On Tuesday, a Delaware jury found President Joe Biden’s son Hunter guilty of federal gun crimes. The verdict comes amid a yearslong right-wing media effort to delegitimize the federal justice system as a weaponized arm of the Democratic Party.
Reasonable minds would think this conviction may cause conservative media to reconsider their assumptions — think again. MAGA propagandists responded by coalescing around a new twist in their conspiracy theory-addled fever dreams: The conviction is an “op” in which Hunter Biden is being deliberately sacrificed to protect the rigged system and that the trial is a “red herring” that is “meant to distract the American people” from “much larger crimes of the Biden crime family.”
- Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk declared, “This is a fake trial trying to make the Justice system appear balanced. Don’t fall for it.”
- America First Legal’s Stephen Miller: “The gun charges are a giant misdirection. An easy op for DOJ to sell to a pliant media that is all too willing to be duped. Don’t be gaslit. This is all about protecting Joe Biden and only Joe Biden.”
- Real America’s Voice Jack Posobiec said, “They went after Hunter on his gun stuff to make you overlook all his Ukraine stuff.”
- Newsmax host Rob Schmitt called Hunter Biden’s trial a “psyop.”
To put this in some perspective — Donald Trump, his former campaign chair, his former campaign manager, his former legal fixer, his longtime political adviser, his company’s chief financial officer, and several of his other associates have been convicted of, or pleaded guilty to, crimes since he became president in 2017.
Right-wing propagandists responded to the legal woes of Trump world by concocting a baroque conspiracy theory positing that the federal law enforcement apparatus under both the Trump and Biden administrations was seeking to take down Trump through “witch hunt” investigations while protecting top Democrats. But the Hunter Biden verdict shows how bankrupt the right’s conspiracy theory is.
As Media Matters’ Matt Gertz puts it: “To a normal person, a federal criminal conviction of Joe Biden’s son demonstrates that there is not a massive conspiracy to use the law enforcement system to protect Joe Biden’s allies and attack his enemies. But the one thing MAGA propagandists refuse to be under any circumstances is normal. They want their excuse to throw their enemies in jail, and they’ll do whatever it takes to retain it.”
Advisory board members for Project 2025 have attacked or outright called for the end of no-fault divorce, the option to dissolve a marriage without having to prove wrongdoing by a partner.
This is part of a larger trend of MAGA and far-right media figures pushing for the removal of no-fault divorce laws across the country. Several local Republican parties in Texas, Nebraska, and Louisiana have also called for the dissolution of no-fault divorce in some capacity.
Project 2025 is backed by a nearly-900 page policy book which outlines potential approaches to governance for the next Republican administration, including replacing federal employees with extremists and Trump loyalists and attacking LGBTQ rights, abortion, and contraception. Project 2025 is also supported by a coalition of over 100 conservative organizations, many of which have spent years promoting critiques of no-fault divorce as “destructive” for society — or even blaming it for enabling a “culture of death.”
We’ve been warning you about the dangers posed by Project 2025 in this newsletter and will continue to do so — this plot poses a significant threat to the health of our republic and the freedoms all Americans cherish.
Last month, we told you that far-right figures were telling their audience to drink raw milk during a bird flu outbreak among dairy cows. Now we can add the right-wing youth organization Turning Point USA to that list.
The group recently released a T-shirt for sale featuring an image of a cow and the words “got raw milk?” Additionally, Turning Point USA host Alex Clark has repeatedly promoted drinking raw milk, including claiming that “raw milk is nearly perfect for pregnancy.”
As we said last time, drinking raw milk has always been risky, but a recent H5N1 bird flu outbreak now makes it even more dangerous. The Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control have both warned against consuming the product. So, don’t let right-wing personalities convince you to consume something that could be dangerous for your health.
