“Conspiracy theory” is the go-to smear against those of us who questioned any aspect of the government’s authoritarian response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But as the great Austrian economist Murray Rothbard once observed, the smear serves one purpose: to divert the public’s attention away from the truth.
“An attack on ‘conspiracy theories,’” Rothbard writes in “The Anatomy of the State,” means that the subjects of a regime “will become more gullible in believing the ‘general welfare’ reasons that are always put forth by the State for engaging in any of its despotic actions.”
The democratization of information means that censorship just doesn’t work as well as it used to.
“A ‘conspiracy theory,’” he continues, “can unsettle the system by causing the public to doubt the state’s ideological propaganda.”
The more I dig into the origins of the COVID pandemic, the more “despotic” our state seems to become — and the more “conspiratorial” I get.
I am trying to put together the final pieces of the puzzle of what I consider among the greatest public policy scandals of my lifetime — not only who did it, but more importantly, why would they do it?
A few months ago, I spent a day with Matt Taibbi, the iconoclastic muckraker and “Twitter Files” reporter, for the latest episode of my BlazeTV investigative series, “The Coverup.”
As he dug through the trove of emails and texts, Taibbi discovered the conspiracy to blacklist and silence Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the subject of the first episode of “The Coverup” and now the head of the National Institutes of Health. Taibbi soon learned that the same tactics and tools — and even many of the very same deep-state actors — have their fingerprints all over both the Russia collusion hoax and the COVID cover-up.
Recently released documents from Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard reveal that the so-called Russia collusion hoax wasn’t just wrong — it was deliberate. The Obama administration orchestrated the fabrication, pushing U.S. intelligence agencies to leak a report suggesting Vladimir Putin had helped Donald Trump steal the 2016 election.
That leak, repeated endlessly by the press, fueled a national narrative branding Trump’s presidency as illegitimate — despite those same agencies having already dismissed the claim.
This kind of manipulation would be outrageous if it weren’t so familiar.
Five years after the COVID lockdowns stripped millions of Americans of basic liberties, we’re still uncovering how the deep state used propaganda to silence dissent. Throughout the pandemic, scientists and doctors raised alarms about the damage lockdowns would cause — and did cause. Some of the world’s most respected experts signed the Great Barrington Declaration to oppose the government’s heavy-handed response.
But the public never heard from them. Bureaucrats and media allies moved swiftly to smear, suppress, and sideline these voices using one of the oldest authoritarian tactics: control of information.
In fairness, public health agencies didn’t have to twist many arms. The legacy media followed their lead willingly — even when the guidance contradicted itself or defied basic logic.
But unlike the days of Project Mockingbird, when the CIA could shape coverage by nudging the New York Times or CBS, controlling the old guard wasn’t enough. The rise of social media — decentralized, fast-moving, and open to anyone with a computer or phone — posed a new challenge. The administration needed a more aggressive strategy to dominate the narrative.
In episode 5 of “The Coverup,” I ask Taibbi how they pulled it off. As one of the first journalists to dig into the Twitter Files, Taibbi exposed the machinery behind the censorship regime. Americans suspected that platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube were suppressing dissent during COVID. But the Twitter Files confirmed what many feared: They weren’t acting alone. They took orders from the FBI directly.
And these weren’t polite requests, either. When the government “suggested” something, tech companies treated it as a command.
It all traces back to — surprise, surprise — the Russia hoax.
In 2017, Congress hauled tech executives into hearings and accused them of letting Russian disinformation run wild. Essentially, they were given an offer they couldn’t refuse: Allow the government to play a role in content moderation or prepare to be regulated into submission.
RELATED: On the 9th anniversary of Russiagate, the hoax is finally crumbling
Their surrender gave U.S. intelligence agencies de facto control over what Americans could say online. The feds told platforms which posts to delete, which users to silence, and how to suppress the rest. You could post your opinion — as long as no one could see it. “Shadow bans” became the preferred method of censorship: clean, quiet, and deniable.
Thanks to Taibbi — and a handful of journalists who still value truth over access — we now see how the government sold Americans on fiction. Russia hacked the election. COVID came from a bowl of bat soup. Question either and you’d vanish from the digital public square.
Millions believed these lies. And under their influence, they did real damage — locking down schools, closing businesses, and sowing doubt about fair elections.
But truth has a way of leaking out.
It’s taken time, but the lies are unraveling. And that’s the silver lining. In a world where information moves faster than censors can keep up, suppression doesn’t work like it used to. So long as we have truth-tellers willing to dig and defy — like Taibbi — the regime won’t have the last word.
We won’t get fooled again.
Episode 5 of “The Coverup” premieres Thursday, July 31.
During a press conference last week in the Oval Office, a reporter asked President Trump how it’s possible that we know more about a couple from a Coldplay concert just hours after their extramarital affair was exposed on social media than we do about Thomas Crooks more than a year after he came within centimeters of killing the president in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Despite thousands of interviews and hundreds of hours combing through photos and videos, the public still knows very little about the would-be assassin. Not his motive, not how he gained access to a nearby rooftop, not even how he built two remote-detonated bombs he ultimately never used.
Until any of us are given reason to believe transparency in any particular case is harmful to the constituents we serve, our duty is to demand it at every juncture.
Trump responded that he believed the FBI when the organization told him investigators didn’t find anything, clarifying that his conversation was with the “new” FBI leadership, not the corrupt organization led by James Comey or Christopher Wray — leadership he would never trust.
Though Trump has placed widely trusted figures within the FBI, six months is hardly enough time to place faith in the same institution that has been weaponized against him for nearly a decade. Institutional rot undoubtedly runs deeper than its top brass.
The ambiguity surrounding Trump’s failed assassin should be met with absolute scrutiny. The lack of information about Crooks is not an anomaly — it’s the signature of a bureaucracy that hoards information from the public under the pretext of “national security” or “ongoing investigations.”
This culture of concealment has infected Washington for decades. Bureaucratic elites, along with their stakeholders, have presumed the authority to decide what the public should know — if anything — and release only information that suits their agenda.
Americans have been promised transparency and accountability across generations. They almost never get it. Such entrenched power calls into question who truly holds the keys to power in Washington.
Consider the John F. Kennedy assassination. For more than 60 years, the public has doubted the official narrative pushed by the intelligence community — and rightly so. Just days after President Kennedy’s funeral, a Gallup poll revealed that a majority of Americans didn’t believe that the shooter acted alone. The lack of transparency that still persists decades following the case has only fueled speculation.
In one of my first hearings on the Task Force on Declassification of Federal Secrets, experts confirmed what President Trump’s March declassification made undeniable: The CIA repeatedly lied to Congress about its ties to Lee Harvey Oswald.
Just days ago, the agency tacitly admitted that its 1963 testimony — claiming to have had only limited knowledge of Oswald — was a lie. Newly released documents show that the CIA’s liaison to Congress, George Joannides, not only concealed an “off-the-books” anti-Castro operation that had interacted with Oswald, but he also earned the CIA’s Career Intelligence Medal for stonewalling Congress’ investigation.
For nearly 62 years, a bureaucratic agency commissioned by Congress, funded by Congress, and subject to congressional oversight lied to Congress. And not only did it get away with it, it was rewarded.
If the body that created the CIA can’t hold the agency accountable, who can?
Not even the executive branch has succeeded. Republican and Democratic presidents alike have failed to force full compliance with the 1992 JFK Assassination Records Collection Act. Under Trump’s first term, the public was given the familiar excuse from the intel community: “It’s a national security concern.”
Do the American people have to wait six decades — and for all involved to be long dead — before knowing the truth about what their supposed representative government has done? Who decides when and what we get to know? If not the people, if not Congress, if not the president — then who?
RELATED: The CIA’s greatest failure: Intelligence
This is why the Jeffrey Epstein case matters to the public and why it can’t be swept under the rug. The “files” and our inability to even learn who was involved in the crimes that placed Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell in jail are a testament to the ugly truth: In the words of James Madison, “A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps both.”
The American people have become several steps removed from the decision-making power in Washington. Information and the means of acquiring it — and thereby, the ability to even know whom to hold accountable — have been almost entirely lost. Perhaps our government is, as Madison asserts, “a prologue to a farce or a tragedy.”
As members of Congress, it is our duty to do everything in our power to uphold the Constitution and deliver to the American people the transparency that sustains trust in our democratic Republic. Until any of us are given reason to believe transparency in any particular case is harmful to the constituents we serve, our duty is to demand it at every juncture.
In preparation for a recent doctor's appointment, I had to go online and complete a patient intake form. One of the questions asked for the patient's sex. In the past, I was given two choices — without necessary clarification. On this form, which is apparently standard these days, I saw this:
MALE
FEMALE
(Sex Assigned at Birth)
This kind of lunacy has been endorsed by the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association, ostensibly in the name of something called "safetyism" (i.e., to err on the side of not hurting anyone's delicate feelings).
God’s plan for the world is self-evident, and it requires us to put on our work boots and be His hands and feet.
America’s founders, perhaps inadvertently, caught on to this whole idea of “that which is obvious” when composing the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” Back in their day, everyone was on board with certain statements — for example, “All men are created equal.”
Our founders were merely stating the facts, and they were asking men and women of good will to sign on — along with the 56 representatives of the 13 original colonies who put their “official” John Hancocks on the document. These men, along with every patriot living in America at the time, pledged their “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor,” putting their blood and treasure on the line in the unknown and dangerous fight ahead.
Yet nearly 250 years later, many Americans can’t even perceive these truths, let alone fight for them.
How did this change?
Could it be that failing to believe in nature and nature's God — another of these self-evident truths of yesteryear — has removed any common basis by which truth can be self-evident? If you no longer believe in objective truth — or the God who defines it — then you’re free to invent your own reality, your own “truth,” and your own “gods.”
This shift helps explain how a baby in the womb can be dismissed as a mere “blob of tissue” and terminated at any point in pregnancy — even after birth in some places. It’s how a grown man can claim to be a woman, compete against girls in sports, and expect the rest of us to cheer him on as if biology had nothing to say about it.
It might also explain why many will champion open borders and still say they are good citizens of America. Never mind that a nation without borders is no nation at all — another self-evident truth.
Christians have a unique responsibility in this cultural moment. Like Queen Esther, we were “born for such a time as this.” We are not meant to sit this one out.
Unfortunately, some Christians sit on the sidelines, arguing that getting involved culturally or politically will “spoil their witness,” that they have been put on this Earth just to “preach the gospel.”
RELATED: Embodied truth: God's timeless design silences woke gender delusion
And some among the “faithful” who have unashamedly joined the prevailing winds of an off-course culture are quick to point to passages like “judge not lest you be judged” to show that making waves in culture is un-Christian.
However, those who adopt this line of thinking are completely oblivious to what is happening out in the open and therefore act with political immaturity. The Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments, beckons believers to get involved in their world. They have to get their hands dirty and their hair messy in the righteous fight that encourages and supports building God’s kingdom on Earth.
God’s plan for the world is self-evident, and it requires us to put on our work boots and be His hands and feet.
This is the “mission” that we were “assigned at birth.”
Editor's note: A version of this article appeared originally at American Thinker.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has released a treasure trove of evidence revealing how former President Barack Obama and his national security Cabinet members had, as many long suspected, apparently "manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump."
Both before and after the 2016 election, the understanding among intelligence officials appears to have been that Russia had likely not interfered, particularly by using cyber means, to influence the outcome.
Gabbard revealed, however, that before this conclusion could be delivered to the American public, the Obama White House seemingly intervened to set an alternative narrative — a narrative largely based on the Steele dossier, a political opposition research report paid for in part by the Clinton campaign, which the intelligence community knew to be devoid of credibility.
'They weren't in Russia; they never made a phone call to Russia; they never received a phone call.'
This false narrative, which was initially fed piecemeal through leaks to the liberal media and then officially advanced through a reworked intelligence assessment published on Jan. 6, 2017, served "as the basis for countless smears seeking to delegitimize President Trump’s victory, the years-long Mueller investigation, two Congressional impeachments, high-level officials being investigated, arrested, and thrown in jail, heightened U.S.-Russia tensions, and more," Gabbard said.
The success of what Gabbard characterized as a "treasonous conspiracy" was largely reliant on the participation of the liberal media, whose assistance took on various forms but in some cases was as simple as framing unnamed partisan sources from the previous administration not only as credible but noble.
For instance, in March 2017, the New York Times explained away Obama officials' eagerness to push the Russian collusion narrative before President Donald Trump took office not as an attempt to "make an excuse for their own defeat in the election," as then-White House spokesman Sean Spicer put it, but rather as a heroic effort to protect legitimate intelligence from obfuscation or destruction:
Mr. Trump has denied that his campaign had any contact with Russian officials, and at one point he openly suggested that American spy agencies had cooked up intelligence suggesting that the Russian government had tried to meddle in the presidential election. Mr. Trump has accused the Obama administration of hyping the Russia story line as a way to discredit his new administration. At the Obama White House, Mr. Trump's statements stoked fears among some that intelligence could be covered up or destroyed — or its sources exposed — once power changed hands. What followed was a push to preserve the intelligence that underscored the deep anxiety with which the White House and American intelligence agencies had come to view the threat from Moscow.
This explanation was followed paragraphs later by the claim that Obama directed none of the efforts.
One month prior, Trump — whose transition team emphasized early on that the intelligence agencies alleging Russian interference were "the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction" — called the Russia narrative a "scam."
"You can talk all you want about Russia, which was all a, you know, fake news, fabricated deal, to try and make up for the loss of the Democrats, and the press plays right into it," Trump said during a Feb. 16, 2017, press conference. "In fact, I saw a couple of the people that were supposedly involved with all of this — that they know nothing about it; they weren't in Russia; they never made a phone call to Russia; they never received a phone call."
The Poynter Institute's PolitiFact, among the publications that made good use of the reworked intelligence assessment, leaned on the apparently Obama-skewed document when insinuating that Trump's remarks at the press conference were false.
The Washington Post, which was among the biggest media proponents of the hoax, readily and routinely leaned on the input and framing of fierce Trump critics, including those apparently involved in the manufacture of the Russian collusion hoax, such as ex-CIA Director John Brennan.
In its long-standing effort to portray Trump as guilty and defensive, the paper also tracked how many times the president and those in the White House denied Russian collusion.
'The integrity of our democratic republic demands that every person involved be investigated and brought to justice to prevent this from ever happening again.'
Unhinged Trump critics such as Anne Applebaum, the writer who smeared as propagandists early proponents of the pandemic lab-leak theory and wasted ink last year imagining parallels between Trump and various 20th-century dictators, kept Washington Post readers' hope alive that they were getting closer to "direct evidence" of collusion, while over at CNN commentators worked as if it there were proof that Russia interfered to get Trump elected.
Former CNN editor at large Chris Cillizza suggested in a 2018 piece that Trump's refusal to play along with the hoax was a likely sign that Moscow had compromising information on the president. This, for Cillizza, made more sense than the notion "in Trump's mind [that] any talk of Russian interference in the election is an attempt to undermine the 'brilliant campaign' (his words) he ran in 2016 and somehow invalidate his victory."
Days later, CNN's Marshall Cohen identified "10 ways Trump has strayed from his own intelligence agencies on Russian meddling" — a piece that now serves to memorialize the media's misplaced faith in the intelligence community and to vindicate Trump's skepticism.
While the newly released documents from the DNI both salt the remains of the Russian collusion hoax and justify Trump's use of the term "fake news" in reference to numerous publications, the documents could prove far more impactful for those who constructed the false narrative. After all, Gabbard referred the documents to the Department of Justice for potential prosecution.
"These documents detail a treasonous conspiracy by officials at the highest levels of the Obama White House to subvert the will of the American people and try to usurp the President from fulfilling his mandate," Gabbard wrote.
The director of national intelligence added, "The integrity of our democratic republic demands that every person involved be investigated and brought to justice to prevent this from ever happening again."
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!Democrats were virtually salivating as they unanimously voted against Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act ahead of the Independence Day holiday, which certainly should give pause to Republicans as they prepare for the midterms and the 2028 elections beyond.
What gives the Democrats hope that they can campaign effectively against Trump’s mega-bill? Is it the fact that Republicans were able to make permanent the 2017 tax cuts? Are they planning to campaign against the “no tax on tips” provision that even Kamala Harris supported? Will they claim that funding border security and mass deportation of illegal aliens is somehow bad for the country?
Remember, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is the codification of the agenda that President Trump ran on in 2024. It’s not tricky. It’s not nefarious.
No, no, and no. Democrats are not idiots. They know that they have the short straw on all of those 80-20 issues. So they are going back to the same issue they have demagogued since 2008 — health care. By tugging on the heartstrings of the American public, they know they can use fear to win votes.
During debate in both the House and Senate, Democrats relied on questionable forward-looking interpretations of the impact of the mega-bill on Medicaid to claim that nearly 12 million low-income people would lose health coverage if the bill passed, as it ultimately did.
The left-leaning Congressional Budget Office supplied some of that data, and by the time the vote was finalized on July 3, various other groups were adding fuel to the fire. KFF, formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation, added the 12 million people who would allegedly lose Medicaid to the five million who KFF claimed would lose coverage in the Affordable Care Act marketplace, concluding that at least 17 million would be at risk. Then, there was the claim that Trump’s budget would deny food stamps to hungry children and pregnant women.
But not so fast. Despite the bleak picture painted by Democrats and weak-kneed RINOs that Trump wanted poor people to just die and be done with it, there were reasonable explanations for all the budget changes that had nothing to do with genocide.
Reductions in Obamacare premium subsidies are just an acknowledgment that the COVID crisis is over, and those boosted premiums are no longer necessary. Likewise, food stamps are still going to be provided to the disabled, families with young children, and the impoverished elderly, even if Democrats want to pretend otherwise.
And pretend they will, so if Republicans want to prevail in future elections, they had better fully understand the truth about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, because otherwise, they will be painted as heartless elitists who want their fellow Americans to die by the millions.
Fortunately, the road map is already clear on how to respond to the demagoguery of the Democrats, and it was modeled by two members of the Trump administration on the Sunday morning talk shows over the long holiday weekend.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, faced down their hostile questioners on CNN’s “State of the Union” and CBS’ “Face the Nation” respectively.
Bessent, who by all accounts is the most competent member of Trump’s Cabinet, immediately pushed back on Dana Bash’s supposition that the bill would cut benefit programs like Medicaid:
Only in D.C. is a 20% hike over 10 years a cut. Medicaid funding will go up 20% over the next 10 years. The people who Medicaid was designed for — the pregnant women, the disabled, and families with children under 14 — will be refocused. The able-bodied Americans are not vulnerable Americans, so a work requirement or a community service requirement, that’s very popular with the public.
Bessent then struck a blow against the argument that millions of Americans will lose their Medicaid coverage because they didn’t remember to reapply for benefits under the new rules.
“It is a group of Democrats who unfortunately seem to think that poor people are stupid,” he said. “I don’t think poor people are stupid. I think they have agency, and I think to have them register twice a year for these benefits is not a burden. But these people who want to infantilize the poor and those who need these Medicaid benefits are alarmist.”
RELATED: The budget hoax that nearly sank Trump’s biggest win (so far)
Over on “Face the Nation,” Hassett was interviewed by Weijia Jiang, senior White House correspondent for CBS. She dutifully recited the claim that 12 million people would lose their Medicaid coverage, but Hassett struck back hard:
Let’s unbundle that a little bit. What we are actually doing is asking for a work requirement, but the work requirement is that you need to be looking for work or even doing volunteer work, and you don’t need to do it until your kids are 14 or older, so the idea that that’s going to cause a massive hemorrhaging in availability of insurance doesn’t make a lot of sense. And if you look at the CBO numbers, if you look at the numbers they say are going to lose insurance, about five million of those are people who have other insurance. ... If they lose one, they’re still insured.
Hassett also explained that the best way to get insurance is to get a job, and so if the Trump economy stimulates growth, it will help people to happily leave Medicaid after they gain employment.
On another question, about whether the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is harmful because it grows the national debt by between $3 trillion and $5 trillion over the next 10 years, Hassett responded by reminding the reporter that the Congressional Budget Office is underestimating growth in the economy compared to what happened in the first Trump term pre-COVID. Based on that historical record, Hassett expects the debt to actually shrink by $1.5 trillion in the next decade.
What Hassett didn’t say, but which should be on the lips of every Republican defending their votes for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, is that over the 10 years from 2014 to 2024, the federal debt increased by more than $17.5 trillion. Admittedly, Trump’s first term played a role in that thanks to COVID, but only Trump and Republicans are making any effort today to shrink the debt. If left up to Democrats, every social program in the budget would see increased funding, deficit be damned.
To summarize, here are the talking points that every Republican candidate for Congress must master if they hope to beat back Democrat distortions:
Those will do for a start. Remember, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is the codification of the agenda that President Trump ran on in 2024. It’s not tricky. It’s not nefarious. And if it is unpopular, that’s only because Democrats have been lying about it.
Now, it’s up to Republicans to fight back against the big Medicaid lie, or else pay the price for their silence.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
In June, Texas Patriot, a prominent anonymous account supportive of President Donald Trump, announced during the height of tensions with Iran:
F**k it. If Trump takes us to war, I’m done with him and his administration.
I voted for:
NO WARS
No taxes
Cheap gas
Cheap groceries
MAHA.
What of these things has actually happened?
I’m pissed.
This message from a popular pro-Trump account seemed significant. Was Trump’s populist base turning on him?
In our current world, however, where plausible fake engagement can be created at an almost limitless scale, true anons will lose a great deal of their power.
But shortly thereafter, Right Angle News, another popular anonymous account, asserted that Texas Patriot was actually based in Pakistan. Yet another popular anon account contested this, saying that Texas Patriot is really an American originally from Texas who now lives in Georgia. Notably, most other major accounts weighing in on the controversy, from Proud Elephant to Evil Texan, are themselves anonymous, adding further to the hall of mirrors.
Either way, Texas Patriot deleted its own account shortly thereafter, perhaps suggesting that he or she had something to hide — or at least didn’t want the scrutiny.
The question of whether Texas Patriot is, in fact, a patriot from Texas or a bad actor in Islamabad is ultimately beside the point. As Newsweek wrote of the incident:
Social media has proved useful for galvanizing the MAGA movement, with popular accounts often reacting to political developments from Trump’s feud with X owner Elon Musk to Trump’s policy agenda. If it emerged that an account alleged to be American was actually based in another country, it would impact users’ trust.
And such trust is rapidly eroding, which will accelerate as ever more sophisticated fake accounts and bot farms are exposed.
The incident was just one of many in which major social media accounts were discovered — or at least suggested — to be run by someone far different from who they were purported to be. And it previews a shift that is just now beginning, which will fundamentally change how we interact with social media content.
When it comes to who will rule social media, the age of the anon is ending. The age of radical transparency is beginning — and yet, if designed well, radical transparency can still include a substantial and valuable space for a large degree of online anonymity.
Several reasons explain the shift. Increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence models and bots generate outputs that, in many cases, are already almost indistinguishable from humans. For most users, they will soon become fully indistinguishable (a fact confirmed by multiple studies that have shown that most people have a poor ability to tell the difference between the two). And almost certainly, bots guided with even a minimum of human interaction will become indistinguishable from actual humans.
Many of my best friends have had anon accounts. A few are still prominent anons. It’s also noteworthy that almost every prominent ex-anon I know personally, whether doxxed or self-outed, dramatically improved their profile and professional opportunities once they were no longer anonymous.
I am not anti-anon, however. I understand why some people, especially those expressing opinions well outside of the mainstream, need to be anonymous. I also acknowledge that anonymity has been a crucial part of the American political tradition since the revolutionary era. An internet that banned anons would be an internet that is much poorer. This is why the biggest current anon accounts will be grandfathered into the coming system of radical transparency, as they have actual operators who are known to enough people that they are recognized as genuine.
I know several big anon accounts like this. I don’t know who is running them, but I have multiple offline friends I trust who do know the account holders and vouch for them. Accounts of this kind, with credible, real-world validation, will continue to have influence. But increasingly, new big anon accounts will be ignored, even if they amass a large number of followers (many of whom are fake).
As these ersatz accounts become increasingly sophisticated every day, engaging with the truly real becomes ever more important. Fake videos and photos proliferating on social media merely add to the potential for deception.
Even accounts run by real people will not be immune to the age of radical transparency. Some are partially or wholly automated — a way for a “content creator” to maintain a cheap 24-hour revenue stream. In the future, if you want to have influence, mechanisms will be in place to prove not only that it is you who are posting but that you are posting content that is authentic, with a proven real-world point of origin. Some have even suggested using the blockchain as a method of validation.
There should be a simple way of blocking the worst AI slop accounts, foreign bad actors who post highly packaged clickbait, or those who shamelessly steal content made by others. Most Americans would probably prefer not to engage with unverified foreign accounts when discussing U.S. politics. Certainly, I would be willing to pay for a feed that only showed me real, verified accounts from America, along with a limited list of paid, verified, and non-anonymous accounts from other parts of the world.
I am interested in having discussions with real people about real content and the real opinions they have. I want accounts mercilessly downrated if they produce inauthentic content presented as real. I want accounts downrated that regularly retweet unverified slop. If X, or any other online platform, can’t consistently provide that, I’ll look elsewhere — and so will many others.
My desire for authenticity is not a left-wing attempt to police “disinformation” — that is, whatever the left doesn’t want said. It’s far more serious. It’s not about getting “true” facts but a feed that is filled with actual people producing their own content representing their own views — with clear links to the sources for their claims.
Anonymity has, naturally, always been accompanied by a slew of problems: It can lead to echo chambers or aggressive exchanges, as users feel less pressure to engage rationally.
The lack of personal stakes can escalate conflict, which is amplified by AI. Modern AI can generate thousands of unique, human-like posts in seconds, overwhelming feeds with propaganda or fake news. The increasing influence of state actors in this fake news ecosystem makes it even riskier.
RELATED: Slop and spam, bots and scams: Can personalized algorithms fix the internet?
Anonymity also emboldens individuals to act without fear of repercussions, which often has downsides. The online disinhibition effect, a psychological phenomenon first described by psychologist John Suler in 2004, suggests that anonymity reduces social inhibitions, leading to behaviors individuals might avoid in face-to-face settings.
Everyone has met the toxic anon online personality who turns out to be quite meek and agreeable in person. One friend of mine who had an edgy online persona eventually closed her anon account (with tens of thousands of followers) and recreated her online presence from scratch as a “face” account. Her tweets are no longer as fun or spicy as they had been, but her persona is real — and presents who she really is. And she eventually landed a great public-facing job, partly based on the quality of her tweets.
Anons could play a leading role in the old social media world where bots were mostly obvious, and meaningful provocations were, in large part, created by real people through anonymous accounts. In our current world, however, where plausible fake engagement can be created on an almost limitless scale, true anons will lose a great deal of their power. They will be replaced as top influencers by those who are willing to be radically transparent.
Truly transparent identities should include verifiable information, such as email addresses, phone numbers, or government-issued IDs for account creation. While such information does not need to be publicly shared, it should be given to the social media company connected to the account.
Raising the barrier for AI-driven impersonation, while not foolproof, deters malicious actors, who must invest significant resources to create credible fake identities.
For anons unwilling to trust their private information to one of the major online platforms, third-party identity verifiers dedicated to protecting user privacy could carefully validate their identities while keeping them anonymous from social media companies. Such third-party brokers themselves would have their prestige checked by the accuracy of their verification procedures. This method would still allow for a high degree of public anonymity, bolstered by a backend that guarantees authenticity.
In the future, pure online anonymity will not be banned — nor should it be. But in the coming age of radical transparency, a truly anonymous account — one whose owner’s real-world identity is neither known within i own trusted circles nor verified by a reliable third party — will have little to no value.
The next internet age will value not just what you say, but more importantly, that others know you are the one who is saying it.
Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally in The American Mind.
What’s happening with Donald Trump and Pam Bondi’s mishandling of the Jeffrey Epstein files is a textbook example of the rake-stepping that tripped up the president’s first term. The timing is worse this time, too — because it stands in sharp contrast to the mostly smooth, high-functioning operation of Trump’s second term so far.
Something’s clearly going on behind the scenes — something so sensitive that it’s backing this administration into corners that no number of Ben Shapiro explainers can easily talk us out of. I won’t speculate here on what exactly that “something” is. You’ve earned the right to connect your own dots in this post-COVID, post-trans-the-kids world.
We are in a civil war — spiritual, political, cultural. And the last thing we can afford right now is to split our ranks over a human toilet like Jeffrey Epstein.
But the politics of this mess? That’s what I want to talk about.
As someone who came of age politically reading Buckley, Kirk, Friedman, and Reagan — before I ever knew the gospel — I’ve often found myself at odds with parts of the MAGA movement. My political DNA was shaped by ideas. MAGA has shifted into something else entirely, something rawer, more primal. Less interested in debating the “oughts” and more obsessed with exposing the corruption and rot.
In that sense, DeSantis vs. Trump wasn’t just a primary — it was a proxy war. And MAGA told people like me, flat out: We’re not ready for your high-minded conversation. First, we’ve got to name names and slash some tires.
One of those names, from the very beginning, was Epstein — and anyone who set foot on his infamous island.
Trump himself promised to release the Epstein list more than once on the 2024 campaign trail. So did members of his inner circle. That pledge became a symbol — a MAGA line in the sand. Break it, and you break trust. Think Bush 41’s “read my lips” betrayal, but this time with the stakes multiplied by a base that’s already been burned too many times.
The movement wants its perp walk. And until it gets it, as the prophets Hetfield and Ulrich once said, nothing else matters.
Still think this is just internet drama? Then explain why George Conway is reposting Glenn Beck. Did you have that on your 2025 bingo card?
Or why Jake Tapper — yes, that Jake Tapper — thinks this is his comeback moment. He’s calling for the release of the Epstein list and the tapes, not because he cares about justice, but because he knows exactly how deep the wound could go. He sees the opportunity to turn a hairline fracture in Trump’s base into a compound break.
RELATED: The Epstein case proves one thing: The elites are protected
And here’s the thing: He might succeed.
Unless someone at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or the Justice Department decides it’s worth risking serious chaos in the GOP, this issue won’t just fester. It’ll metastasize.
If this controversy had erupted while Trump was pushing votes for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act or preparing to bomb Iran, would the base have stood firm? Maybe not. Because this hits differently. This feels moral. Existential. A test of whether Trump’s still serious — or if power has tamed him as it tamed so many before.
And what happens in 2026?
Republican turnout in the low 90s won’t cut it — not with a deflated, demoralized base that sees Epstein accountability as a promise on par with Trump’s other major blunders. COVID. Fauci. The shots. Pile on Elon Musk’s third-party siren song, and that’s maybe just enough to peel off five points, and you’ve got a perfect storm of apathy, betrayal, and collapse.
This is the math no one wants to run — but it’s already penciled in.
The Trump team’s answers are getting the red-pen treatment in real time. The political class can pretend this is a sideshow. It isn’t. It’s the main stage, and the spotlight’s burning hot.
We are in a civil war — spiritual, political, cultural. And the last thing we can afford right now is to split our ranks over a human toilet like Jeffrey Epstein.
Attempts to interact with demons are growing as formerly Christian nations apostasize and invite mass immigration of peoples who worship gods that the Christian Bible says are demons.
The current watered-down narrative from Politico and legacy media outlets does not come as a surprise, because, as The Federalist's Brianna Lyman puts it, "reporting honestly on the newly declassified findings would mean admitting they are indeed propagandists and were involved in peddling a hoax."
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