On July 2nd, President Donald Trump sent out this tweet:

This tweet was followed by what can only be described as a complete hysterical breakdown within the mainstream media, which culminated in a July 4th (!!!) article on CNN Politics which revealed that CNN had investigated the original creator of the GIF the President had tweeted.

Ridiculous, right?

Oh, and then they blackmailed him.

Per the original article:

CNN is not publishing “HanA**holeSolo’s” name because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has taken down all his offending posts, and because he said he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social media again. In addition, he said his statement could serve as an example to others not to do the same.

CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.

Yes, that’s right. One of the largest media organizations in the world is now blackmailing private citizens for making memes they don’t like.

I never thought I’d live to see the day that the President of The United States of America posts a meme of himself wrestling a CNN logo to the ground. However, the outrageous response by CNN didn’t surprise me in the least.

Everyone knows the mainstream media is awful. Everyone knows how much they lie.

I’m in the somewhat unique position of having witnessed their malicious narrative-crafting firsthand.

Hey, readers, did you guys know that I created Pizzagate?

I mean, it’s widely reported, by Totally Not Garbage outlets like Mediaite:

The woman who is largely responsible for pushing the false claim that a Democrat-led pedophilia ring is being run out of a D.C. pizzeria isn’t taking any responsibility, even though a man seeking to “investigate” the claim discharged a firearm inside the family restaurant last week.

And they’re not the only ones:

Woman who helped spread Pizzagate lies doesn’t care she almost got people killed. If there is any doubt that the people behind these fake news sites are some of the worst people in the world, it should have been erased by an interview with one of the people who is largely responsible for the explosion of the Pizzagate nonsense.

And here:

Meanwhile, the Toronto Star interviewed Stefanie MacWilliams, a Canadian stay-at-home mom who contributes to the site Planet Free Will, and she says she has “no regrets” about her posts on Pizzagate because they were great for traffic:

“I was personally a little bit insulted. Fake news has become used as this ridiculous term . . . it’s the new ‘conspiracy theorist.’…I really have no regrets and it’s honestly really grown our audience.

And locally (not including my more recent hit piece by the also-mafiaesque local leftist rag, which I’ve written about in depth):

Belleville writer Stefanie MacWilliams, who writes for the website Planet Free Will, wrote about the pedophile conspiracy theory three weeks before the violent incident, helping to spread what some call dangerous and fake news.

And in the local editor’s letter section:

Fake journalist Stephanie MacWilliams is very proud of her part in Pizzagate, which resulted in a heavily-armed man clearing a restaurant of staff. Would she be happy if this man killed children who were at a birthday party? Would she be happy if he slaughtered innocent people?

MacWilliams is extremely dangerous, facts mean nothing to her, real journalists rely on facts.

Maybe helping victims of fake news to sue liars and fake news outlets for huge sums of money will stop the fake news outlets. Stephanie MacWilliams has echoed fake news like yelling fire in a theatre, people end up in court for that action. MacWilliams interfering in another country’s election, she promoted contempt which creates an atmosphere of hatred, spreading slanderous allegations against Hillary Clinton.

MacWilliams should be charged for her crimes.

I’m even mentioned on Wikipedia, y’all!

Though this information is out there, and not something I actively hide, I’ve only spoken minimally about this personal experience with fake news – and most of what I said was explaining why I’ve only spoken minimally about it.

Today, seeing what CNN is doing, I felt compelled to give you my side of the story.

I wrote an article on November 17, 2016, titled “Citizen Journalist Kicked Out Of Comet Ping Pong For Periscoping”. It has been deleted from my previous employer’s site, but you can see an archived copy here. This article, by any account, was very tame.

Some context: I never was a “true believer” of Pizzagate. We had written about 3 articles even tangenitally mentioning the Pizzagate story, none explosive or intending to mislead anyone. I had less than 2,000 followers on Twitter at the time. I was a complete nobody. Would I write the same article today? No, probably not, but I certainly did not write a single word that would imply that I was in any way responsible for some nut job bringing a gun to Comet Ping Pong.

I may have made a mistake writing an article about “what people are talking about”. I’m fine with that. Either way, I don’t really care, because there is a much more clear mistake I know I made.

I talked to the mainstream media.

Specifically, I spoke to one Marc Fisher, a Senior Editor at The Washington Post. He was pleasant but clearly antagonistic, which was fine. We spoke for almost an hour. I should have recorded every word. If you must talk to the mainstream media, record it yourself, so you can call them out on their lies and have unimpeachable proof backing you. Since I made that mistake, what I am saying will be my word against his.

I have a feeling you’ll believe me over Mr. Fisher and The Washington Post.

You can read the whole article here, I don’t have time to list everything, but here are a couple parts I take particular issue with:

On Nov. 7, the hashtag #pizzagate first appeared on Twitter. Over the next several weeks, it would be tweeted and retweeted hundreds or thousands of times each day.

Interesting – sites like Mediaite were able to use this story to write a story about how I “started Pizzagate”, but couldn’t figure out that the story itself clearly states my article was posted almost two weeks after Pizzagate started trending.

MacWilliams calls herself a journalist, but she does not try to be “100 percent accurate,” either. She believes the beauty of the Internet is that people can crowdsource the truth. Eventually, what is real will emerge, she said.

What I actually said was more like “Like any news website, including The Washington Post, I cannot claim that we’ve always been 100 percent accurate. I’m sure I’ve spelled a guys name wrong or gotten a date wrong here or there, but I have never and would never intentionally mislead my readers. ” I guess the rest of the quote wasn’t relevant, despite changing the entire meaning of what I said.

The day that the article was posted on The Washington Post’s website, I recieved a call from a reporter at the Toronto Star.

Mistake number two.

I told the reporter, in a much shorter interview, what I just stated above: that Marc Fisher completely and blatantly misquoted me to make it sound as though I intentionally spread fake news.

She did not include that in her story.

Instead, the Toronto Star ran an article that was partially comprised of the very Washington Post article I told them included blatant lies about me.

So not only did the Toronto Star not address the fact that I had called out The Washington Post for misquoting me and then proceed to use the same story in their piece, they also added new lies, my photo, and my hometown.

Planet Free Will was among the websites recently called out by the New York Times for sharing fake news.

“I was personally a little bit insulted,” said MacWilliams of the label, adding, “Fake news has become used as this ridiculous term . . . it’s the new ‘conspiracy theorist.’ ”

Pay attention: they note this article, where Planet Free Will was first mentioned.

Despite the fallout of Pizzagate (as it’s come to be known) that resulted in an armed man entering Comet Ping Pong in search of alleged child sex slaves, MacWilliams said she has no regrets.

“I really have no regrets and it’s honestly really grown our audience,” she said.

When I said that, I was referring to the aforementioned New York Times article. You know, the one they had mentioned a couple of paragraphs before. I said I didn’t regret that the Times called us fake news, I wasn’t even referring to the shooting incident.

You can see how a few skilled misquotes and half-truths can spiral when you look at the pieces mentioned above. The Pizzagate narrative is clear: I’m a liar, I lied on purpose to make money and get views, and I didn’t care that someone could have gotten shot.

Oh, and I started something that had already started almost two weeks before.

Though I denounce (and denounced at the time) any violence or vigilantism because I’m a decent human being, I simply bear no responsibility for it in the context of the article I wrote. To assert that because I wrote an article that could basically be summed up as “this is a thing people are talking about, here’s why they’re talking about it” I have responsibility for Edgar Welch’s actions is completely imbecilic.

The media blatantly misquoted me, lied about me, and tried to destroy my career. It’s not because I’m special or relevant or important. In fact, I think it was my unremarkable-ness that made me such a target.

I remember watching TV as the second tower collapsed on September 11, 2001.

I was 9 years old.

In the following weeks, I watched my safe world become an unsafe one. A bubble I had lived in had suddenly burst. Fear of terror attacks had hit a fever pitch, and even in Canada, people were expecting a new attack every day.

I remember a conversation with my dad where we discussed the motives of terrorists, and why they had chosen the twin towers. I remember thinking it was silly to attack such a big, obvious thing, and my dad shared my sentiments. We agreed that, were we to commit a terrorist attack (I was a weird kid, I know, this was all theoretical, obviously), we wouldn’t choose a landmark in a big city.

We’d go after a small town.

We’d make people feel like terrorism really could happen anywhere (I didn’t understand the Islamic ideological framework behind terrorism at the time).

Imagine the chaos if someone were to blow up a church in my hometown of 49,000 people? Maybe a smaller town? A grocery store in a village of 5,000, hit by a suicide bomber?

This is why I have no qualms with referencing terrorists when speaking about large mainstream media outlets.

I’m strongly anti-Islam and I believe Islamic terror should usually be kept seperate when speaking about general violence, but I’ll make an exception here. No, I won’t say #CNNisISIS. That would be a comparison I’m not comfortable with.

But the mainstream media has effectively implemented my childhood imaginings of how to be an effective terrorist.

They did it to me.

And now they’re doing it to someone who made a meme.

Tomorrow, it could be you. Unfortunately, this sort of assasination – character assasination – is under every rock.

My advice? Expect it, prepare for it, and say whatever you want anyway.

Oh, and by the way? I’ve been wanting to say this for six months.

F*ck you, Marc Fisher.