Prison for mocking Hillary!?

Well, not exactly. Or, rather, not at all.

As part of my Substack iteration of The Global Exclaimer I logged into my X account for the first time in about 3 years, and almost immediately regretted it. But, it did give me fodder for this story.

Tucker Carlson showed up when I clicked on “Explore.” And I saw this:

Ep. 38 The First Amendment is done. Douglass Mackey is about to go to prison for mocking Hillary Clinton on the internet.

And I thought, “That seems unlikely.” So, I used the internet as Al Gore intended and found this press release from the United State’s Attorney office, Eastern District of New York. It is titled:

Social Media Influencer Douglass Mackey Sentenced after Conviction for Election Interference in 2016 Presidential Race

Note this from the press release:

For example, on November 1, 2016, in or around the same time that Mackey was sending tweets suggesting the importance of limiting “black turnout,” the defendant tweeted an image depicting an African American woman standing in front of an “African Americans for Hillary” sign. The ad stated: “Avoid the Line. Vote from Home,” “Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925,” and “Vote for Hillary and be a part of history.” The fine print at the bottom of the deceptive image stated: “Must be 18 or older to vote. One vote per person. Must be a legal citizen of the United States. Voting by text not available in Guam, Puerto Rico, Alaska or Hawaii. Paid for by Hillary For President 2016.” The tweet included the typed hashtag “#ImWithHer,” a slogan frequently used by Hillary Clinton.  On or about and before Election Day 2016, thousands of unique telephone numbers texted “Hillary” or some derivative to the 59925 text number, which had been used in multiple deceptive campaign images tweeted by Mackey and his co-conspirators.

Someone may try and twist that into, “Well, he was just mocking Hillary, and that’s his First Amendment right,” but someone saying that should not be taken seriously…

In Tucker Carlson’s video that links from his Tweet, we see from the interview he had with Douglas Mackey this:

Full quote is “I read, I think in Buzzfeed, that you were a dangerous white nationalist militant.”

Well, that didn’t sound quite right to me either, so, again I turned to the internet.

Yeah, so Buzzfeed isn’t exactly restrained in its reporting either, but there is a difference between “white nationalist troll” and “dangerous white nationalist militant.”

This is an example of Tucker Carlson setting up a strawman to tear down, and allowing him to paint Mr. Mackey as a victim of the patriarchy, or some such.

See, once we put it together, we’ll know exactly how to take it apart.”

I have heard the name Tucker Carlson, but never watched him or read his stuff. But if this is an example of him protecting us from the Information Wars, all I can say, is “No, thank you. You are not helping.”

So, today I learned that if I read something inflammatory on the internet, it will take all of 3 minutes to get the context and figure out that someone is selling something.