Rachel Maddow Suggests 4Chan to Blame For Democrats' Iowa Debacle

Chris Menahan
InformationLiberation
Feb. 07, 2020

Rachel Maddow suggested Thursday night on MSNBC that the anonymous message board 4Chan was to blame for the Democrats' Iowa caucus debacle.

"Maddow was in top form tonight," the Daily Caller's Chuck Ross said, sharing a clip of Maddow's show. "She claimed that a few 4 chan posts urging ppl to 'clog up' the Iowa Democratic Party phone lines messed with 'Democrats' ability to carry out the caucus.'"

"Firstly, the caucus was over, and Dems had to call in because their other tech failed," Ross said. "But even crazier, Maddow compared all of this to the 2002 New Hampshire phone jamming scandal, in which, completely unlike Iowa, GOP operatives robo-called Democrats' get-out-the-vote call centers *before* a Senate election."

Maddow was in top form tonight.

She claimed that a few 4 chan posts urging ppl to "clog up" the Iowa Democratic Party phone lines messed with "Democrats' ability to carry out the caucus."

Firstly, the caucus was over, and Dems had to call in because their other tech failed... pic.twitter.com/VzvP8kr54b
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) February 7, 2020

"This is pure disinformation and millions of people have seen it. That's nothing compared to what a couple of 4channers posted the other night," he said.

This is pure disinformation and millions of people have seen it. That's nothing compared to what a couple of 4channers posted the other night.
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) February 7, 2020

The notion 4Chan somehow was responsible for the debacle was blown off by another MSNBC host earlier in the day.

The few dozen 4Chan users calling the IDP on Caucas night isn't what caused the election catastrophe. #Maddow's trying to craft a boogeyman narrative about villains that were really just kids making prank calls

Oddly, MSNBC actually had good coverage of this earlier this morning pic.twitter.com/Vsp66CtKC3
— ᏔმƦ𝔢ჳ💤 (@mooncult) February 7, 2020

The actual party reportedly responsible for the debacle was Shadow Inc, which was launched by the dark money nonprofit ACRONYM.

The Grayzone reported Thursday that non-other than Reid Hoffman -- the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn who was recently "implicated" in the Epstein scandal and who reportedly helped stage a "false flag" operation with fake Russian bots to influence the 2017 Alabama Senate election in favor of Doug Jones -- funded the creation of ACRONYM.

Silicon Valley billionaire Reid Hoffman not only funded the creation of ACRONYM, the group that sabotaged Iowa caucus vote results, he bankrolled a notorious online “false flag operation” in Alabama's 2017 senate campaign.

By @MaxBlumenthal https://t.co/S3zqK5IQra
— The Grayzone (@TheGrayzoneNews) February 6, 2020

From The Grayzone, "Acronym group that sabotaged Iowa caucus birthed by billionaire who funded Alabama disinformation campaign":

The exceptionally opaque Acronym was itself created with seed money from a Silicon Valley billionaire named Reid Hoffman who has financed a series of highly manipulative social media campaigns.

The billionaire founder of LinkedIn, Hoffman is a top funder of novel Democratic Party social media campaigns accused of manipulating voters through social media. He is assisted by Dmitri Mehlhorn, a corporate consultant who pushed school privatization before joining Hoffman's political empire.

One of the most consequential beneficiaries of Hoffman's wealth is Acronym CEO Tara McGowan, a 33-year-old former journalist and Obama for America veteran.

Once touted as "a weapon of a woman whose innovative tactics make her critically important to the Democratic Party," McGowan's name is now synonymous with the fiasco in Iowa. She also happens to be married to a senior advisor to Pete Buttieg's presidential campaign.

Back in December 2018, McGowan personally credited Hoffman and Mehlhorn's "Investing in US" initiative for the birth of her dark money pressure group, Acronym.

"I'm personally grateful and proud to be included in this group of incredible political founders + startups @reidhoffman and his team, led by Dmitri [Mehlhorn], have supported and helped to fund over the past two years," she declared on Twitter in December 2018.

I’m personally grateful and proud to be included in this group of incredible political founders + startups who @reidhoffman and his team, led by Dmitri, have supported and helped to fund over the past two years. https://t.co/o0QApPbHWY
— Tara McGowan (@taraemcg) December 21, 2018

At the time, Hoffman had just been exposed for funding Project Birmingham, a covert disinformation campaign consisting of false flag tactics that aimed to depress voter turnout and create the perception of Russian interference in the 2017 Alabama senate election.

Hoffman and Mehlhorn have also faced scrutiny for their alleged operation of a series of deceptive pages which attempted to manipulate center-right users into voting for Democrats. Today, Acronym's McGowan oversees a massive Facebook media operation that employs similarly deceptive techniques to sway voters.

Through youthful, tech-centric operatives like McGowan, Hoffman and Mehlhorn are constructing a massive new infrastructure that could supplant the party's apparatus.

As Vanity Fair reported, "Hoffman and Mehlhorn, after all, are not just building a power base that could supplement traditional Democratic organizations, they are, potentially, laying the groundwork to usurp the D.N.C. entirely."

Read their full report.

There's plenty of bread crumbs pointing to what could be a potentially massive conspiracy at play here and yet Maddow -- who made her name chasing non-existent Russia conspiracy theories -- wants her viewers to focus on supposed 4Chan meddling!

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