Friday, February 05, 2021

Mike Lindell (MyPillow) Pays OAN To Broadcast His Two-Hour Election Fraud Video For 12 Consecutive Hours; Dominion Lawyer: OAN Acted With "Textbook Actual Malice" (Despite Lengthy Disclaimer Stating It's All Bullshit); It Seems Lindell (MyEmptyWallet) Has Produced And Distributed Exhibit A In Any Successful Defamation Suit Against Him

"The statements and claims expressed in this program are . . . not intended to be taken or interpreted by the viewer as established facts."

Please keep in mind that OAN's decision to broadcast "Absolute Proof: Exposing Election Fraud And The Theft Of America By Enemies Foreign And Domestic" multiple times on Friday and this weekend came after the network was named in Dominion's $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit!!!

Thomas Clare, one of Dominion's lawyers:
"Nice try" by OAN, but it definitely does not relieve them of liability. To the contrary, we warned them specifically and in writing that they would be broadcasting false and defamatory statements of fact if they broadcast the program, and they made the affirmative decision to disregarded that warning and broadcast it anyway. . . . Other outlets have refused to host it. Textbook actual malice.

James Poniewozik, New York Times Chief Television Critic:

TV's latest, most outrageously paranoid conspiracy-thriller has arrived. It has everything: cyberespionage, evil vote-stealing machines, wicked media cabals. And it aired Friday on One America News Network.

It is "Absolute Proof," a two-hour-plus disinfomercial made and hosted by Mike Lindell, the chief executive of the MyPillow company . . . Mr. Lindell paid OANN to air it multiple times starting Friday.

In it, Mr. Lindell sits behind a news desk stamped with the seal of "WVW Broadcast Network." . . . He claims that Mr. Trump not only won the election but won by such a margin that he "broke the algorithm" of voting machines.

Mr. Lindell used to sell pillows on TV. Now he's peddling dreams. . . . The content of Mr. Lindell's stolen-election case poses a challenge for a newspaper reviewer, because it is hogwash, widely discredited hogwash . . .

It's tempting just to laugh at all this. And make no mistake, you should laugh at all this! It is a healthy sign that after years of alternative facts, you have still retained some sense of reality and the absurd.

But you should also cry, a little. Because it's not hard to imagine an audience who wants to believe . . . 

In fact, you don't need to imagine them. Just look at pictures from the Capitol on Jan. 6. . . . [R]idiculous does not mean harmless.


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Aaron Rupar, Vox:
Dominion has already filed a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani for baselessly linking the company with fraud, and letters the companies sent to Fox News, Newsmax, and OAN warn that similar litigation is "imminent."

Strangely, however, OAN — an upstart far-right cable network that along with Newsmax has cut into Fox News's audience by echoing Trump's big lies about the election — used extremely reckless language while promoting Lindell's special on Twitter, writing falsely that "Growing evidence of election fraud reveals that the presidency of the United States has been stolen from the American people" in a tweet that has been flagged.

Massive lawsuits of the sort that Dominion and Smartmatic are threatening have driven media companies out of business in the recent past and could represent an existential threat for OAN, even if Lindell is now compensating them for airtime.

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"Cyberly"

"This Is Gonna Reveal All The Criminals In the Country ... From Social Media, Like Mark Zuckerbuck"

"The Biggest Crime Against Humanity"

"The Founding Fathers Did Not Know Anything About Cyber Warfare" (Fact!)

"I Love It When A Defamation Lawsuit Comes Together"

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