Retiring Republican Congressman Denver Riggleman has had it with the conspiracy theories and misinformers. He says he is going after them.
Congressman Denver Riggleman will take them on.
It is refreshing to see a Republican, albeit retiring, comes clean to describe the rot that has infiltrated the Right.
Congressman Denver Riggleman is the author of “Bigfoot …. It’s Complicated,” which, according to the congressman, explains much of our politics, conspiracies, and all. When asked about misinformation and conspiracy theories in the Republican Party, he was clear.
“I did try to get at people a little bit with this book “Bigfoot …. It’s Complicated” because you know I’ve been a victim of disinformation,” Riggleman said. “But you know my background is in intelligence counterterrorism and non-kinetic attack; sort of like what you saw with the Solar Winds hack. And I just wanted people to know that belief system can completely overtake your life view. And looking at different sets of Bigfoot believers not only did they get very angry with me they actually thought Katie and I hope you’re okay with this, they thought I was making lists. I worked for the National Security Agency. They thought I was making lists to hack into their bank accounts and destroy their lives because we knew that Bigfoot existed, that is sort of what you’re saying out there right now. And it’s not just the conspiracy theories that we’ve heard like you just had that incredible interview or that incredible back and forth about those poor ladies who believe in adrenochrome and that Democrats are you know a Satan-worshiping cabal of pedophiles that are trying to plant a Deep State coup against the president.”
The Congressman continued to itemize the misinformation and conspiracy theories on the Right. But his closer after Katie Tur asked him if we can solve the problem was refreshing and hopeful.
“I think you got to do a compassion, but you also have to be very offensive,” the congressman said. “What we’re going after is really dissemination of disinformation, an online disinformation campaign that might be the biggest conspiratorial grift in history. You’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. So we have to be very offensive. And I think we almost have a digital vaccine just like the COVID-19 vaccine where we use machine learning, we use big data, we use fact-based analysis, and we aggregate data from public trust companies. And we go after these hashtags. We go after these messages. We get on these boards. We fight them on their turf. It’s something I was very good at when I was in the military, especially in the counter-terrorism encounter intelligence world. And I think that’s what we do. And that’s why I’m on the board of the Network Contagion Research Institute. Now we just released one of the most. I would say in-depth quantitative analyses of QAnon just yesterday or the day before. So we are, I’m going after them. So I’m not going to stop Katie. It’s my time to go after them.”
We will be watching congressman.