The Signorile Report

The Signorile Report is reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!

The conspiracies among anti-vaxers reached a fevered pitch around ivermectin, a drug mostly used as a de-wormer for animals, as Covid vaccines began being administered.

There is no study showing ivermectin prevents Covid-19, but plenty of evidence that it can be harmful, particularly when using veterinary strengh grades of it.

But even now, after the height of the anti-vax Covid conspiracies, there are many people ingesting large doses of ivermectin not just to ward off Covid; they’re taking it as an all around cure for many ailments and as a general health remedy — again with no evidence it cures cancer or the vast array of other ailments and diseases they’re using it to treat — and in dangerous doses. And some are giving it to children as young as three and four years old.

Meanwhile, some GOP politicians and Fox News pundits talk about ivermectin as if it was and is a legitimate alternative to Covid vaccines — when there’s with no science backing up any efficacy and health authorities have warned against it.

It’s become a cult, and one man who was an “ivermectin influencer” with a Telegram channel with hundreds of thousands of followers, Danny Lamoi, recently died after his heart grew to double its size, an outcome of ingesting too much ivermectin.

David Gilbert of Vice came on my SiriusXM radio program to talk about it after he reported on this dangerous online culture, and the death of Lamoi as well as the tens of thousands of people who have followed him, many of whom are panicked, experiencing terrible pain and symptoms themselves.

Since Lamoi’s death, Gilbert says, the administrators of the channel have done what they can to both censor those who are expressing painful symptoms of the drug’s damage and bring new people in, fearful of losing the audience.

“There's a lot of parents in the group who are asking for advice about how they give ivermectin to their children,” he says, “which is deeply worrying because that's something over the course of the last week while I've been tracking the group that seems to be increasing in number rather than decreasing.”

Listen in to the discussion. Below is a transcript, slightly condensed, and edited for clarity.

Michelangelo Signorile: So talk a little bit first about ivermectin — because I think a lot of people have just forgotten about this — how, [it emerged as a false cure] at the height of the COVID pandemic, when there were people arguing about vaccines. And a lot of that has died down now. There was all of this talk about people taking ivermectin, but in fact, people have continued to take it. And this individual who died actually was taking it before the COVID pandemic.

David Gilbert: So yeah, Danny Lamoi, who ran a Telegram channel called Dirt Road Discussions. He started taking it a decade ago as an alternative treatment when he was diagnosed with Lyme disease. He was at the time speaking to doctors and he was getting the typical treatment for Lyme disease, but he heard about Ivermectin, and there's not only a human version of ivermectin or formulation of ivermectin. There's a veterinary one. He chose the veterinary one. Among conspiracists they believe that all diseases are caused by parasites in the body and therefore ivermectin —the veterinary ivermectin — is going to target those parasites and bring them out. 

So he decided to treat Lyme disease he was going to use ivermectin and he created this protocol, as he called it, or a dosage where he decided that this was the right amount of ivermectin to give himself. Now, the FDA, the CDC, everyone else has repeatedly said that veterinary ivermectin should never be taken by humans. It's highly concentrated to work in large animals and can be toxic for humans taken in large doses. But throughout the last decade, he continued to take it. 

But it was only at the height of the pandemic when people began looking for alternatives and the anti-vaxxer movement had very successfully managed to create this kind of undermining of the legitimacy of the the vaccine in many people's minds. So people were looking for alternative cures. And so ivermectin became a hugely popular one. And because he had a decade experience of taking it himself, he set up this Telegram channel. It quickly amassed over 100,000 followers. And if you look through it and look through the chats, there are tens of thousands of people who all testify about taking ivermectin and following the protocol that this guy, Danny Lamoi sets out.

MS: So yes, you call him an ivermectin influencer because he obviously has this massive following and 100,000 people and tens of thousands who are talking about it and taking it. What would he tell them about it?

DG: So just to be clear, there has been some research done into the how well Ivermectin could treat COVID. And there's absolutely no evidence to show that either the human formulation or the veterinary formulation is effective against COVID 19, but that, you know, such facts don't don't really matter in these universes. So what he would do in his channel is he would create recipes effectively, which he called protocols, which were telling you the exact amount of the veterinary ivermectin paste that you should ingest per day, how many times you should take it per day. And then along with that, he came up with his own concoction or recipe for hydroxychloroquine. So he told people how to make that and they took that as well. 

Another key part of his protocol was lemon water because that would flush out the parasites once the ivermectin had kind of brought them to the surface. And one other thing is he also created an eye drop that included ivermectin that people could drop directly onto their eyeball, again to take out certain parasites, which is all extremely dangerous. But as I said, tens of thousands of people, you know, swore by this, But at the same time, they also wrote in the chats complaining about headaches or complaining about fevers or pains in their bones or, you know, their heart was beating out of their chest or they were constantly having hot flushes, loads of different examples of side effects of ivermectin that have been documented down through the years.

MS: And they believed, as you describe it, that these were simply, I guess, positive side effects, That it was “herxing,” something called “herxing,” which is a real thing that is a side effect of taking a drugs that cure Lyme disease, antibiotics. Talk about that.

DG: This was a way of — obviously if people continuously wrote in the chats about how they're having headaches and nausea and dizziness and blurry vision, all these things, then people would quickly turn off ivermectin and they wouldn't take it. So to overcome that, Danny Lamoi and the admins on the channel would constantly push the idea that what people were experiencing was a thing called herxing. And as you say,  that is an actual real word for a reaction that you get during the treatment for Lyme disease. What they said is if there were any negative side effect that people were experiencing, they simply dismissed it as herxing, saying that this is the parasite's last dying dance, that this is what they are doing on the way out of your body. You just have to go through this one extra step of even worse pain than you were in before, and then you will be fine. 

MS: Tell us about [Danny Lamoi’s] death and what happened and how ivermectin had affected his heart.

DG: On the 3rd of March, just last Friday week, he posted on the channel a message about, you know, ‘Happy Friday to all you poisonous horse paste survivors,” I think is how he described it. And then a meme showing sheep basically. So the rest of us are sheep because we're all following western medicine. But then sadly, a couple of hours later, he was dead. His family, two.

MS: Hours after he post, two hours after he posted that?

DG: A couple of hours after he posted that. Yeah. So his family put up an obituary, and they simply said that he passed away suddenly. They didn't reveal any more information about how he died. And when I tried to contact the family, they didn't respond to me. But the admins in his channel then, who have been in touch with his family, who had talked to them, they posted a message saying that his heart had been overworking and had grown to almost double the size than it that it should have been.But they dismissed out of hand the idea that that had anything to do with the fact that he had been taking ivermectin for the last ten years. They criticized anyone who dared suggest such a thing.

MS: Wow. Now, since then, a lot of his followers are worried because, as you say, they've been having pain. You quote one person saying, “I'm four months now and all hell is breaking loose. All pain has hit my wrist, my waist down with sciatic shin splints, restless leg syndrome, tight sore calves. And it feels like some pain in the bones”. And that, again, people thinking it's herxing, but then others talking about other kinds of things that are happening to them. And some of them are are worried, obviously, that something similar is happening that happened to him.

DG: They are. In the days after, Danny Lamoi died, the channel was just — people initially were grieving and posting how much they, you know, loved him and how much they valued his, his advice. But then slowly over maybe a week later, they started posting messages questioning how he died or why he died. And then they started posting more messages like the one you just read out where they're, you know, detailing the pain that they were going through. 

And while some of those messages remain, a lot of them were actually deleted by the admins and the channel who had announced that they were going to continue running the channel even after Danny Lamoi’s death and that they were going to because there's hundreds of thousands of people following us, or 130,000 people or 140,000 people at the moment following it. And so there's a huge amount of power there for the admins to control where the conversation goes. 

So when people posted saying that they were worried about the side effects of this thing, you know, “What had happened to Danny, we have lots of questions” those posts were quickly deleted and some of the people were kicked out of the channel. The channel is continuing to push this information about ivermectin. It's continuing to give out advice. 

There's a lot of parents in the group who are asking for advice about how they give ivermectin to their children, which is deeply worrying because that's something over the course of the last week while I've been tracking the group that seems to be increasing in number rather than decreasing.

MS: And it's so dangerous. And you talk about how he he formulated this regimen for children and you write about one member who wrote that she had established another group for parents of children on the spectrum, cerebral palsy, panda, downs, et cetera. These are serious issues and they're using Ivermectin for it.

DG: And it's just really worrying to see the number of people who are asking for information about kids as young as three and four years of age. Wow. And how to deal with that and how to deal, as you say, with with conditions that are, you know, really complex and very, very difficult to treat by experts. And you have people in these groups, running these groups who are not medical experts and who are giving out advice as if they know exactly what they're saying.

MS: Is there anything legally that can be done about this when you have people putting out information that is harming people and they're not medical authorities?

DG: Doesn’t seem like there is. Telegram is is a wild west. It. It allows much, if you can imagine, much worse stuff than this. There is very little moderation. Unless they're specifically breaking a law. which, at the moment, it doesn't appear that they are, then they're going to be allowed to continue to, to run this channel without any objections.

MS: And people can legally get ivermectin. That's the other issue as well.

DG: Yeah. Ivermectin, there's no problem getting. They even offer in the channels themselves. They have two or three brands of veterinary ivermectin paste that they recommend and they post links to websites where you can get it. And they're also advertising apricot kernels as a cure for cancer, even though eating large quantities of apricot kernels risks cyanide poisoning inside the body.

MS: You can't see my body jolting like, you know, every 30 seconds through this entire interview. It's horrifying. And it's important to to reveal it and talk about it. And I'm glad you're covering it. Thank you for coming back on the program. I realize we've had you on before. Thanks so much for coming on today.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

The Signorile Report is reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!

During a discussion about Tucker Carlson’s reckless claim that there was no insurrection — and the GOP politicians who emboldened him, like House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, giving him video surveillance footage — Roger from Dayton, Ohio called my Sirius XM program to say “all politicians lie.”

It was the classic “all sides” argument — or “many sides,” as Donald Trump himself infamously said about the Charlottesville white supremacist march.

“Ah, you know, I just think that all honestly all of our politicians are nothing but liars,” he said, “and I don’t think it makes a difference which side of the aisle they’re one. None of them are working for us as they should. And they all lie.”

Claiming he didn’t vote for Trump, Roger then sloughed off the fact that all lies aren’t created equally. He then bizarrely shifted into an attack on the Russia election interference investigation and Trump’s collusion, saying “Adam Shift” didn’t prove anything — a mispronunciation of Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff’s name used by the right and which has an anti-Semitic tinge to it — and that Special Counsel Robert Mueller didn’t prove anything.

I had to jump in to correct the record, and ask Roger to back up his claims with facts and explain himself. But each time he respond by going on and on about how I don’t let people talk, using his time to criticize me rather than tells us the supposed facts.

And that’s because there are no facts — just more b******t from a Trumper posing as something else. But hey, maybe I’m wrong — maybe he did vote for Joe Biden, as he claimed! You tell me. Listen in and let me know your thoughts!

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

The Signorile Report is reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!

Amid the recent discussion about the House Homeland Security Committee’s Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and her demented demand for a “national divorce” — a clarion call for a civil war, secession or complete dissolution of the United States —once again the question was thrown into stark relief: What the hell has Trumpism done to the Republican Party?

How has a party allowed for people like Greene to come to the forefront and be given enormous power, and how has it now completely absorbed someone like George Santos, a fantasist who appears to be deranged, disconnected from reality entirely?

And what is Trumpism continuing to do to the rest of us? What are the psychological effects of the the mental battering we’ve experienced?

To discuss all of this, I turned to Dr. Seth Norrholm, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences at Wayne State University School of Medicine. He’s a translational neuroscientist and psychologist, and one of the world's leading experts on PTSD and fear.

PTSD in fact was very much a focal point of the conversation I had with him on my SiriusXM program last week. In addition to discussing what is fueling a new wave of Trumpists, we discussed the collective trauma that millions of us have experienced, and continue to experience.

What will heal us? The simple answer — yet something that’s been elusive — is justice.

“Accountability,” he said. “Without some kind of sweeping accountability to remove what I've called the cancer that is in our political system, there's not going to be any meaningful healthy change.”

Listen in to the discussion. Below is a transcript, edited slightly for clarity.

—

Michelangelo Signorile: So I wanted to talk a little bit first about -- and it's something I don't think a lot of people have discussed -- what the entire country has experienced collectively, and how it has affected people emotionally and mentally. With regard to Donald Trump's administration and certainly the kind of brutality that he emboldened —the fear he created for a lot of people. A lot of people still feel that. They don't want us to even play clips of him speaking [on this program]. And also, of course, there are the people who emulate him as well.

Dr. Seth Norrholm: If you look at the last seven years now, the way it was before, you could really look at your life in terms of two views. 

One, I call a micro scale, which you think about as your family situation, your housing situation, your job, the things that you have a lot of control over. And there's also the macro scale, which is your role as a citizen of the United States, the citizen of the world, your role in terms of your stewardship of the earth and its environment for the next generation. So there was a time pre-Trumpism where you could really focus on your micro scale and then maybe if you were interested in politics, if you wanted to affect change, if you wanted to dive into that storm, you could, but you could live pretty much in your micro scale.

And maybe there would be issues like taxation or prices rising and things like that that might affect you, but you could, as a citizen, remain in your micro scale and not engage with politics and just let it be. And if somebody said, “Let's talk about the upcoming election,” you could appropriately say, “I don't want to talk about politics or I don't follow politics.” And that was pretty well accepted and appropriate.

But what happened with the ushering in of the Trump age is suddenly what was happening on the macro scale in terms of our government and elected officials and their policies and their beliefs and their actions was suddenly having a strong influence on our micro scale. So we could no longer separate those two parts of our life where they were making decisions that were detrimental to our health, that were potentially deadly in terms of consequences. 

One of the first examples I point out is the response to Hurricane Maria in 2017, in which the Trump administration slow-walked the response and in many ways was racist in their response because they viewed Puerto Rican Americans as being somehow different and inferior in much the way you would if you thought like a racist. And what happened then was 3000 Americans lost their lives. 

And that was really a precursor to what we saw with the pandemic, where, again, this self-serving malicious form of government was anti-mask, anti-vaccine, anti-closing. You know the famous words, “We’re going to open up again by Easter of 2020,” where policies were actually potentially deadly to Americans. And so you suddenly just couldn't ignore what was happening politically because there was such a potential for it to be dangerous to you.

MS: And you talk about this as a collective PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder, that many people in the country have experienced. And I'm curious: Is that something everyone experienced, whether they are those who fear and despise Trump, or those who are in his cult?

SN:  So let's first define PTSD. It is an illness related to your experience of a traumatic event in your life and then it has consequences that affect you mentally and and behaviorally. 

And it's usually, you know, the prime example is a combat veteran who was traumatized while they were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. They come back to the states. And even though they're in a safe environment, they still act as though they're in the war zone. And so there are elements of the collective psychology that are similar to PTSD. 

But I just want to be clear that relative to your question, not everybody viewed Trumpism as a traumatic event. But there were certainly hundreds, if not thousands of people with real PTSD related to Trumpism. For example, if you were in Puerto Rico during Hurricane Maria, or if you were on the front lines in March and April of 2020 and you saw all these traumatic deaths because of the the start of the COVID pandemic.

MS: Or what he did to people at the border and separating families and putting kids in cages.

SN: Right. Right. So it's a collective PTSD or traumatization in the sense that there was suddenly this danger we all had to be aware of. And whether that was domestic terrorism through people who were, you know, Trump loyalists or MAGA-ites who carried out — you know, the gentleman who blew up a city block in Nashville. 

And in situations like that, the loyalists follow this dangerous path. So suddenly there was this new fear and threat in America, which is “What is going to happen to my life and my livelihood based on what I'm seeing?” And it was really almost on a daily basis for that four year term. 

One of the things that you see with PTSD is what we call hyper-vigilance, where you're constantly on guard and on alert for something threatening. That is very much the situation that many of us found ourselves in during that presidency because we just didn't know what the next thing was going to be. 

And in fact, we had leadership that was opposing all the positions that would potentially keep us safe, like pulling out of the Paris Accord, like, you know, international relations, courting Putin, courting Kim Jong Un, so actually seeking out danger.

It was completely justified and appropriate for people to have this newfound sense of fear because we had never seen this before from our leadership. Sure, we had presidents you may not have agreed with. There was the example of Nixon where there was corruption — but never on this scale and never on such a consistent basis.

MS: Right. And even still with, of course, Trump losing the election, Joe Biden winning, we had the insurrection. We have the Big Lie. We have these people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and others in power. That fear and that PTSD is still there. For many people it hasn't gone away.

SN: Yeah. The analogy I like to use a lot is Trump was an abusive president, meaning he did not care about the well-being of Americans unless they were loyalists or said nice things about him, to use his words. And so, you know, there was a situation where you're at risk and there are potential dangers surrounding you. And what you see now is these parrots and these mouthpieces who are imitating Trump because they saw that that approach could be successful. 

And so if you think about Trump as being the abuser and the American people as being the abused spouse or partner, what's happened now is there's been no accountability.

 The analogy I like to use is the abused spouse who sees the police outside their house and they're walking up to the door and the abused spouse opens the door and the police say, “You know, we have no evidence,” or, “You know, it's your word against his. There's nothing we can do.”

And so the abused partner or spouse watches the police walk away and just has this fear and dejection because their abuse is being completely ignored and there's been no accountability. So that's what we've been seeing in the wake of January 6th, as there's been no accountability for upper level leadership, including the president and his cabinet and and his advisors.

There's been no accountability at that level. And so what you've seen is there were 147 Republicans who voted to overturn the election of Joe Biden, and many of them are sitting members of Congress. They're getting in front of microphones and they're basically telling the abused populace, “Oh, we're going to keep abusing you, and there's nothing you can do about it.”

MS: And that's so important. And something I hadn't thought about. How the lack of justice, seeing any justice, any indictments, anybody going to jail, how that has traumatically affected people, how that has had a mental and emotional effect on them. 

Very important. And I'm glad you brought that up. And you talk about the Republican Party now, and you just were alluding to it as becoming this place where people with pathological behavior can thrive. So we had Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar, and others who were incredibly extreme and erratic and promoting white supremacist and QAnon ugly lies. And that's bad enough. 

But then we get George Santos, who is completely and totally fabricating his background. Now, we also have another freshman member in Florida, Anna Paulina Luna, who also seems to be in the same vein — changed her name, changed her biography, used to be an Obama supporter. I mean, everything that comes out about George Santos, like we don't even know who he is. You're putting that in an even newer category the Republican Party is accepting. And you talk about him as having a personality disorder.

SN: Yes. So I look at the genesis of individuals like George Santos in terms of what we saw unfold over the past seven years. Certainly if you were paying attention to the campaign in 2016, you saw who Trump was. 

You saw him insult John McCain as a war veteran. You saw him mocking a disabled reporter. You saw the the Access Hollywood tape come out. So you were given all kinds of information as to how unqualified this person was. And I would even go further to say we recognize as mental health experts how dangerous he was. And what you saw was he ultimately got elected.

And for the most part, the mainstream media did not call him out on these things. Sure, there was, you know, MSNBC. And what people would call the left media would address these things. But it was never publicly called out and clearly wasn't disqualifying. 

So what that did was, it created a level of permissiveness in terms of candidates, in terms of what they could get away with. And in a large sense, what was being rewarded now was this malicious, ill intent and self-serving bias and deception that we equate with people who have personality disorders like antisocial personality, which is by definition doing things that are against the interest of other people and in some cases taking pleasure in it.

And before the age of Trump, if you are talking to friends or family and said, “I think I'm going to run for Congress, but I'm going to lie about who I am back in, let's say, in the 90s and early 2000s,” that you would think that that family member or that adviser would say, “You can't do that. They're going to vet you. You're going to be caught in the lie.”

But what we saw over the years of Trump was, you know, if you watch Seinfeld, you remember George Costanza. His stance was, if you believe it, it's not a lie. And what we saw with Trump was, if you tell it enough, it's not a lie. 

So there was this permissiveness of lying. You get to the point where people that I have classified as personality disordered, meaning they have no moral compass, they have no thought about consequences. They lie with impunity. You know, it was inevitable that you would have somebody who can completely create a caricature of themselves and get elected because they would use the Trumpism approach, which was just keep lying about it and push back. And if there's any accountability, you know, you can do your best to evade it. And sometimes you can evade it for years.

MS: Right. And it's interesting, you mentioned people around them who might say, hey, don't do this and how it kind of becomes a collective thing, perhaps. I mean, we don't know that so much with George Santos, but I mentioned the other congressperson, Anna Paulina Luna. In her story, her mother seems to be part of this, too. Her mother vouches for her story. But the rest of her family, everybody else says, no, none of that is true. So it's it's sort of like someone else is in on the lie and the promoting of this permissive behavior.

SN:  Right. And you can imagine a situation where when Santos was putting this idea together, he had people to look at as models and potentially reach out to in Marjorie Taylor Greene or others who are openly free with deception and lying and basically rewarding him and encouraging him by saying, “Yeah, you can do that. And in fact, we value your votes [in Congress]. So we'll take you.” And you need to look no further than the election of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House to see how a small group of deceptive loyalists can hijack Congress for days.

MS: Absolutely. And it’s so important to talk about what this means from the perspective of a neuroscientist and a psychologist about what has happened to the Republican Party and what has happened to all of us and the entire country in terms of what we're experiencing. I really appreciated talking about this and getting into this angle of it. I think it's very important.

SN: I appreciate having the time to speak about. If I can make one closing comment: I often get asked, you know, what's the future of America look like or how do we get quote unquote, healthy again? 

And I think what we were talking about a few minutes ago with accountability, you know, that needs to be the fixed —- you need to have the insurrectionists face consequences.  You know, banishment from Congress. You need to have Trump face consequences for his role in the insurrection. So without some kind of sweeping accountability to remove what I've called the cancer that is in our political system, there's not going to be any meaningful healthy change.

MS: Perfect way to end it. What do we all need to do? And yes, it's about justice and and hoping that we see that happen — in Georgia, or in the Justice Department,  somewhere soon.

.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

The Signorile Report is reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!

During a discussion on the my SiriusXM program about QAnon cultist Marjorie Taylor Greene’s demented white supremacist fantasy of a “national divorce,” Laura from Alabama called.

Of course, Alabama is one of the red states that Greene sees as part of the New Confederacy, or New Gilead, or whatever she wants to call what she wants to create. And like most of the red states, it would bleed out without federal money, most of which comes from 10 or so blue states. Red states would be destroyed.

The whole idea — the dissolution of the United States — is absurd. But it’s all about feeding a rabid base on secession and civil war as they take last a gasp of being the white majority — and grab for their guns to rule from the minority.

Anyway, Laura and I didn’t get into any of that. She was instead stuck on our supposedly “complaining” about Donald Trump “all these years” after he’s left office.

As if Trump is not running for president again.

Well, the four-letter words flew. No patience for this!

Listen to the short clip and let me know your thoughts.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

This one is a doozy. You’ll have a laugh — but you’ll also see how deeply immersed these people are in the MAGA cult. The best you can do with people like this is use them to show others the dangers of self-delusion, letting them flail and embarrass themselves.

In a discussion on my SiriusXM program about the mania on the right over the Chinese spy balloon, David from North Carolina called in to demand the “evidence” that there were Chinese balloons flying over the U.S. under Donald Trump’s administration.

But not only did Pentagon officials tell the media about three balloons, at least two of which flew over Texas and Florida during Trump’s administration, and others that crossed over Hawaii; intelligence officials and even Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee, like Marco Rubio, confirmed it (even as he tried to downplay it), as did Republicans on the Intelligence Committee in the House, like Rep. Michael Waltz.

The Biden administration reported per intelligence reports that, in fact, there was quite an advanced Chinese spy balloon program for at least five years, and the Trump administration seems to have been clueless about it — or just decided these balloons weren’t a threat.

David denied it all, saying Rubio is an “idiot” and the rest of it the sources are some of sort of conspiracy by the Biden administration and the so-called liberal media.

“I don’t trust — do you understand? The AP? The New York Times?” he said.

Of course, when I further underscored the diversity of the sources with evidence, including Republican politicians, David tried to shift the discussion to — you guessed it! — Hunter Biden.

LOL.

Listen in and let me know your thoughts.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

The Signorile Report is reader-supported. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!

In a discussion on my SiriusXM program about Direct TV and AT&T deciding they no longer wanted to broadcast Newsmax on their cable and satellite platforms — largely because it’s not profitable, but also, it’s a disseminator of misinformation, hate and lies — Andrea from California called in.

It was unclear what her point was on Newsmax. She managed to veer the conversation to Twitter and Facebook — and the bogus “Twitter Files.” Yes, in which we learned that Twitter decided to listen to the Biden campaign’s urgings not to allow revenge porn — dick pics — from Hunter Biden’s laptop.

It always comes back to Hunter Biden’s laptop, of course. Not only did it completely escape Andrea that this is not government censorship — Twitter is a private company and can listen to the urgings of anyone, and the Biden campaign wasn’t the “government” but rather a campaign — she seemed to think the FBI was involved. But in fact, the FBI had no involvement whatsoever in telling Twitter what to do — just another right-wing conspiracy. And the Trump campaign — and administration — also urged Twitter not to allow certain topics on its platform.

(By the way, if you listen carefully , when I asked Andrea, “Did you want to see Hunter Biden’s dick pics?” she actually answered, “Maybe.” )

It’s hard to argue with people when they have a different set of facts. More so, I rarely let people change the subject to their own topic — and it was bad enough that she did that — but then she was trying to direct the show with questions to me about Facebook.

As she engaged in this claim that people were “canceled,” I explained that many people on the left have been booted from Twitter and Facebook for doing nothing but criticizing Trump — and, as wrong as that might be, the companies are private entities that can do what they want.

Andrea claimed that it is conservatives who are “overwhelmingly” suppressed, which is not only ridiculous when we look at all of the stories of people on the left booted off the platforms; it doesn’t acknowledge that many “right-wing” users are white supremacist, and neo-Nazi trolls, and thus of course they should be banned and shouldn’t be seen as people on the right innocently booted.

Anyway, I probably got way too snappy and angry with her, and maybe this was one of those cases where I should have pulled back. One could argue she was trying to calmly engage, even if veering off, and I was shutting her down. I was frustrated at her changing the subject and having a false set of facts — and just won’t let conservatives commander the discussion to their liking.

But I’ll let you be the judge. Listen in and let me know your thoughts!

( There’s about 40 seconds of me setting up the topic first before going to the call).

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

They are “more radical than they were” in the past. “And Kevin McCarthy is a weaker speaker” than those in the past.

“This is a crew that almost has to touch the oven to know that it’s hot.”

“The GOP caucus is one where Marjorie Taylor Greene almost doesn’t stand out anymore. And that’s pretty remarkable.”

The Signorile Report is reader-supported.If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!

Democratic Congressman Colin Allred, who represents Texas’ 32nd Congressional district in Dallas, came on my SiriusXM program this week. It’s always a great conversation, as Allred is thoughtful and fully focused on the issues for which Democrats are fighting.

We spoke about the new GOP-controlled Congress and the extremists who are now sitting on powerful committees — Marjorie Taylor Greene on both the Oversight Committee and the Homeland Security Committee, for example — and we spoke about the plans Republicans have moving forward.

In particular, we discussed the threats from the GOP on not lifting the debt ceiling and sending the economy globally into chaos. Allred talked about strategies Democrats have, including the use of discharge petitions, in order to get around the GOP’s reckless tactics and get several Republicans onboard with Democrats. And we talked about how the GOP, when they did this previously during the Obama years, got Democrats to make concessions which were ultimately bad for the country. He doesn’t see that happening now.

“I think President Biden, who was vice president when many of these negotiations took place during the Obama administration, I think he is one of those folks who’s learned you can’t negotiate around this.”

We also talked about the border and the need for real immigration reform. And we focused on the Inflation Reduction Act and, in particular, the cap on costs for insulin which he fought for — and which Republicans in the Senate severely narrowed — and how we have to expand it.

Listen in and let me know your thoughts.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!

This one is a real beauty from my SiriusXM program.

In a discussion about Congressman George Santos, his fabrications and why should resign, George from Georgia called in.

“How can we justify going after Santos when we have people who’ve done essentially the same thing?” George asked.

Before he gave an example, I replied, “Oh you mean Donald Trump. Well we did of course impeach him...for inciting an insurrection against the United States and for engaging in extortion of a foreign leader. But you’re right, he did lie about his his entire resume and his businesses.”

George immediately began saying, “No, no!” trying to interrupt me.

He then went to Senator Blumenthal of Connecticut, who did lie about serving in the military in Viet Nam.

I asked, What else did he lie about? George couldn’t come up with anything, as I explained that every Republican senator and House member has lied about something, and even many Democrats have — and none of it is right or defensible. But if they cop to and apologize, one distortion or falsehood about a background can be tolerated.

But nobody comes close to George Santos having fabricated his entire resume.

I then shifted the discussion — in making an example of how two people could do something similar but for one it’s much, much worse because of the severity and intent — to classified documents, and Trump stealing hundreds of files and refusing to return them while Biden appears to have had files in an office and his residence he didn’t know about and returned them promptly.

Well, that lit a fuse for George, and then I only had to escalate further.

Warning: Lots of F-bombs, (on my part!).

Listen in and let me know your thoughts!

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!

“These are arsonists intent on burning everything down!"

I thought you’d all want to hear this conversation I had on my SiriusXM program with Congressman Ritchie Torres, who represents the South Bronx — New York’s district 15 — in New York City. We chatted while he was on the floor of the House as Kevin McCarthy was forced to go through 15 ballots — giving away whatever was left of his soul — to become Speaker.

Torres, is a brilliant young voice, standing up against bigotry and speaking out loudly — and he can be bitingly sarcastic. And yes, we need more of that.

He was elected in 2020, when he and former New York Congressman Mondaire Jones became the first openly gay Black men elected to Congress. Torres is the first gay Afro-Latino elected to Congress.

“I introduced a bill known as the SANTOS Act — the Stop Another Non Truthful Office Seeker Act. It will punish fraudulent candidates who tell lies to voters. ”

Torres, who is often burning up Twitter and other social media platforms, has called out the GOP for caving to the far-right extremists, as McCarthy made concessions to election deniers and insurrectionist defenders.

And he’s been all over the George Santos scandal — seeing this fraudster con his way into Congress — both in speaking out against Santos and in filing an Ethics Complaint.

“During the debates around the Speaker’s vote, at one point Elise Stefanik said that Republicans are the most diverse legislative conference. When we heard her say that I said, ‘By what standard is that true?’

“I guess she must be counting George Santos. If you factor in the lies of George Santos, you might have a gay, Afro-Latino, biracial, Brazilian, Belgian, Ukrainian, Jewish, Catholic Republican.”

Listen in and let me know your thoughts.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe

Moody College of Communication from Austin, USA. Licensed under Creative Commons

If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism. Thanks!

As Twitter continues to meltdown — with the latest news last night of owner Elon Musk suspending accounts of prominent journalists who have criticized him, as well as an account promoting one of his competitors, Mastodon — you’ll be interested to listen to this interview with NYU professor and prominent media critic Jay Rosen, who himself is a force on Twitter.

This interview was conducted last week on my SiriusXM program after Musk has engaged in many chaotic actions. It’s been weeks of Musk firing employees, attacking former employees, bringing back white supremacists and bigots of every stripe who’d been banned from the platform, pushing conspiracies and allowing right-wing journalists to have access to Twitter’s internal emails to supposedly expose a left-wing bias from before Musk took over.

Rosen discussed what’s been happening, and what may or may not be motivating Musk. And we also talked other platforms people are migrating toward and what he thinks about them, how functional they are and whether or not they will take off — primarily Mastodon and Post.

It’s an interesting conversation and one that I know a lot of you who use social media will want to hear if you didn’t hear it on my SiriusXM program.

We also had spoke a bit about media coverage of politics, and a media still unable to deal with properly cover the political world as Donald Trump has declared his presidential run.

Listen in and let me know your thoughts!

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.signorile.com/subscribe