PLENTY OF GUILT TO GO AROUND: The Tiki-Torch Hoax Should Not Be Blamed Only on the Lincoln Project’s Grifters.

Jim commented on the Intercept story about Lauren Windsor and the Lincoln Project attempting to defend their role in the now-infamous tiki-torch stunt at a Glenn Youngkin rally by making the case that they planned it as an open satire — sort of like “Billionaires for Bush” — rather than intending it to be a hoax that people mistook for actual white nationalists. Jim’s conclusion: “The simple answer seems to be the accurate one. The folks at the Lincoln Project are just stupid. Really, really stupid.”

That’s true, but there are two additional, related points worth considering here about why the blame should not stop with the Lincoln Project. One is about the media coverage. The story went national starting with Elizabeth Holmes, a supposedly straight-news reporter from NBC29 in Charlottesville, who presented the fake white nationalists as if they were for real:

Read the whole thing — and then check out this Twitter thread by Drew Holden, who spots additional players getting in on the action. “Now, you’ll notice that these tweets were never flagged for disinformation or anything of the sort. Something tells me that if the parties were reversed, some outlets may call this an organized attempt to spread lies days before an election to suppress the vote. The takeaway here should be clear: as I’ve said many times before, if a story perfectly, hilariously and inexplicably confirms all of your priors, it may well be too good to be true. It never hurts to wait for more details to come out. And it should go without saying, but it’s despicable behavior from @ProjectLincoln at a time when racial relations are, by any metric, bad and trending worse.”