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Man Charged With a Felony for Posting Satirical Voting Memes Sets a Chilling Precedent
Late last month, a Florida man was arrested and charged with a felony for posting memes pretending to instruct people to vote by text or social media. It is impossible to vote those ways, so the memes were obviously a joke. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of memes floating around joking about voting. Douglass Mackey, who also goes by Ricky Vaughn, posted several of these memes during the 2016 election year. One of the memes showed a black woman next to an African-Americans for Hillary sign. It said, “Avoid the line. Vote from home. Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925. Vote for Hillary and be a part of history.” A small notation at the bottom of the meme said it was paid for by Hillary for President 2016.
No one would believe the meme was accurate, send a text message, and think they had voted. In fact, the Clinton campaign sent back a default response to anyone who texted the number saying the ad was not approved by the campaign. It was clearly someone’s goofy sense of humor. People joke about the saying, “Democrats vote on Tuesday, Republicans vote on Wednesday.” No one is prosecuted for it.
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Legal scholar Eugene Volokh observes that Mackey is not being prosecuted under a statute that clearly prohibits lying about how to vote. Some states have them. Instead, Mackey is being prosecuted under 18 U.S.C. § 241, a federal law that punishes conspiracies “to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person … in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution.” Volokh says no one has been prosecuted under that law for speech influencing someone from voting. People lie in political campaigns all the time and aren’t prosecuted, so why go after free speech in politics now? Those prosecuted for election fraud generally engage in some type of activity such as voter fraud, not merely speech.
Twitter said at first that the memes did not violate their rules. Considering how quick the company is to censor memes and kick conservatives off the platform, it is telling that it did not initially find anything wrong.
The fact the DOJ did not arrest MacKey until just after the Inauguration, even though he posted the memes over four years earlier when they first received publicity, is evidence the prosecution is politically motivated by the Biden administration. MacKey is an easy target. He posted antisemitic and racist memes. No one wants to defend someone like that. The right understandably wants to distance themselves from someone that offensive. But this is how the left makes inroads into silencing the right; they target a disreputable extremist who they associate with the right because they’re so easy to take down. Once a precedent is set with the first target, it becomes easier to go after others on the right, others who aren’t so offensive.
It is part of a larger effort to ban conservative satire, because humor has proven to be effective. The right excels here, since the left’s positions aren’t conducive to humor. The left has made a lot of ground in recent years by pretending the right is offensive. Once they went down that path, it didn’t leave a lot of room left for the left to joke, or they’d risk violating their own draconian policies.
And one of the main ways the left goes after conservative memes is by claiming they are fake news — even humorous memes that are clearly satire. Their “fact checking” sites now also fact check opinion, not just facts. So not only has the left been able to get these memes removed from social media, but gets those posting them banned.
It was bad enough deleting obvious satire. It was worse banning people from social media who posted the memes. Now it’s gotten to an extremely disturbing level, prosecuting people who post the memes. This is a slippery slope and if allowed to continue, will set a dangerous precedent for conservatives merely posting satire about elections, a type of political speech our Founding Fathers revered, which is why they protected it in the First Amendment to our Constitution.
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“When those who are entrusted to enforce the law,” said author and Fox host Gregg Jarrett, “instead, abuse their power to pursue innocent people in the name of justice it is the worst kind of oppression.” The ongoing weaponization of government agencies and the courts in order to stop Donald Trump is the quintessence of such oppression.
The initial goal of this scheme was the protection from prosecution and the subsequent election of Hillary Clinton. We know from reading the emails of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page that high-ranking members of the FBI were working behind the scenes to ensure Trump’s defeat in the 2016 election. When that failed, the Democrats launched the second step in their plan—the special counsel investigation run by Robert Mueller to prove Trump-Russia collusion.
When that failed, step three was put in motion—the assault on Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago and a nefarious barrage of phony indictments leveled against Trump and many of his supporters. The indictments are baseless. Questioning the outcome of an election is not a crime. “One of the election crimes Trump is charged with,” said Kurt Schlichter on Townhall, “is that he allegedly conspired to violate a civil right of American citizens. What right, you ask? Well, a convoluted version of the right to vote, which apparently he conspired to interfere with by insisting that elections be honest, transparent, and unrigged. No one else has ever been prosecuted for that.”
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If successful, the indictments would put Trump in a jail cell for the rest of his life. This campaign amounts to a criminal conspiracy by Democrats to destroy the leading Republican contender for the 2024 nomination. It is an overt attempt to interfere with the outcome of a presidential election. Ironically, this is precisely the charge that the Democrats want to hang on Trump.
The Democrats have not recovered from Trump’s 2016 victory. As a political outsider sworn to “drain the swamp,” Trump scares the pants off the Washington elite. They will do anything to protect their lucrative rackets, whether their tactics are legal or not. Meanwhile, Biden is getting away with the worst corruption ever perpetrated by an American president.
Along with Biden, a guilty cast of characters is going free—Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, James Comey, Susan Rice, John Brennan, Barack Obama, and others. Gregg Jarrett has spelled out their crimes in agonizing detail. Why haven’t they been investigated? The answer: the guilty parties are the same corrupt people who run the justice system. For justice to prevail, they would be required to investigate themselves.
One consequence of the anti-Trump cabal is the loss of confidence by the American public in our system of justice. The public understands that we have a double standard. Justice and fair play do not apply to conservatives and Trump supporters.
Let’s do a little pretending. You are living in East Germany in 1960. Stasi, the repressive secret police, have arrested you and threatened that if you don’t testify against someone they want to condemn, you will spend the next 40 years behind bars and the state will go after your spouse, your children, and your beloved dog Fido. Ah, but you say, “This is America. That could never happen here.” Well guess what, this used to be the land of the free. The quaint notion that we benefit from due process has evaporated along with Cinderella’s ball gown and fancy coach.
Thanks to our politicized justice system, General Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Dinesh D’Souza and now President Trump have seen their lives destroyed because of their political opposition to the corrupt Democratic Party. If the powers of government can be weaponized to sabotage a former president, what perversion of justice can be directed at you and me?
Former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell, author of Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice, described a justice system consisting of out-of-control prosecutors who will do anything to get a conviction. She has been proven correct in a way she never anticipated. Powell is one of the Trump supporters targeted by the Democrat-fueled indictments. Goodbye USA, hello Stasi. If you refuse to support Biden, we will destroy you, your family, and your dog.
It’s the sort of thing we would expect to happen in North Korea. A venal gang of Obama alumni is getting away with a perversion of American justice. When a government doesn’t have a crime but starts a campaign to find one, that’s called a police state. Unless the anti-Trump indictments are quashed and we address the real scandal in our government—corruption in the Oval Office, DOJ, FBI, and IRS—we can kiss the American system of justice goodbye.
Ed Brodow (www.edbrodowpolitics.com) is a conservative political commentator and author of two No. 1 Amazon Best Sellers, AMERICA ON ITS KNEES: The Cost of Replacing Trump with Biden, and THE WAR ON WHITES: How Hating White People Became the New National Sport.
Do you feel like you wake up every day to a bad dream and then struggle with the fact that your nightmare is actually reality in America today? Thankfully, the polls of Democrats and Republicans alike are sending a clear message—we’ve had enough of dementia Joe. He is often incoherent with or without his teleprompter. After speaking, he consistently wanders waiting to be guided to an exit. He tries to kiss and grope women who fall into his meandering web. Heaven help him if he would actually have to handle an open press conference with unscripted questions. The man seldom even works; he majors in rest and vacations.
And yet, somehow, Biden manages to keep making executive orders and decisions that move America further into “progressive” darkness. Obviously, somebody other than the President is managing the puppet strings and moving America faster and further into institutionalizing leftist policies.
Fearful of Biden facing Trump in the 2024 election, the Democrats have managed to tie up the leading Republican candidate with 91 indictments. Their hope is that the legal quagmire and trials will restrict his ability to mount an effective campaign. Be clear. The Democrats have one goal—keep Trump out of office and hopefully in jail.
Speaking of jail, where are the investigative reporters unraveling the crimes of “the Big Guy” Biden. We have recorded statements by Joe bragging about bribing Ukrainian leaders with US funds conditional on firing the Ukrainian district attorney looking into prosecuting Burisma. Vice President Joe Biden stopped the man whose investigation could have implicated his son, Hunter Biden. The Democrats keep claiming that Hunter’s problems have nothing to do with the President.
Unfortunately for Joe, in spite of such claims more and more evidence is mounting that the President and the Biden family benefited from Hunter’s influence peddling. Hunter Biden’s email to his daughter Naomi Biden that recently became public makes clear the father’s involvement. The email has been verified by the Washington Post and is clearly damning.
According to Hunter’s statement in that email, President Joe Biden demanded and received payment for his influence. It reads, “I hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years. It’s really hard. But don’t worry unlike Pop I won’t make you give me half your salary.”
This email and related information could have been made public two years ago. It could have impacted the 2020 election. If the House of Representatives initiates an impeachment inquiry, more of this information will be front and center and hard for the left-leaning media to avoid covering. With Joe Biden using aliases to send hundreds of additional incriminating emails, the evidence is just now coming to light.
If Biden is innocent of any wrongdoing, he should be cooperating and welcoming an investigation. Instead, he has already created a “war room” to be ready to fight any impeachment inquiry. Even with an inquiry, it’s unlikely that the Senate would have the votes to Impeach the President. But the more evidence that comes out, the more Democrats behind the scenes will likely be asking Biden to step down. Republicans did it with Nixon, and the Democrats would be wise to do it with Biden rather than risk him running again, losing, and taking their majority down with him.
The President’s future legal problems are not the only thing that is wreaking havoc on the American society. There is sexual confusion that is enraging many voters on the right and the left. In many states, biological men are claiming to be women and being allowed to compete in sporting events and winning against biological women. Politicians and even judges are refusing to define what a woman is. Most of us are pretty sure we know!
One meme that has been circulating makes the difference very clear. The world population is 8,030,610,062. People born from women: 8,030,610,062. People born from men: 0. They go on to suggest, “Feel free to fact check.” If men who call themselves women want to compete in sports, let them compete against other men instead of forcing their way into women’s locker rooms to live a lie.
In America today, they are not content limiting sexual confusion to adults. Many leftists are condoning trans surgery of young children to “change their sex” without parental approval. Schools can’t give an aspirin without parental approval, but in some states, children can decide to have irreversible surgery that mutilates their bodies. The parents are still responsible for caring for their children when they have to pick up the pieces from this child abuse.
Supporters call it “gender affirming care,” and it’s not all that rare. From 2016-2020, the American Medical Association reports 3,678 gender affirming surgeries done on children twelve to eighteen years of age. Columbia University has found that 3,315 children had breast surgery and 405 had genital surgery at a young age. This is not “care” of any kind! If anyone wants to do this to their body, wait until they are an adult and pay for it themselves.
If this is not enough, we have an administration claiming we have a secure border when millions continue to stream across our border in record numbers. Even sanctuary cities like New York have had enough. America takes pride in welcoming legal immigrants. It’s time to close down the flood of illegals.
Add to that the dismal performance in public schools around the country. Our kids are falling behind, and Democrats, coveting the support of teacher unions, refuse to even consider school choice. Minority parents want it, and Biden and his administration stand in the way.
It’s clear that America is hard to recognize as the country we once loved and cherished. It’s rapidly becoming a leftist loony bin in need of an intervention! Let’s hope that comes in November of 2024.
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