On MSNBC, Angelo Carusone explains that the right-wing echo chamber has been in lockstep reacting to Trump's latest indictment
Carusone: “It's one of the few weeks we've had in a while where there's almost uniformity. Whether it's Fox News, or talk radio, or Alex Jones, they're all saying the same thing.”
Published
Citation From the August 5, 2023, edition of MSNBC's American Voices With Alicia Menendez
ALICIA MENENDEZ (HOST): With me now, Angelo Carusone. He is the president of Media Matters. Angelo, if you watch right-wing media, if that is what you consume in any form, what is it that you believe happened this past week?
ANGELO CARUSONE (PRESIDENT & CEO, MEDIA MATTERS FOR AMERICA): You believe that the deep state, which the -- not just the extremists on the right, but the mainstream Republicans now believe that, that this was sort of the next step in their plan to persecute Donald Trump. And not just Donald Trump, but then that they would then come after you next. That's what you believe. It doesn't matter what part of right-wing media you watch. It's one of the few weeks we've had in a while where there's almost uniformity. Whether it's Fox News, or talk radio, or Alex Jones, they're all saying the same thing. And that's what you believe. You believe this was just another step in a big plot to come at you.
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MENENDEZ: OK, so I'm so sorry to ask our viewers to watch that. But I think it is important because what you see at the end there is this mainstreaming of the idea of retribution.
CARUSONE: That's it, revenge. And that's sort of the fuel that's here.
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Because that wasn't just Jesse Watters at Fox News, that was a very big narrative all across the right-wing echo chamber, was that this is it, this is why you have to get out there and vote. Because Donald Trump is going to be your mechanism for revenge against all of these people. And so, and that I think is a really powerful motivator. So, they're not just spinning all these lies and conspiracies. You heard about the damage of disinformation. They're also giving people a call to action. And the call to action isn't immediately violence, but they are priming that pump as an ends justify the means.
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So you put that poison into the system, and let's not forget they have a delivery mechanism. It's not just the right-wing media. They have all these QAnon figures and all these individuals that are spreading these ideas by word of mouth. They're just putting the poison into the system, and one by one plucking off the individuals on the margin because there are no antibodies in the system against this type of misinformation, this type of disinformation. And the process that led up to January 6 is playing out very similarly right now in the right-wing media. I'm not trying to be alarmist
about it, but this is just a reflection of what we're seeing every single day.