Quillette, Andy Ngo and the Trump campaign

Starting last summer, Pinkerite reported on the connection between Andy Ngo and the Trump campaign via Ngo's lawyer Harmeet K. Dhillon:

• July 6, 2019 - Andy Ngo, the grift and the Republican Party
• July 13, 2019 - More on the IDW's plan to help Trump's re-election campaign
• July 16, 2019 - The IDW/Republican Party/Andy Ngo grifter scheme continues apace
• July 18, 2019 - Andy Ngo & Bob Roberts
• July 29, 2019 - Ezra Levant -> Claire Lehmann -> Andy Ngo -> Donald Trump
• August 7, 2019 - Trump is the ratfucker
• August 29, 2019 - The Andy Ngo saga continues

The last link goes to a post that includes a passage from a Slate article about Ngo's career:

Andy Ngo, the right-wing journalist and provocateur who was embraced by mainstream Republicans and covered favorably in mainstream media after he was attacked by antifa activists during a street fight in Portland, Oregon, may suddenly be persona non grata among conservatives. Nearly all mentions of Ngo were scrubbed from the upscale right-wing publication Quillette after a newly-released video showed him acting friendly with members of Patriot Prayer, a far-right hate group that has repeatedly sought out fights with leftists. 

Ngo, who has used selectively edited videos to paint antifa as a violent, criminal group was hit with punches and milkshakes during a clash between antifa activists and members of the Proud Boys, an organization labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Many on the right rallied around Ngo after that altercation, and spread false rumors that the milkshakes thrown at him and others had contained quick-dry cement. 

Ngo used his newfound fame to boost his profile, appearing on Fox News and other cable news outlets and embracing his victimhood.
Just weeks later, however, a video surfaced on Twitter showing Ngo pal around with the Proud Boys-adjacent group Patriot Prayer. 

The video shows Ngo laughing as the group plans a violent attack on antifa members at a Portland bar in May. The video surfaced as part of a lawsuit brought by the bar, accusing Patriot Prayer members of causing a riot.

Please note that there has never been any evidence presented as to the identity of those who attacked Ngo and it's possible - and I think extremely plausible - that those anonymous people were right-wingers staging the attack in coordination with Ngo.

Ngo's strategy is obviously a template for Trump's campaign: coordinate with far-right groups and the right-wing media machine to bait and even frame leftist groups in order to claim leftists are out of control and a danger to the country.

Now Ngo is aiding the Trump campaign as reported last month in the Washington Post article Conservative media helps Trump perform ‘law and order’ in Portland, with risks for November.

The Trump administration has escalated tensions, local officials argue, by sending camouflaged officers to confront activists, most of whom have practiced nonviolence. The president, while devolving control of the coronavirus response to state and local authorities, has vowed to replicate the federal crackdown in Chicago, New York and other Democratic-controlled cities seeing sustained protests after the police killing of George Floyd. And he is being cheered on by provocateurs online and in the media pointing to the backlash against federal mobilization as a sign that a still more severe response is needed.

Video posted by conservative activist Andy Ngo, showing a scuffle with armed agents in military fatigues, became fodder for Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire website to label protesters “rioters.” Sean Hannity, the Fox News host, thundered: “The president’s right. This is a war zone.”

It helps that actual members of Antifa won't reveal their identities nor pledge non-violence, making them the perfect boogeymen for the Trump campaign. This reveals the genius of Martin Luther King, Jr.:  his emphasis on nonviolence and non-anonymity prevented the FBI from successfully portraying the Civil Rights movement as scary violent thugs out to destroy America.

It's also important to note that the far left, including Antifa, generally hates the Democratic Party. But Trump and Andy Ngo did their best to try to connect them:

And in spite of Andy Ngo's being caught coordinating with Patriot Prayer it's clear that Slate was wrong when it said:

Andy Ngo... may suddenly be persona non grata among conservatives. Nearly all mentions of Ngo were scrubbed from the upscale right-wing publication Quillette after a newly-released video showed him acting friendly with members of Patriot Prayer, a far-right hate group that has repeatedly sought out fights with leftists. 

Ngo is not only aiding the Trump campaign with his sleazy tactics he is also, in spite of being scrubbed from Quillette last August, back in the Quillette fold. He is listed as a member of Quillette's team as Sub-editor, Contributing Writer.

And in spite of the brief break between Quillette and Ngo, Quillette's founder Claire Lehmann has supported and enabled Ngo throughout his sleazy grifting career, including promoting the completely unfounded claim that Ngo was the victim of "a chemical attack."

Lehmann it seems is not at all disturbed by Ngo's aiding the Trump campaign with his Reichstag Fire tactics.

Neither is Steven Pinker since he hasn't said a single word against Andy Ngo and his sleaze, nor Quillette's continuing support for Ngo.

The IDW/Republican Party/Andy Ngo grifter scheme continues apace

Here we see Andy Ngo trying to connect Democrat Maxine Waters to a violent mob.

This was an obvious next step in the IDW/Republican Party/Andy Ngo grift -

First make a big to-do about Andy Ngo being hit by an anonymous rando at an anti-Proud Boys demonstration. Including bogus claims of milkshakes with quick-drying cement. Or as Claire Lehmann called it a "chemical attack."

Next get Republican committee woman Harmeet K. Dhillon to become Ngo's lawyer.

Get Dhillon to make common cause with Trump by showing up at Trump's right-wing social media summit.

And of course when Trump is being criticized for attacking three American-born congress women as originally coming from "countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe" neither Andy Ngo nor any member of the IDW has, so far, had any complaints. Even alleged "liberal" members of the IDW like Steven Pinker and Bret Weinstein.

And in fact, Trump's response to criticism is similar to the IDW/Republican/Andy Ngo tactic. Trump's response was to claim that he wasn't the racist, it was the women he attacked who are the racists.

Much like Ngo and friends are trying to deflect from the hatred of journalists and pro-violence of the right and Trump by claiming it's the left and Democrats who are anti-journalist (Andy Ngo is portrayed as a "journalist" ) and pro-violence.

This is the ultimate expression of what the "intellectual dark web" is really all about. A pro-Trump effort trying to pass itself off as centrist or even liberal.

And Andy Ngo himself is the son of Vietnamese immigrants. Exactly the kind of people Trump attacked.   Because the grift is too strong for Andy Ngo to give up, even when Trump hates him as much as he hates any non-white immigrants.

When will the media do a story on children of immigrants like Andy Ngo & his lawyer, Harmeet K. Dhillon who side with Trump's racism, knowing Trump must hate their own immigrant parents as much as any congresswoman's?

Andy Ngo, the grift and the Republican Party

Less than a week after an unidentified
individual punched Andy Ngo,
Harmeet K. Dhillon is riding
the grift all the way

Pinkerite's mission is to focus on the mainstreaming of race science, but since the Intellectual Dark Web - recently describe by The National Review, correctly as "reactionary" has many connections to the right, Pinkerite must discuss politics directly from time to time, without the race science emphasis.

Which brings us to the Andy Ngo incident.

Last Saturday, June 29,  Ngo was at a clash between the far-right Proud Boys and the far-left Anifa (Anti-fascism) and had milkshakes and sillystring thrown at him and is on video being punched.

Andy Ngo was first declared a grifter - literally a "conservative activist" - in the mainstream media in the March 2018 article in GQ entitled The Free Speech Grifters (my bold):

Jordan Peterson, a psychology professor turned conservative provocateur, said he's figured out "how to monetize social justice warriors." Ben Shapiro, who rose to fame "owning" liberals on college campuses, sells "Leftist Tears" mugs and a book entitled How to Debate Leftists and Destroy Them. Andy Ngo, a conservative activist who followed Sommers around to her Portland engagements, asked for donations after he published a video of the Lewis & Clark episode, notably edited down to just the protesting rather than including Sommers's ideas. Sommers vouched for Ngo's plea for money, tweeting that "he works tirelessly promoting free expression in Portland area. Often for no compensation. Help him out if you can." 

Ngo seems to be raising funds for his career constantly and it doesn't take much for him to create a cause, as he did when Katie Herzog, a fan of Quillette wrote a positive article for The Stranger about Ngo and his career as a "journalist." The title of the article explains why Ngo is such a valuable asset to the right, which normally claims to be opposed to identity politics: Anti-Racist Protesters Harass Gay Asian-American Journalist

Ngo, although not mentioned in the Bari Weiss article, is in tight with the IDW, as his connection to Christina Hoff Sommers demonstrates. Pinkerite has mentioned Ngo several times previously on this blog. And he writes for Quillette.

Quillette's Claire Lehmann promoted the unsupported claim that Antifa put quick-drying cement in milkshakes, even going further by calling it a "chemical attack."

Media Matters published a story: How conservative figures turned a flimsy rumor about "concrete milkshakes" in Portland into a meme - Nobody is doubting that there was a physical confrontation. The details, however, remain murky.

And now the Republican Party has gotten into the act.

Andy Ngo's lawyer is Harmeet K. Dhillon, a Republican committee woman, according to her Twitter profile. She tried to join the Trump administration, according to her Wiki.

She has advocated on behalf of Milo Yiannopoulos, another individual mentioned as a grifter in the GQ article.

Pinkerite has noted the apparent strategy on the part of the IDW to try to intimidate civil rights organizations by threatening to sue critics.

Her Twitter timeline shows that Harmeet K. Dhillon has no problem with financial/legal intimidation against free speech.

Less than a week after the Ngo incident, Harmeet K. Dhillon has founded a 501(c)(3) organization which she tweeted will serve "Americans who are not served by the traditional civil rights establishment." She means conservative activists like Andy Ngo and also, most likely, far-right extremists like the Proud Boys.

This appears to have been Harmeet K. Dhillon's plan for a long time. According to Breitbart last August:

Attorney Harmeet Dhillon argued during a Breitbart News Sunday appearance on SiriusXM that conservatives need to use the legal system to defend their civil rights.

I think Dhillon's ultimate goal is to aid in the re-election of Donald Trump by making an issue of the violence of "the left" to deflect from the fact that Donald Trump loves murderous (often journalist-murdering) dictators, "very fine" Nazis, and locking children up in concentration camps

And thanks to our gullible media and a shameless rightwing machine funded by god knows how much plutocrat money, you don't need much more than an unidentified individual or two, throwing a punch at a conservative activist, to launch an anti-left campaign.

Couldn't be easier for Republicans to run this grift.

Andy Ngo & Bob Roberts

Bob Roberts was released in 1992, when Andy Ngo was six years old, but the movie seems to have anticipated Ngo's career.

Per the Wiki summary of the end of the movie:

As Roberts is leaving the studio, he is seemingly shot by a would-be assassin. Raplin, who has been causing problems for the campaign, is initially linked to the shooting, but he is later cleared when it is found that due to constrictive palsy in his right hand he physically could not have fired the gun. Following the incident, Raplin contends that Roberts was never actually shot and that the gun was fired into the ground. 

The campaign is boosted by public support following the assassination attempt, and Roberts wins the election with 52 percent of the vote. Although Roberts claims that his wounds have left him paralyzed from the waist down, he is seen tapping his feet at a celebration party. 

The scuffle between Ngo and a few unidentified people in an anti-Proud Boys counter-demonstration has been used by Ngo and by his lawyer, Republican committee woman Harmeet K. Dhillon to raise money by representing a few unidentified randos as a danger to free speech, and most recently Ngo tried to link Congresswoman Maxine Waters to Antifa.

The claim that Andy Ngo suffered a brain hemorrhage as a result of the scuffle came from Quillette:

The Antifa thugs who attacked Quillette editor and photojournalist Andy Ngo in Portland yesterday did not quite manage to crack his skull. But they did manage to induce a brain hemorrhage that required Ngo’s overnight hospitalization. (For those seeking to support Ngo financially as he recovers, there is a third-party fundraising campaign.) 

Many people have pointed out that Andy Ngo's quick recovery from brain injury is miraculous - almost immediately after the Antifa event he made the rounds of right-wing media.

I find it curious that in the screenshot just above, Claire Lehmann was claiming that "liquid cement" was responsible for Ngo's "traumatic brain injury."

Snopes ruled that the claim about quick-drying cement was false:

However, Portland city officials admitted in a July 1, 2019, phone call with reporters that the evidence for the statement made in the tweet was based solely on an observation of a police lieutenant in the field that day who, according to the Portland Mercury, “‘saw a powdery substance that appeared to cause some irritation [when in contact with skin].’ The lieutenant also said the milkshake smelled similar to wet concrete, a smell they were familiar with from ‘having worked with concrete before.'” 

The police department’s tweet referenced vegan milkshakes made and distributed by the activist group Popular Mobilization (PopMob). 

“They put targets on our backs,” said Popular Mobilization spokeswoman Effie Baum, who asserted that activists didn’t add cement or any other non-food ingredient to the drinks and were “flabbergasted” at how the rumor spread online. 

The narrative appears to change from milkshakes to punching in the slightly more respectable end of the right-wing media, the Wall Street Journal:

Footage filmed by an Oregonian reporter shows someone in a black hoodie punching and kicking Mr. Ngo, and others surrounding him and throwing things at him. 

After escaping the mob, Mr. Ngo went to the hospital and was treated for head injuries including a subarachnoid hemorrhage, or brain bleed. 

A photo on Twitter shows his bloody face and battered eye.

Mr. Ngo was also hit with milk shakes, which have become a common Antifa projectile. Portland police on Saturday tweeted that they had received a tip that some milk shakes contained quick-drying cement.

But no actual medical records have been provided to prove that Ngo was treated for a brain hemorrhage.


Before the June 30 scuffle, Ngo was mocked for portraying himself as a martyr of Antifa because he was silly-stringed. It seems possible to me that someone in sympathy with Ngo came up with the cement milkshake story to help Ngo look less ridiculous. And once there was video of punching, the cement milkshakes were no longer needed.

According to Tim Robbins, the movie "Bob Roberts" did anticipate Trump:

“‘Bob Roberts’ came true,” Mr. Robbins says, referring to the 1992 mockumentary he wrote and starred in. 

He prefigured the Trump phenomenon in the film, which is about a charismatic television entertainer and rich businessman who runs for office on the Republican ticket, sugarcoating his corrupt ways with an appeal to family values. He is hailed as a savior by his fans and as a crypto-fascist by his critics. 

When a young woman sends an admiring note to Bob Roberts, he writes back warning her to stay away from crack because “It’s a ghetto drug.”

IDW update: so far none of the "liberals" of the IDW have spoken out against Trump's racism, including his attack at his latest Nuremburg rally.

UPDATE - Pinker has just come out against Trump. Good for him.

When the IDW comes after you

 

Lehmann claimed, without evidence,
that Ngo was the victim of a chemical attack.
There was no chemical attack.

Quillette was identified by Bari Weiss, in her NYTimes article as "the publication most associated with (the IDW)."

In spite of claims that can be found online that Andy Ngo was fired by Quillette, he is in fact still listed as a "contributing writer" at Quillette.

As Buzzfeed News wrote:

He’s whittled his themes down to a brutally efficient, social media- and Fox News–friendly trio: Hate crimes are hoaxes, anti-fascists are the real fascists, and liberals are naive about Islam, which is violent. And he now edits part time for Quillette, the so-called heterodox publication that has staked out a position as a home for centrist journalists and academics disgruntled about left-wing activism and woke culture. It gives him an easy way to defeat charges that he’s a right-wing activist.

Ngo also had connections to the Trump administration, and Ngo's relentless attempts to demonize the rag-tag group of unorganized anonymous leftists, Antifa, was so popular with the Trump administration that at one point during the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, Trump claimed the attackers were Antifa.

So I was very interested to see an article in The Intercept, A Right-Wing Brawler Asked a Court to Protect Him From an Antifascist’s Tweets. 

It seems that rightwing extremists went after an activist who had volunteered to investigate far-right groups:

LODER FIRST BECAME alarmed while working as a consultant for tech companies that wanted to keep their sites clear of hate speech and messages that promote violence; they realized that social media platforms were not doing enough to keep extremists “from fundraising and recruiting and spreading their hateful messages.” Paying attention to what was on those platforms during Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, and in the lead-up to the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Loder said, felt like “pointing at an oncoming freight train, and then just watching it happen.” 

So, working on weekends, Loder started to tackle the problem as a volunteer, watching hours of footage from right-wing social media feeds and trying to identify groups that might be using political rallies as “grass to hide in, to recruit and carry out violent acts.” 

Loder has tried to prod social networks into taking action against users who threaten violence. In 2019, Loder set up searches to collect death threats directed at Rep. Ilhan Omar, after then-President Donald Trump tweeted a video that distorted her comments on the 9/11 attacks alongside images of the World Trade Center in flames. Loder then urged other users to mass-report those tweets to press Twitter to enforce its rules and remove them.

The article reports on Andy Ngo's connection: 

In July, Loder helped identify  far-right activist Aaron Simmons as the masked attacker who clubbed an independent filmmaker in the head during an anti-trans protest in Los Angeles. (That attack had been wrongly blamed on antifascists after video of the assault was tweeted with a misleading caption by Andy Ngo, a far-right commentator.) Simmons was subsequently arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon for the attack on the filmmaker (Simmons had menaced Loder outside the Torrence courthouse in September)...

Ngo was identified as a "free speech grifter" in 2018 along with a named member of the IDW, Christina Hoff Sommers. But of course free speech only goes one way with grifters:

In the meantime, Loder has also repulsed two recent legal complaints from lawyers working for Andy Ngo. The first was a copyright complaint over a photograph Loder tweeted of Ngo posing in front of fascist graffiti in Poland. The second was a cease-and-desist letter concerning Loder’s role in a Twitter campaign to shame companies into pulling their ads from the Canadian website Ngo writes for, The Post Millennial.

Loder scoffs at Ngo’s complaint that putting pressure on the site’s advertisers is a form of censorship. “I’m not censoring you,” Loder said they would tell Ngo. “But I am showing advertisers what your site looks like and what’s on there, and they’re dropping you.”

Thanks to Quillette and other rightwing media, Ngo was classified as a "journalist" for a time, but soon news outlets discovered that Ngo was very much a partisan:

Nowhere was this demonstrated more quickly than in the case of the meteoric rise and equally rapid fall of Andy Ngo, the provocateur and social media personality who garnered nationwide sympathy last June, when he tweeted that he was attacked by antifascist protesters at a Proud Boys rally. Last week, the local newspaper the Portland Mercury reported that a left-wing activist going undercover as a member of Patriot Prayer, a far-right group known for promoting and engaging in violent clashes with leftist activists, had given the publication an 18-minute video that included footage of Ngo with a group of Patriot Prayer members as the members discuss an upcoming brawl, including weaponry to be used in altercations with antifa. Ngo, who describes himself as a journalist, did not record the conversation, and does not appear to have his camera or notebook out. For part of the footage, he is seen on his phone.

It should be mentioned here that both Ngo and Proud Boys have shown up at public demonstrations disguised as Antifa and BLM supporters.

Luckily for Loder, California has a robust anti-SLAPP law:

Unfortunately for Kiefer, that is not how the law works. Thomas Burke, a lawyer who wrote a book on California’s anti-SLAPP statute, told me that it doesn’t matter at all if Loder is defined as an activist or a journalist. The law is designed to protect anyone whose free speech in a public forum or on a matter of public interest is threatened by a meritless lawsuit or injunction.... 

...As Burke explained, the original aim was to stop wealthy corporations from suing environmentalists or residents of an area who protested a company’s use of land but could not afford the legal fees to defend themselves from a libel suit. A later amendment added language saying that the statute “shall be construed broadly.” Since then, courts have ruled that anti-SLAPP protections apply to people who are providing information to the public, whether they are activists or journalists.

My work is different from Loder's: he focuses on the rightwing extremists themselves. I am less likely to be the target of violent threats, since I focus on the mainstream right-wingers who sometimes aid and abet extremists, and "celebrity intellectuals" like Steven Pinker, who, while he may not support Andy Ngo directly, seems to have no problem supporting Quillette, which helped legitimize Ngo's grift. Pinker even has a couple of bylines in Quillette.

Quillette also published Razib Khan's review of Charles Murray's latest book in which Khan agreed with Murray we need to "connect the dots" about Black Americans or "face disaster." That information is public, but few people outside the Quillette audience are aware of it. It's possible Khan considers my publicizing his menacing views of Black Americans as some kind of threat to his career.

I'm grateful New York State also has a robust anti-SLAPP law.

The Andy Ngo saga continues

Slate has a perfect summary of the past couple of months of Andy Ngo's career:

Andy Ngo, the right-wing journalist and provocateur who was embraced by mainstream Republicans and covered favorably in mainstream media after he was attacked by antifa activists during a street fight in Portland, Oregon, may suddenly be persona non grata among conservatives. Nearly all mentions of Ngo were scrubbed from the upscale right-wing publication Quillette after a newly-released video showed him acting friendly with members of Patriot Prayer, a far-right hate group that has repeatedly sought out fights with leftists. 

Ngo, who has used selectively edited videos to paint antifa as a violent, criminal group was hit with punches and milkshakes during a clash between antifa activists and members of the Proud Boys, an organization labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Many on the right rallied around Ngo after that altercation, and spread false rumors that the milkshakes thrown at him and others had contained quick-dry cement.  

Ngo used his newfound fame to boost his profile, appearing on Fox News and other cable news outlets and embracing his victimhood. 

Just weeks later, however, a video surfaced on Twitter showing Ngo pal around with the Proud Boys-adjacent group Patriot Prayer. 

The video shows Ngo laughing as the group plans a violent attack on antifa members at a Portland bar in May. The video surfaced as part of a lawsuit brought by the bar, accusing Patriot Prayer members of causing a riot.

Many Quillette critics on Twitter suggested that Quillette had fired Ngo because of the video but Lehmann denied it...

Quillette, where Ngo worked as a photo editor until Monday, announced after the video surfaced that Ngo was leaving his job at the site. Ngo’s name was scrubbed from the site, The Daily Beast reported.
Quillette editor-in-chief Claire Lehmann told The Daily Beast that Ngo left the site weeks earlier but the move was not publicized until Monday.

“Andy actually moved on from Quillette a few weeks ago because he is undertaking bigger & better projects, we just hadn't updated the website and he hadn't updated his Twitter bio until today,” she told the Daily Beast. “I haven’t seen the video,” she added.
Lehmann also said that Ngo had been on a “break” from a “brain injury” he suffered at the Portland rally.  

Ngo, however, did not remove Quillette from his Twitter bio until Monday, noted National Observer reporter Caroline Orr, the same day that the Patriot Prayer video was released.

Columnist Tabatha Southey had a great response.

The question is, will Andy Ngo devote himself to ratfucking for Trump, or will this hurt his ratfucking career?

Andy Ngo's pro-Trump friends caught planning violence

 The Guardian published the story today:

z

Revealed: pro-Trump activists plotted violence ahead of Portland rallies

Leaked chat logs show Portland-area pro-Trump activists planning and training for violence, sourcing arms and ammunition and even suggesting political assassinations ahead of a series of contentious rallies in the Oregon city, including one scheduled for this weekend.

The chats on the GroupMe app, shared with the Guardian by the antifascist group Eugene Antifa, show conversations between Oregon members of the Patriots Coalition growing more extreme as they discuss armed confrontations with leftwing Portland activists, and consume a steady diet of online disinformation about protests and wildfires.

At times, rightwing activists discuss acts of violence at recent, contentious protests, which in some cases they were recorded carrying out. At one point, David Willis, a felon currently being sued for his alleged role in an earlier episode of political violence, joins a discussion about the use of paintballs.

Where other members had previously suggested freezing the paintballs for maximum damage, Willis wrote: “They make glass breaker balls that are rubber coated metal. They also have pepper balls but they are about 3 dollars a ball. Don’t freeze paintballs it makes them wildly inaccurate” [sic.]

Andy Ngo and David Willis can be seen together in an image in this tweet.

The Claire mentioned in the tweet is long-time Andy Ngo enabler and employer, Claire Lehmann.

Here is Claire Lehmann pushing the lie about a "chemical attack" which I think was invented before the event, planned by Ngo and his enablers as part of the usual grift.

Ngo was caught making common cause with Patriot Prayer last year, reported in Rolling Stone:

The source told the Mercury that Ngo and Patriot Prayer have an “understanding” that the group offers him protection when he covers rallies in exchange for favorable coverage. While this has not been confirmed, and Ngo strongly denies these allegations, an audio conversation between members of the Proud Boys, released by Willamette Week seemed to confirm that such discussions between Ngo and the Proud Boys had occurred, as one man is recorded saying that Ngo was attacked on June 29th because he refused an offer of protection. “Andy Ngo was fucking told that if he wanted protection from the PBs [Proud Boys], he went in with us and he went out with us,” the man says.

When reached for comment, Ngo directed Rolling Stone to his attorney Harmeet Dhillon, who refuted the allegations made by the Portland Mercury. “There have been suggestions made by that story and others that he is part of that group or embedded in that group or took protection from that group, which is absolutely false,” she tells Rolling Stone.

Harmeet Dhillon is not only Ngo's lawyer, she is a Republican committee woman and a rabid Trump supporter.

Trump is the ratfucker

I've been talking about the connection between Trump and Quillette's favorite grifter, Andy Ngo via Ngo's lawyer, Republican committeewoman Harmeet K. Dhillon for the past month.

It was my hunch that Trump would try to use Ngo's fear-mongering over Antifa as a deflection tactic.

A week later, my hunch was further confirmed when Dhillon showed up at Trump's rightwing social media summit.

Just a few days after that, I saw that Andy Ngo was proceeding with the obvious next step - try to connect Antifa to the Democratic party.

A week ago, on what I think is the obvious co-ordination between Ngo, his lawyer and the Trump campaign I wrote:

There is a slight problem with the Antifa tactic - Antifa, being a bunch of anarchists and random zanies likely hate the Democratic Party as much as the Republican Party. 

But I am confident that Trump's ratfuckers will come up with a scheme to try to link Antifa and the Democrats. And Andy Ngo has already made an attempt to do just that.

The movie "All the President's Men" discussed the dirty tricks committed by the Nixon campaign, called "ratfucking."

But as we can see in the image at the top of this post, Trump does his own ratfucking, personally.

And this will not be the end of it. According to the NYTimes yesterday:

The Trump campaign was unapologetic on Tuesday about a New York Times report on its Facebook advertisements that use the word “invasion,” which featured prominently in the El Paso suspect’s manifesto. A senior Trump political adviser had a single-word answer — “no” — when asked if the campaign would change the tenor of its ads.

Trump's tweet about Antifa from today makes it obvious - any time Trump is accused of causing harm to the country because of his unrestrained racism and fear-mongering, he is going to try to do a both-sides. With plenty of help from grifter Andy Ngo. Expect Trump to mention Antifa a lot more, and to try to smear Democrats with that conveniently anonymous collection of masked individuals.

Legitimate journalists would do well to keep track of Andy Ngo if they want to scoop the next big story of the campaign. It's sure to be an utterly shameless example of ratfucking.

This video clip is the ratfucker scene from "All the Presidents Men" with Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein and Robert Walden as Donald Segrettti.

Ezra Levant -> Claire Lehmann -> Andy Ngo -> Donald Trump

I've mentioned a couple of times that Andy Ngo and his Republican committeewoman lawyer Harmeet K. Dhillon want to participate in Trump's re-election campaign through hyping Ngo's clash with Antifa, for use as a tactic to deflect from Trump's raging racism. 

Looks like it's working beyond their wildest dreams.

I'm not sure where Trump got the idea of Antifa hitting people over the head with baseball bats, not even Claire Lehmann tried that one, although I guess it isn't any worse than a "chemical attack" as Lehmann claimed, without evidence.

What's even more significant about Lehmann's tweet, more significant than the chemical attack claim or the way that Fox News has been hyping the Antifa story, is Lehmann declaring Andy Ngo a "valued member of the Quillette team."

Quillette, which has been aiding and abetting Andy Ngo's grift for years, was created by Claire Lehmann, who was an Australian correspondant for Ezra Levant's Rebel Media. 

Here is Lehmann appearing in a Rebel Media episode along with Gavin McInnes, who is back at Rebel Media.

In the summer of 2017 Rebel Media looked pretty bad. As Canadaland wrote:

The Rebel Had An Awful Lot Of Sympathy For The White Supremacists In Charlottesville

Just after 1:00 this afternoon, Rebel Media personality Faith Goldy captured one of the clearest videos of the car that mowed into anti-racist protesters at the apparent culmination of the “Unite the Right” convergence of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia. The driver, who is in custody but has not yet been identified, killed one person and injured nearly 20 others. 

In the hours and minutes leading up to that moment, however, Goldy had spent her live Periscope broadcasts rationalizing the rally organized by white nationalist Jason Kessler — an “extremist” to whom the Rebel once paid the revenues from a video that contained material plagiarized from him — and complaining about what she saw as the unfair treatment of the alt-right by authorities. In particular, she expressed the (wildly incorrect) view that American police are more generous toward Black protesters than white ones.

It did not look good for Levant as Vice News noted:

And while Levant insisted “simply covering controversial figures doesn’t mean we agree with those controversial figures,” The Rebel has nevertheless used its growing platform — with some 400,000 Youtube subscribers — to push sensationalist coverage of the counter-protesters who showed up in Charlottesville over the weekend. Even in his statement aimed at toning down The Rebel’s image, Levant writes that “the alt-right is, in my mind — the mirror image of Black Lives Matter.”

Equating Black Lives Matter with the alt-right is the same "both sides" tactic that Donald Trump used in response to the Charlottesville violence. And it didn't help Levant much because Canadian candidate for Prime Minister, Andrew Scheer, distanced himself from Rebel Media.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer is distancing himself from The Rebel, announcing he will no longer do interviews with the controversial right-wing website until it changes its editorial direction. 

But the Tory leader has stopped short of explicitly denouncing The Rebel, which is under heightened scrutiny in light of the protests in Charlottesville, Va. 

"I am disgusted by the vile comments made by hate groups this past weekend. I believe there is fine line between reporting the facts and giving those groups a platform," Scheer told HuffPost Canada in a statement. 

"I have a positive vision for Canada and I want to share that vision with Canadians and talk about issues that unite us all. Until the editorial directions of the Rebel Media changes, I will not grant interviews to the outlet." 

Scheer granted interviews to the outlet during the Tory leadership race, as did other contenders. But he has faced pressure in recent days to denounce the website over coverage that was seen as sympathetic to organizers of the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville.

Ezra Levant must feel avenged right now. His old protege Claire Lehmann is furthering the far-right cause. Andy Ngo, a valued member of Claire Lehmann's Quillette team is helping Trump deflect from charges of racism - charges that first surfaced most strongly during his presidency in Charlottesville, and which resulted in blowback for Rebel Media.

There is a slight problem with the Antifa tactic - Antifa, being a bunch of anarchists and random zanies likely hate the Democratic Party as much as the Republican Party.

But I am confident that Trump's ratfuckers will come up with a scheme to try to link Antifa and the Democrats. And Andy Ngo has already made an attempt to do just that.

Andy Ngo supports a traitor, shot while trying to murder members of Congress

Those who have followed the career of grifting sleazoid Andy Ngo, as I have, will not be surprised to see him, on the anniversary of the January 6 attempted coup, portraying Ashli Babbitt as a martyr.

During the coup, Babbitt tried to lead a murderous mob right to members of Congress. 

Washington Post:

Babbitt and others were attempting to breach a barricaded door inside the Capitol building on Wednesday afternoon, angrily demanding that three U.S. Capitol Police officers who were guarding the door step aside, one of the clips shows. The officers moved away as colleagues in tactical gear arrived behind the rioters, according to the clip and other video posted online.

Roughly 35 seconds after the officers moved away, as she climbed up toward a broken section of the unguarded door, Babbitt was shot by an officer on the other side.

Babbitt, a 35-year-old California native, and more than a dozen others appeared to be trying to get into the Speaker’s Lobby, a hallway that would have given them access to the House of Representatives chamber, according to a Post analysis of video footage and plans of the Capitol

Not only was (still is?) Ngo's lawyer a Republican committeewoman, Harmeet K. Dhillon, but during the run-up to the 2020 election he acted as Trump's ratfucker, promoting the Antifa panic. 

Trump loved the Antifa panic narrative so much, he tried to use it for January 6.

President Trump on Monday privately — and falsely — blamed "Antifa people" for storming the Capitol, even though clear video and documentary evidence exists showing the rioters were overwhelmingly Trump supporters.

Why it matters: Despite facing an impeachment vote for an assault he helped incite, the outgoing president is still sticking with his tried-and-true playbook of deflecting and reaching for conspiracies.

I will never forget how Quillette and the IDW worked with Andy Ngo and supported his career.

Christina Hoff Sommers supported Andy Ngo and gave a shout-out to others who were apparently Andy Ngo supporters including Jesse Singal, Sam Harris, Peter Boghossian and Cathy Young.

This is the kind of thing, along with the report that Peter Thiel secretly funded Quillette, that makes you realize just how extreme are many people associated with Quillette and the IDW.

Harmeet K. Dhillon & Andy Ngo - the biggest clowns in the Trump circus

Wow how did I miss this story in the NYTimes from June 4?

Lawsuit Aims to Hold Nebulous 'Antifa' to Blame for Injuries

From the story:

A conservative writer from Portland, Oregon, filed a lawsuit Thursday against purported elements of the nebulous, far-left militant groups collectively known as antifa, days after President Donald Trump blamed those groups for inciting violence at protests over police killings of black people. 

The suit was filed on behalf of Andy Ngo, who is known for aggressively covering and video-recording demonstrators. 

“I am hoping that this marks a turning point, that militants belonging to a criminal movement can no longer depend on the anonymity ... to get away with their crimes,” said Ngo, who previously was a writer with the online publication Quillette and now is with The Post Millennial. 

Ngo has drawn attention to antifa for years and said he was targeted and suffered brain injuries when he was assaulted while covering protests in Portland a year ago. Video of the attack was widely viewed online and led to national calls for investigations as well as a subsequent rally led by the Proud Boys, a right-wing organization that has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

Antifa — short for “anti-fascists"— is an umbrella term for leftist militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations. 

That makes it more difficult, but not impossible, to pursue a lawsuit, said California-based attorney Harmeet Dhillon, a Republican Party official who sued on Ngo's behalf. 

Dhillon said the timing of the antifa lawsuit was coincidental to recent protests over the death of George Floyd, who struggled to breathe as his neck was pinned down by a white Minneapolis police officer’s knee. She said she waited months to sue in the futile hope that authorities would bring criminal charges against Ngo's attackers.

This is obviously part of Trump's long-standing ratfucking Reichstag fire plan to make ANTIFA the bogeyman. The lawsuit is the next step after Trump declared the "nebulous" group a "terrorist organization" and will be used to justify more authoritarian moves by Trump.

Pinkerite has written about these two clowns several times. Andy Ngo is a right-wing stooge and failed "journalist" who makes money through the free speech grift.

It's the involvement of Republican Party official Harmeet K. Dhillon in this scheme that demonstrates how truly degraded and corrupt and - there's no other word for it - evil - the Republican Party has become.

I'm glad others are talking about Trump's Reichstag Fire tactics.

YouTube vs Andy Ngo

I've written about sleazy far-right "journalist" Andy Ngo many times on this blog, from his connection to Free Speech Grifters and Quillette to his connection via his sleazy lawyer Harmeet K. Dhillon to Trump's ratfucking campaign - which of course culminated in the January 6 insurrection. Ngo was very sympathetic to the insurrectionists. 

But it was still good to see "Some More News" provide the video evidence of Ngo's friendly relationship with fascists and hear him do his fake British accent. Superb.

But wait, there's more!

Andy Ngo: The Next Generation of News Grifter | BEHIND THE BASTARDS.

The "Behind the Bastards" guy knows Cody Johnston from "Some More News" - they did a podcast together about Jordan Peterson. 

This is great and mentions Ngo's pioneering of stochastic terrorism (after Gamergate which was promoted by Ngo's pal Christina Hoff Sommers.)

Proud Boys leader arrested; Quillette continues to employ Andy Ngo, Trump's ratfucker

In what must be the strongest argument ever against the "defund the police" slogan, Enrique Tarrio, leader of the right-wing, fascism-loving Proud Boys, recently seen on Pinkerite admitting that Proud Boys are ratfuckers who like to dress up as Antifa, has been arrested:

Enrique Tarrio, the chairman of the Proud Boys, was arrested by the Metropolitan Police on suspicion of burning a Black Lives Matter banner that was torn from a historic Black church in Washington during protests last month that led to several violent clashes, including stabbings, around the city.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police Department confirmed that Mr. Tarrio, 36, had been arrested on charges of destruction of property stemming from an episode in downtown Washington in mid-December. Upon his arrest, he was found to have two high-capacity firearm magazines and charged accordingly with possession. 

Speaking of ratfuckers, Andy Ngo apparently feels one of his jobs is to do public relations for the Proud Boys.

Andy Ngo, a member of the Quillette team, continues to push the insane Trump claim that Democrats have something to do with Antifa. It's such an obvious lie if you know anything about the far Left, which hates Democrats more than Republicans. 

But this Big Lie has been a favorite tactic of Trump and his little ratfucker Andy Ngo, and they have been at it since at least when I wrote about it in July 2019.

That is who Quillette is - an employer of Trump's filthy lying ratfucker.

Trump's campaign strategy: Reichstag fires

Trump tweet from today

I am certainly not the first person to make a connection between Trump and the Reichstag fire strategy. As Timothy Snyder wrote in Reichstag Warning in the New York Review of Books on February 26, 2017, a month after Trump was sworn in. (my highlights):

In February 27, 1933 the German Parliament building burned, Adolf Hitler rejoiced, and the Nazi era began. Hitler, who had just been named head of a government that was legally formed after the democratic elections of the previous November, seized the opportunity to change the system. “There will be no mercy now,” he exulted. “Anyone standing in our way will be cut down.” 

The Reichstag fire shows how quickly a modern republic can be transformed into an authoritarian regime. There is nothing new, to be sure, in the politics of exception. The American Founding Fathers knew that the democracy they were creating was vulnerable to an aspiring tyrant who might seize upon some dramatic event as grounds for the suspension of our rights. As James Madison nicely put it, tyranny arises “on some favorable emergency.” What changed with the Reichstag fire was the use of terrorism as a catalyst for regime change. To this day, we do not know who set the Reichstag fire: the lone anarchist executed by the Nazis or, as new scholarship by Benjamin Hett suggests, the Nazis themselves. What we do know is that it created the occasion for a leader to eliminate all opposition.... 

...The aspiring tyrants of today have not forgotten the lesson of 1933: that acts of terror—real or fake, provoked or accidental—can provide the occasion to deal a death blow to democracy. 

The most consequential example is Russia, so admired by Donald Trump. When Vlaimir V. Putin was appointed prime minister in August 1999, the former KGB officer had an approval rating of 2 percent. Then, a month later, the bombs began to explode in apartment buildings in Moscow and several other Russian cities, killing hundreds of citizens and causing widespread fear. There were numerous indications that this was a campaign organized by the KGB’s heir, now known as the FSB. Some of its officers were caught red-handed (and then released) by their peers. A Russian parliamentarian announced one of the “terror” attacks several days before the bomb actually exploded.
Putin blamed Muslim terrorists and began the war in Chechnya that made him popular. He thereafter exploited more terrorist attacks to consolidate his rule: three years later, Russian security forces ended up gassing to death Russian civilians in a botched response to an attack at a Moscow theater. Putin used the negative press coverage as a justification for seizing control of television. In 2004, after the Beslan massacre, in which terrorists occupied a school and killed a large number of parents and children during a violent confrontation with Russian forces, Putin abolished the position of elected regional governors. And so the current Russian regime was built...

...It is alarming that in a series of catastrophic executive policy decisions—the president’s Muslim travel ban, his selection of Steve Bannon as his main political adviser, his short-lived appointment of Michael Flynn as national security adviser, his proposal to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem—there seems to be a single common element: the stigmatization and provocation of Muslims. In rhetoric and action, the Trump administration has aggrandized “radical Islamic terror” thus making what Madison called a “favorable emergency” more likely.

It appears that Synder thought Trump would use Muslims to execute his Reichstag fire strategy, but now it appears - or rather it has appeared since last August - that Trump intends to use ANTIFA as the great bogeyman.

And ANTIFA is the perfect vehicle. ANTIFA - for anti-fascist - like to protest wearing masks and refuse to reveal their identities. This is custom-made for use by the Right to infiltrate, commit mayhem and blame it on leftists and the "terrorist organization" ANTIFA.

The connection between Trump's Reichstag fire strategy and the IDW is through Andy Ngo.  Ngo is a right-wing sympathizer who disgraced himself so badly that he's no longer with Quillette but rather has descended even further into the pits by joining the right-wing garbage publication Post-Millennial.

Andy Ngo, the right-wing journalist and provocateur who was embraced by mainstream Republicans and covered favorably in mainstream media after he was attacked by antifa activists during a street fight in Portland, Oregon, may suddenly be persona non grata among conservatives. Nearly all mentions of Ngo were scrubbed from the upscale right-wing publication Quillette after a newly-released video showed him acting friendly with members of Patriot Prayer, a far-right hate group that has repeatedly sought out fights with leftists.

Ngo, who has used selectively edited videos to paint antifa as a violent, criminal group was hit with punches and milkshakes during a clash between antifa activists and members of the Proud Boys, an organization labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Many on the right rallied around Ngo after that altercation, and spread false rumors that the milkshakes thrown at him and others had contained quick-dry cement. 

After the Ngo-ANTIFA brouhaha last July/August, it turned out that Ngo's lawyer is Republican committee woman Harmeet K. Dhillon.

The Proud Boys are apparently at it again.

This tweet is also from today

The Proud Boys is a right-wing organization founded by Gavin McInnes, who has his own IDW connection - he worked for the right-wing extremist Canadian Rebel Media along with Quillette founder Claire Lehmann.

Several Proud Boys were prosecuted for brawling in Manhattan in October 2018.

Meanwhile another organization of anonymous individuals called Anonymous has apparently published information about Trump's connection to Epstein although the story is not new. And of course the IDW has another connection to Trump - Steven Pinker was also a known associate of Jeffrey Epstein.

Although it was new to me that Trump had been accused of child molestation - of both boys and girls - by a web site called the Wayne Madsen Report:

In addition to Stephanie Clifford, aka porn actress "Stormy Daniels," and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, Cohen reportedly helped settle a number of rape cases involving Trump. WMR received a list from a reputable Republican source of these settlement claims, all of which involve male and female minors: 

1. Michael Parker, 10-years old, oral rape, Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach, FL, 1992. Trump paid his parents a $3 million settlement.
2. Kelly Feuer, 12-years old, $1 million settlement paid in 1989, allegations of forced intercourse, Trump Tower, NY, NY.
3. Charles Bacon, 11-years old, $3 million, allegations of oral and anal intercourse, 1994, Trump Tower, NY, NY.
4. Rebecca Conway, 13-years old, intercourse and oral sex. Trump Vineyard Estates, Charlottesville, VA, 2012, $5 million settlement.
5. Maria Olivera, 12-years old. Her family was paid $16 million to settle allegations of forcible intercourse occurring in Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach, FL, 1993.
6. Kevin Noll, 11-years old, anal rape, Trump Tower, NY, NY. 1998. Settlement details unknown.

Five of the six alleged incidents took place at two of Trump's best-known properties -- Trump Tower in New York City and Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, FL. The exception is incident No. 4, which is the most recent (2012) and took place at Albemarle Estate at Trump Winery. Donald and Eric Trump opened the facility as a bed-and-breakfast in May 2015.

Trump started negotiating to acquire the property after it went into foreclosure in 2011. Trump formally purchased the entire estate in October 2012. 

The child-sex settlements might explain Trump's reluctance to disclose his tax returns, WMR reports, and documents indicate our "president" is a deeply disturbed individual:

WMR's GOP source indicated that Trump has refused to release his tax returns because they will reveal the many out-of-court settlements he has paid to silence his assault victims and their families. The list of Trump's child victims came with an interesting reference point that was apparently part of the documentation in the settlement cases. Trump was designated with a psychiatric disorder referenced in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM–5). The referenced disorder is "Pedophilic Disorder (F65.4)."