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It’s a day that ends in “y,” which means that Republicans have discovered some new thing to make them fall face-first into their fainting couches in a hysterical and intensely racist conniption before moving on and never mentioning it again, like “CRT,” Jade Helm [ [link removed] ], that thing with the immigrants eating dogs in Ohio, Beyonce’s Super Bowl half time show, the “migrant caravans” at the border… the list goes on and on.
As usual, their collective freakout is disingenuous, wildly hypocritical, and being advanced in support of a disgustingly racist bad-faith campaign to smear immigrants and Democrats.
Time to log on.
If you’ve been anywhere near right-wing social media circles, you’ll have heard about a viral video in which a right-wing influencer, Nick Shirely, claims to have exposed a huge fraud ring by Somalian immigrants through a network of supposedly fake child daycare centers.
He filmed himself going to ten different daycares in order to see if they were actually taking care of children; two of the centers have been permanently closed, a fact which he did not share with his audience, and others refused him entry, because one normally doesn’t admit strange men with cameras into daycare centers on general principle.
In this video, he and his associate, “David,” baselessly claimed that the fraud in Minnesota was “the worst in history,” that the public funds were being funneled to terrorists, that the Somali people were “exceptionally violent” and accused Gov. Tim Walz of being guilty of misconduct.
You can easily see how this disgusting show of racism and conspiracy was absolute catnip to the viral hate machine that was once Twitter’s algorithm. It went megaviral, racking up 110 million views and drawing the attention of the Vice President, who praised him for his “journalism.”
This is not the first time Shirely has done some shit like this; he previously went to Ukraine, filmed himself wandering around Kyiv [ [link removed] ], insinuated that the war wasn’t actually happening, and baselessly asserted that US aid money was being fraudulently stolen, to the delight of pro-Russian propagandists.
Shirely did not “expose” anything. Tikki Brown, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families, said each of the centers has been visited in the past six months [ [link removed] ], but none of those unannounced visits turned up evidence of fraud. Some of the daycares involved had had licenses previously revoked for poor performance and were under investigation for low standards, but that is not fraud.
It also wasn’t a secret, as it was widely reported in local media and this reporting could have been found with a simple Google search.
There was a major Minnesota fraud scandal run through fake nonprofits that was discovered by the Biden administration in 2022 and prosecuted…and it was orchestrated by a white woman. Somali immigrants were the ones who alerted the authorities.
But none of that matters to MAGA world, which was eager for a new conspiracy theory to push ahead of the midterm elections. Right-wing social media immediately became filled with heinous attacks on Black people, immigrants, Democrats, the mainstream media, and social welfare programs all at once. Prominent right-wingers like Donald Trump Jr., JD Vance, and Elon Musk eagerly lied their asses off and helped further spread what almost immediately became a white supremacist smear campaign.
Now the story is going further off the rails; right-wingers are concocting fake voter fraud accusations to go with it, dragging Ilhan Omar into the narrative, and even suggesting that murdered Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hartman was killed by Tim Walz [ [link removed] ] because she was investigating the fraud (Hartman was targeted for being a Democrat by a right-wing extremist).
Meanwhile, there is rampant government-supported fraud going on in this country — coming straight from the White House.
Donald Trump has pardoned at least 62 people who were guilty of fraud, and in doing so prevented $1.3 billion in restitution from being delivered to their victims.
Donald Trump himself had to pay $25 million in order to settle with the victims of his fraudulent university. His charitable foundation was also found guilty of fraud. His company? Tax fraud.
Philip Esformes ran a massive nursing-home Medicare fraud scheme and stole $1.2 billion in public money. Trump pardoned him.
David Gentile defrauded his investors to the tune of $1.6 billion. Trump pardoned him.
Rick Scott committed the largest Medicare fraud in history and Republicans ELECTED HIM TO THE SENATE.
The entire Trump presidency has been dedicated to fearmongering about crime committed by the poor in order to distract from the de facto legalization of crime for the rich, and nowhere is that more obvious than in this latest manufactured hysteria.
They couldn’t care less about fraud or the responsible use of public funds. They just want to flood the zone with so much hate, conspiracy, and fear that they can drown out the truth and distract voters from their own colossal failures and crimes.
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