The Trump mouthpiece’s newest catchphrase tries to paint conservative women as victims of the feminist left
Enlarge(Credit: Getty/Brendan Smialowski/Bryan R. Smith/ Chip Somodevilla/Salon/Mireia Triguero Roura)
Last weekend, Kellyanne Conway sat down with “CBS This Morning” for an in-depth one-on-one interview designed to make the political operative described by Samantha Bee as President Donald Trump’s “omnipresent spokes-cobra” seem less of a sentient Two Truths and a Lie drinking game and more like an actual human. In this interview, Conway appeared to be testing the waters for a new Kellyanne Katchphrase™ when she claimed that she and other conservative women are subject to “a triple standard” by the media, specifically “traditional feminist outlets.”
“We are constantly going back to where I sat, the presumptive negativity of what I wore, or what I said, and I do think it’s a triple standard,” Conway told correspondent Norah O’Donnell. “People talk about a double standard of what a woman wore or said, but the triple standard is that conservative women are cast aside many times by traditional feminist outlets and individuals who control most of the media.”
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 00:41
‘Last Night in Sweden’
Video At a campaign-style rally in Florida on Saturday, President Trump issued a sharp critique of Europe’s refugee policies, ticking off a list of places that have been struck by terrorists. But he also mentioned Sweden, which has not been target of recent terrorist attacks.
SEWELL CHAN
FEBRUARY 19, 2017
LONDON — Swedes reacted with confusion, anger and ridicule on Sunday to a vague remark by President Trump that suggested that something terrible had occurred in their country.
During a campaign-style rally on Saturday in Florida, Mr. Trump issued a sharp if discursive attack on refugee policies in Europe, ticking off a list of places that have been hit by terrorists.
“You look at what’s happening,” he told his supporters. “We’ve got to keep our country safe. You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this?”
By TERRENCE MCCOY The Washington Post – Mon., Nov. 21, 2016
Jobless in May, Paris Wade and Ben Goldman were ruling an empire built on Facebook shares by the time of the vote, influencing millions with rumours, exaggeration, conspiracy theories and lies.
Paris Wade, left, and Ben Goldman at their apartment in Long Beach, Calif. (STUART PALLEY / FOR THE WASHINGTON POST)
LONG BEACH, CALIF.—Fewer than 2,000 readers are on his website when Paris Wade, 26, awakens from a nap, reaches for his laptop and thinks he needs to, as he puts it, “feed” his audience. “Man, no one is covering this TPP thing,” he says after seeing an article suggesting that President Obama wants to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership before he leaves office. Wade, a modern-day digital opportunist, sees an opportunity. He begins typing a story.
“CAN’T TRUST OBAMA,” he writes as the headline, then pauses. His audience hates Obama and loves president-elect Donald Trump, and he wants to capture that disgust and cast it as a drama between good and evil. He resumes typing: “Look At Sick Thing He Just Did To STAB Trump In The Back …”
Ten minutes and nearly 200 words later, he is done with a story that is all opinion, innuendo and rumour. He types at the bottom, “Comment ‘DOWN WITH THE GLOBALISTS!’ below if you love this country,” publishes the story to his website, LibertyWritersNews.com, and then pulls up the Facebook page he uses to promote the site, which in six months has collected 805,000 followers and brought in tens of millions of page views. “WE CANNOT LET THIS HAPPEN!” he writes, posting the article. “#SHARE this 1 million times, patriots!” Then he looks at a nearby monitor that shows the site’s analytics, and watches as the readers pour in.
“Down with the globalists,” writes a woman in Cape Girardeau, Mo., one of 3,192 people now on the website, 1,244 of whom are reading the story he just posted.
“Down with the globalists!” writes a man in Las Vegas.
“DOWN WITH THE GLOBALISTS !!!” writes a woman in Helena, Mont.
At a time of continuing discussion over the role that hyperpartisan websites, fake news and social media play in the divided America of 2016, LibertyWritersNews illustrates how websites can use Facebook to tap into a surging ideology, quickly go from nothing to influencing millions of people and make big profits in the process. Six months ago, Wade and his business partner, Ben Goldman, were unemployed restaurant workers. Now they’re at the helm of a website that gained 300,000 Facebook followers in October alone and say they are making so much money that they feel uncomfortable talking about it because they don’t want people to start asking for loans.
Enlarge(Credit: Getty/Brendan Smialowski/Bryan R. Smith/ Chip Somodevilla/Salon/Mireia Triguero Roura)