Anatomy of a smear: How far-right websites spread a fake story about Pete Buttigieg

[spanone]

(CNN)This is a story about how political operatives tried to take down a presidential candidate, and ended up just humiliating themselves.

It's also a story about how a smear was spread by right-wing websites -- and was cleaned up by newsrooms that took some time to check the facts.

On April 29 someone shared a post titled "Pete Buttigieg Sexually Assaulted Me" on Medium, a site that lets anyone upload stories, essays and any other bit of text. It was attributed to a college student named Hunter Kelly.

Within hours, the fake allegation against the South Bend, Indiana mayor and Democratic presidential candidate would begin to crumble, and the real story -- the story of the smear campaign -- would emerge.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/05/media/anatomy-smear-pete-buttigieg-fake-story/index.html

[Arkansas Granny]

1. Brought to you by Jacob Wohl, a James O'Keefe wannabe.

[malaise]

2. The hate industry is all fake

Lock them up

[suffragette]

3. Wasn't the FBI investigating Wohl and Burkman after their false accusations against Mueller?

Seems like they should already be locked up.

[malaise]

4. Precisely

[suffragette]

5. Seems there is a financing industry funding the likes of them and O'Keefe.

They don’t care that their smears keep getting caught, as long as they manage to plant the lies in some people’s minds.

The backers need to be rooted out.

[malaise]

6. I read here last week that Koch funded O'Keefe

They have a well-oiled industry made up of fake shit.
What disturbs me the most is that it is rich old racist fools destroying the country just before they croak. I don't get it.

[suffragette]

7. Disturbs me, too. Koch, Mercer, DeVos/Prince. Super wealthy families devoted to pushing the worst

on the U.S. and globally.

They fund people like Wohl here and Bannon and the far right in Europe.

And they don’t let up, not for a minute.