested that this inflammatory, xenophobic claim was a story meant for rhetorical effect. “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” he told CNN’s Dana Bash in September.
In another example, InfoWars founder Alex Jones gained popularity by baselessly and cruelly insisting that the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax. After years of harassment, the grieving families won a historic defamation judgment against him, shutting his operation down $1.5 billion later.
Let’s also not forget the disgraced Rudy Giuliani. His attacks on Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, two Georgia election workers, are a textbook example of how MAGA disinformation can ruin lives. A leading election denier, Giuliani falsely accused them of manipulating ballots, which led to threats and harassment. Fortunately, a court awarded Freeman and Moss $148+ million in damages a year ago (leading Giuliani to recently claim “I can’t buy food,” after several asset seizures), representing yet another low in Giuliani’s tragic, bumpy ride as he continues circling the drain.
D’Souza’s apology is just the latest too-little-too-late admission in a long list of retractions and judgments that have caused substantial harm both to innocent individuals as well as to our democracy. All these examples show MAGA’s reliance on disinformation, then doubling and tripling down to spark outrage, gain power and win elections at all costs. Who will be next?
Ron Leshnower is a lawyer and the author of several books, including President Trump’s Month