November 8th, 2016 was Election Day. As you may recall, Hillary Clinton was going up against Donald Trump. If you can think back that far, you might remember that back in those days — before Chinese-style COVID lockdowns became a pretext for transforming the entire system of elections in this country — people actually went to the polls in large numbers on Election Day. They didn’t mail in their ballots or hand them over to a political operative. They actually showed up and voted.
So, that morning, a Left-wing activist named Kristina Wong decided to play a practical joke on all these Election Day voters. She went on Twitter, writing, “Hey Trump Supporters! Skip poll lines at #Election2016 and TEXT in your vote! Text votes are legit. Or vote tomorrow on Super Wednesday!”
Wong also uploaded this video on Twitter, telling Trump supporters once again that Election Day, in reality, was on November 9th — a day later than the actual Election Day. Watch:
Hey 🇺🇸Trump Supporters🇺🇸! Skip poll lines at #Election2016 and TEXT in your vote! Text votes are legit. Or vote tomorrow on Super Wednesday! pic.twitter.com/ES34HV0yad
— Kristina Wong 🍆 (@mskristinawong) November 8, 2016
That video is still available on Kristina Wong’s Twitter feed. She hasn’t taken it down. Now, watching that video, it’s clear to any reasonable person that it’s a joke. No Trump supporter is going to get tricked by a random woman on Twitter into thinking that Election Day is one day later. No one is going to be fooled into thinking they can text their vote anonymously for any candidate. And, in any event, if somehow a voter did fall for Kristina Wong’s schtick, then honestly, they’re so stupid that they shouldn’t be voting anyway.
That could be why the DOJ never charged Kristina Wong with any crime. She was engaging in political satire — or trolling, or mockery, or whatever you want to call it. Whatever it was, it was protected by the First Amendment.
But if that’s the case, then it’s very hard, in fact impossible, to justify the DOJ’s approach to a man named Douglass Mackey. On social media, Mackey used the online alias of “Ricky Vaughn.” And exactly one week before Kirstina Wong posted her meme on Twitter, Douglass Mackey posted this meme:
Douglass Mackey, aka far-right influencer "Ricky Vaughn," has been charged in Brooklyn Fed with 2016 election interference, with a scheme to limit black turnout.
The complaint cites this meme and BuzzFeed story. https://t.co/gN6AzrfSVW
Story soon @LambeJerry, @LawCrimeNews. pic.twitter.com/Z7Var5tXgU
— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) January 27, 2021
As the image reads: “Avoid the line. Vote from home.” Douglass Mackey posted this image on social media a full week before Election Day. At the time he posted this on his Twitter account, Mackey’s profile picture depicted a man in a MAGA hat wearing a Bane mask. So it was not exactly a credible announcement about the upcoming election. Nor was it trying to be.
At the time, everyone recognized this. More than four years went by, and no one said a word about it.
Then, in late January 2021 — just a week after Joe Biden was inaugurated, and his handlers took control of the federal government and the DOJ — everything changed. Douglass Mackey was suddenly hit with federal charges. As the New York Times reported, Mackey was accused of “spreading disinformation online that tricked Democratic voters in 2016 into trying to cast their ballots by phone instead of going to the polls.” The feds said that Mackey had “coordinat[ed] with co-conspirators to spread memes on Twitter falsely claiming that Hillary Clinton’s supporters could vote by sending a text message to a specific phone number.”
I want you to take a moment to reflect on that phrase. “Coordinated with co-conspirators to spread memes on Twitter.”
MSNBC’s coverage was just as breathless. Here’s how they covered the crimes of this dangerous, edgy meme-lord:
So Douglass Mackey is using the same tactics as Vladimir Putin. This guy with 50,000 Twitter followers, along with Vladimir Putin, is the reason Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton. That’s what they’re saying. They don’t even realize how ridiculous any of this sounds. That’s how determined they are to come up with reasons why Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election.
What’s funny about that clip, aside from the total absurdity of the whole thing, is that this week, NBC’s “disinformation” reporters just spent an entire day lying about a hospital bombing in Gaza. They told you Israel bombed a hospital and killed 500 people, when in reality, it looks like some terrorists in Gaza put a crater in a parking lot. The NBC “disinformation” experts who lied about that incident are the same people telling you that they’re very concerned about a meme posted on Twitter about the 2016 election. They’re complete frauds, as usual.
WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show
At the same time, however, they are effective. The Biden DOJ put Douglass Mackey on trial, more than a half-decade after his allegedly illegal memes. And they did it using the same law — 18 U.S.C. Section 241 — that they’re accusing Donald Trump of violating. This law makes it criminal to engage in a conspiracy to deprive Americans of their right to vote. This was a law that Congress passed to prevent the KKK from intimidating blacks at the polls. Now it’s being used to jail everyone from a former president to a random guy with 50,000 Twitter followers who posted a meme. They are determined to crush political dissent, whether it comes from Donald Trump or anyone else.
So, how did Mackey’s trial go? As you can probably guess, it wasn’t exactly a fair and impartial proceeding. For one thing, Joe Biden’s prosecutors hid the identity of a key witness in the case. This witness, known as “Mr. Microchip,” was important, because to prove that a conspiracy exists, you need at least two people. So the feds needed “Mr. Microchip” to testify that he had engaged in a conspiracy with Mackey.
But in a remarkable, if predictable, turn of events, the DOJ convinced a judge to keep Mr. Microchip’s identity under seal. And perhaps more importantly, the DOJ also convinced the judge to issue an order preventing Mackey’s attorneys from cross-examining Mr. Microchip about his extensive dealings with the FBI, which dated back at least to the year 2018. In his communications with the FBI, this witness reportedly acknowledged that there was no grand scheme to sway election results. But none of that could come into evidence. The jury also wasn’t allowed to hear that Hillary Clinton’s own staff didn’t think any of Douglass Mackey’s memes mattered during the 2016 election.
On the other hand, prosecutors were more than welcome to question Mackey about his views on women’s suffrage, and his opinions on whether immigrants should be allowed to vote. All of those opinions could come into evidence, to rile up the jury in New York. Here’s another important point to keep in mind: prosecutors never produced a single piece of evidence to prove that a single vote was actually lost due to Mackey’s meme. The jury did not hear from a single witness who testified that they texted their vote and then didn’t vote for real because of it. In other words, there was never any evidence, or any reason to believe, that any actual real world harm was caused by this meme. Not that preventing idiots from voting would actually be harmful, in my opinion. But the point is that there’s no evidence, at all, that such a thing happened. If he was trying to trick people, it didn’t work. Nothing happened. There was no harm done. And yet, predictably, Mackey was convicted and the other day he was sentenced by this federal judge to seven months in prison.
Seven months. That’s the punishment for mocking Hillary Clinton voters with a meme, which is essentially a modern-day political cartoon. To put that sentence in context, seven months is longer time in prison than a BLM rioter received in 2020 for threatening to murder a police officer with an AR-15. That officer was guarding a courthouse that the rioters were setting on fire. But this rioter, named Dakota Means, was sentenced to probation, meaning no time in prison whatsoever. Dakota Means went on to murder his infant child.
As horrifying as that story is, there are many more like it. Pretty much every BLM terrorist from 2020 received a lighter sentence than Douglass Mackey did for posting a meme. That tells us a couple of things. First of all, it tells us that we’re led by tyrants. If there’s one thing tyrants despise, more than anything else, it’s being mocked. Disagree with them, and they’ll shrug it off and bury you with an avalanche of their own propaganda. But if you mock them — that is how you really incur their wrath. And they will go to tremendous lengths, years after the fact, to make sure you’re destroyed. The devil cannot endure to be mocked, as Thomas More said. And neither can the current regime running our country.
The other lesson from the Douglass Mackey case is that it’s a symptom of a much larger problem. Douglass Mackey could only be convicted in a country that no longer cares about basic principles of democracy, which of course include the freedom of speech. And indeed, it’s becoming clear that our country no longer cares about any of those principles. As Yahoo just reported, “A large portion of Americans on both sides of the aisle favor getting rid of democracy and imposing violence on their political opponents, among other authoritarian measures, according to a new poll. Thirty-one percent of Donald Trump supporters and 24% of President Joe Biden supporters said democracy is ‘no longer viable’ and an alternative system should be tried, according to an October poll from the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.”
Poll results like this aren’t surprising because every day, we see new examples of the disparate, unequal application of the laws in this country. The other day, pro-Hamas protesters stormed a Senate office building, demanding a ceasefire in the Middle East. They obstructed lawmakers on their way to work. They prevented media reports from taking place. It was an insurrection. Here’s what it looked like:
BREAKING: Hundreds of Democrat Insurrectionists storm US Capitol calling for Gaza ceasefire
Did the Hamas Caucus coordinate to allow them access?
This is the darkest day in our democracy
We must create the October 18th Committee and hold these domestic extremists accountable! pic.twitter.com/FKhfzEfq8h
— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) October 18, 2023
Not a single one of those rioters will be placed in solitary confinement by Joe Biden’s DOJ. They won’t face 20-year prison sentences. Just like the women who stormed Capitol buildings during the Kavanaugh hearings, none of these pro-Hamas degenerates will face any consequences whatsoever. That’s because they didn’t mock the people in power. They didn’t put their feet up on Nancy Pelosi’s desk. They didn’t smile while parading Pelosi’s lectern around the Capitol building. So in the eyes of the Biden DOJ, they’re not a threat.
This ad hoc system of law enforcement has gone on for so long that a critical mass of Americans have lost faith in our system entirely. And why shouldn’t they lose faith in it? The appearance of legitimacy — as well as actual legitimacy — is now nonexistent in our judicial system. Fifty years ago, jailing a political cartoonist would have been unthinkable in a supposedly free country. Yet it just happened in this country, and the response has been a collective shrug.
Republicans in Congress haven’t come out in defense of Douglass Mackey. There has been no outrage from either party. So, Douglass Mackey will serve his sentence for mocking his masters. He’ll report to federal prison for his memes. And because no one stood up in his defense, very soon, he’ll have a lot of company.
Continue reading this exclusive article and join the conversation, plus watch free videos on DW+
Already a member?
