Mike Cernovich Pivots From Pizzagate to Not-So-Fake News – New York Magazine
I like to call myself that, because it really triggers people when I do, Mike Cernovich said, his voice tinny but robust with wry satisfaction, when I asked if he thinks of himself a journalist. People get angry, he added. I consider myself a writer, foremost a nonfiction writer. And I write about whatever interests me, and lately, the drama of all the things happening in D.C. interests me. So, in that regard, Im definitely a journalist in the sense that I am breaking news and writing news that other people dont have.
Had Cernovich said that a year ago, there would have been reason to laugh.
Back then, he was a mens-rights activist and self-help guru beloved by the alt-right trolls populating social media with Pepe the Frog memes and anti-Semitic, racist, and misogynistic missives. His major contributions to the political discourse included run-of-the-mill pro-Trump propaganda, like labeling the presidential debates rigged, as well as more creative messaging, like perpetuating rumors that Hillary Clinton (who remains alive as of press time) was near death due to some unholy combination of Parkinsons and syphilis. On his blog, Danger and Play, Cernovich promoted the conspiracy that would become known as Pizzagate, the story that prominent Democrats connected to Clinton were part of a child sex-trafficking operation headquartered in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant that does not have a basement. There was a map to probably, probably child trafficking or something like that, probably the sex cult shit. Thats why it was coded, he speculated on Periscope on November 4, 2016, after studying a leaked email to Clintons campaign chairman John Podesta that included a puzzling reference to a map. These people are fucking sick, man.
But Cernovich is taking a different, arguably savvier approach to expanding his profile and influence in Donald Trumps America. Hes become less reflexively pro-Trump and denounced the alt-right, preferring the term new right while acknowledging that his ideology is a complex terrain that can mostly be defined as a hybrid of populism and nationalism. Hes distanced himself from Pizzagate, claiming in our discussion that hes not responsible for how, in his words, that thing went off the rails, because I never named a pizza parlor. And hes refocused himself on using his substantial platform more than 325,000 Twitter followers, plus millions of viewers on Periscope and YouTube to break news that mainstream journalists are forced to chase, confirm, and, increasingly, cite.
A question you hear often in Washington these days isWho, exactly, is talking to Mike Cernovich? Among the D.C. press corps there is a palpable curiosity about his sources inside the West Wing and on the National Security Council. In just the past few weeks he broke the news of Reince Priebuss firing and was the first to report on and obtain a memo outlining Anthony Scaramuccis White House press strategy.
Ive been playing a tighter game, Cernovich told me. People keep their distance and I respect that. But I think now that when I tweet things out and people actually go and chase down what Im tweeting, especially with national security stuff, they find out that there is at least something there. Sometimes it might be an unconfirmed rumor, but Im not sitting here thinking, Oh, what can I write on Twitter that I made up in my mind? It is actual, real stuff that people are talking about within the intelligence community, or whatever people want to say. You have to earn credibility, you have to earn respect, you have to earn trust.
But who is trusted these days, and who gets to be a Real Journalist? The president got elected after a campaign that was as much about rebranding the monolithic media as fake news as it was about rejecting his political opponent. According to a June 28 Gallup poll, only 27 percent of Americans have a great deal of confidence in newspapers. Television and digital news fared even worse. Yet the numbers are bleaker for the White House. According to an August 7 CNN poll, just 24 percent of Americans trust what they hear from officials, while 30 percent say they trust nothing at all. It makes sense, then, that personalities have become more popular than institutions, and that someone like Cernovich has found a grassroots audience for the information he collects that contributes to their shared beliefs about the world. The minor outrage when he was granted a pass to enter the White House briefing room missed the point entirely.
Cernovich explained a rather cinematic process by which he obtains his tips and information, like if Inspector Gadget, not Robert Redford, had walked into the dimly lit garage inAll the Presidents Men. Most of the stuff I do is shadowy anyway: Meet people in parks, nobody brings a cell phone, which is important, he said, because deep state can detect if you and I are in the same room, thats all shown by a cell phone. They know right away whos meeting. So, when youre meeting with really top sources or whatever, you dont want your cellphones to ever be within range of each other because that can be found. And all of that is being monitored, of course, but theyll deny that never, never spy on journalists. Bullshit! Thats all being monitored.
We were having this conversation on what he called his main number, which is not the number his sources contact him on. Thats a device that doesnt have any association to me or my phone records or anything. So, if somebody found that phone, whats the proof? And people are calling me from burner cell phones. And its all on Signal. So, good luck with that, people!
He admitted, My op-sec is fucking paranoid. When I tell people about it, at first they dont believe it because it sounds so elaborate or whatever.
His sources within the White House and the administration more broadly, he claimed, number in the dozens. He repeated himself for emphasis, duhhhzenz.
A lot of people are afraid to lie to me, he said, because they know that if they lie to me and they burn me, that I would seek revenge. And I would seek revenge in a way that maybe a traditional journalist wouldnt seek revenge. He added that he would do so, legally, lawfully, I wouldnt break any laws or anything. I would start snooping around in that persons life, man.
Still, bullshit tips do fall into his lap. But his process for vetting a source tends to weed those out quickly. This amounts to asking the source to tell him information until he feels hes heard enough to determine if theyre credible, something he says he does sometimes without even learning the persons name.
Cernovich claims that on April 2 an anonymous source called him on Signal to tell him that former national security adviser Susan Rice had requested the disclosure of the identities of Americans including many related to the Trump campaign and transition in raw intelligence reports, a process known as unmasking. He wrote up the tip on Medium, and then watched as it took off on social media, with help from the Drudge Report, Kellyanne Conway, and Donald Trump Jr., the presidents son, who suggested that were the media not rigged, Cernovich would receive a Pulitzer Prize.
The press, however, didnt give him much credit for his scoop. A single anonymous source does not typically meet the threshold for publishing news at most media outlets, for starters. And then there was the issue of taking Cernovich seriously at all, given that his earlier work included stuff like a video where a sickly muppet rendering of Clinton collapsed and rose from the dead repeatedly. So when Bloomberg Viewreported the same news on the morning of April 3, citing U.S. officials familiar with the matter, it was treated differently with total legitimacy.The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal,the New York Post, andthe Washington Times, either unaware or dismissive of the fact that Cernovich was first, wrote that Bloomberg had broken the story.And when Cernovich was cited, byNBCfor instance, it was typically within the context of stories that downplayed the newsworthiness of Rices actions the implication being, if the Pizzagate loon is the one with the intel, perhaps the intel isnt all its cracked up to be.
But by late July, everything had changed, both in how Cernovich perceived the Trump White House, and in how the press perceived Cernovich.
At 3:29 p.m. on July 28, Cernovich took to Twitter to report that a source close to POTUS informed him, Reince has been told hes out. The president himself would not announce the decision until 4:49 p.m., while sitting aboard Air Force One on a tarmac in Washington. And although other reporters would go on to say theyd heard rumors of the decision before it came down, Cernovich had the advantage of operating without the barrier of an editor or publisher or any other organizational structure that might inhibit speed but also lower the odds of a fuck-up.
The reason that Im so fast at what I do is Im not saying that Im getting stories that nobody else has the difference is that if a tip goes out to five people, and I know that its a reliable source, I just tweet it out, he told me. If youre at a respectable news organization, that would be considered irresponsible. So, me, Im just like, Oh. Sounds good. This is a vetted source. Im rocking and rolling. Lets get out and get the conversation going.
On August 2, when he reported the details of what he called The Mooch Memo a document created by the erstwhile White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci before his firing, detailing his plans for a comms strategy other reporters hurriedly confirmed the news and obtained their own copies of the document. CNN noted, It was first published by right-wing media personality Mike Cernovich on Medium. As did Slate, Newsweek, and the New York Daily News, among many others. After Cernovich reported last week that Scaramucci was planning to hold some kind of press event in the wake of his firing, Bloomberg backed up the rumor before CNN reported the specifics of the online town hall scheduled for last Friday (which Scaramucci eventually canceled).
Would you want to go work in the Trump White House after what happened to Mooch today? Cernovich asked his internet audience on July 31, after Scaramucci was fired. If you say yes, youre telling me that you dont really have any options in life. Youre telling me that youre desperate for power, or you dont really have options in life. Otherwise, why in the world would you give up anything for the White House?
Criticizing the president in terms like that is part of his evolution. One way that Ive changed is that if six months ago I had gotten a big story that wouldve hurt Trump, I probably wouldnt break that story, he said. I would have given that story to somebody else to break. But now, Id probably break that story. He told me his decision to be less pro-Trump than I was is about trust, and his realization that although he has a political agenda, being truthful will necessarily mean disagreeing with the president sometimes. This means trust from the public and the rest of the media. I want people to know, Hey, if youre reading my stuff, I do have an agenda. I do have a bias. But what you read is gonna be within the realm of truth, he explains. It also means trust from his sources, who believe he is acting genuinely, and, in a way, transparently.
He added, I wouldnt say all journalism is activism, but I would say most journalism is activism and he includes in that assessment his own work, the objective of which is to get out stories that advance my view of the world. Even with his shift toward a kind of professionalism, that worldview does still include what you might call conspiratorial beliefs, like that some all-powerful they installs pedophiles into elected office as a means of controlling their actions through blackmail.
Recently that has meant leading the charge against National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster. To Cernovich and those of his new-right-whatever-we-are-calling-it-now ilk, McMaster is a globalist warmonger who stands in opposition to the Trump ethos including the surgical removal of National Security Council officials allied with his predecessor, Michael Flynn, and the chief White House strategist, Steve Bannon (whom McMaster removed from the NSC principals committee earlier this year).
Cernovichs reporting on the NSC has concerned McMaster, according toThe Atlantic. During a meeting last month,The Atlanticreported, McMaster mentioned Cernovich by name. He did bring it up and said, This guys been targeting our people, he is posting personal information that has to have come from the inside, a source close to McMaster told the publication.
In our conversation, Cernovich elaborated on what he meant by reporting on things within the realm of truth by pointing to a rumor about McMasters personal life. Because this rumor is so pervasive, according to Cernovich, nobody would accuse him of making it up out of thin air. He said he believes its acceptable to report on a rumor if its a reliable source, because in that case, I dont consider it a rumor. I consider it true. If anything, that might be too tabloid, and I dont have an issue with tabloid-style journalism at all. He does have what he called a platform rule that amounts to: If youre nobody, Im not gonna make you somebody.
I wont do that kind of journalism, he said, But if youre a public figure and youre in the game in the way McMaster is, thats a little bit different. Even lower-level staffers, he said, could be saved by the platform rule, because at a certain point, its just kind of fucking with a persons life with no good reason. Thats bad karma.
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Mike Cernovich Pivots From Pizzagate to Not-So-Fake News - New York Magazine