By David Futrelle
Most of the people I follow on Twitter are, as far as I can tell, lovely people. But in the interest of balance (and because I’m always in search of material for this blog) I also follow a number of truly terrible tweeters. Which means that as I scroll my way through Twitter I regularly encounter some absolutely godawful tweets that often seem to come from an alternate universe somehow even weirder than our own.
Today. I ran across this, which was, er, striking enough that I screenshotted it and shared it with my Twitter followers:
https://twitter.com/DeepStateExpose/status/1077315643136004096
But I was still a bit puzzled: Was @DeepStateExpose simply claiming that Melania is the first truly feminine first lady — a claim I’ve seen other MAGAheads make — or was this intrepid conspiracy researcher literally claiming that all the first ladies before her were secretly trans women?
It turns out to be the latter. Earlier this month, @DeepStateExpose tweeted this, declaring in all caps that
https://twitter.com/DeepStateExpose/status/1074181689646157825
No need to watch his video: It’s two-minutes of some mumbly dude — @DeepStateExpose himself? — putting up pictures of a bunch of first ladies and declaring that each and every one of them “looks like a man.”
This brief video seems to have been, er, inspired by a much longer one that’s been floating around on YouTube for several years that uses a similar, er, methodology to prove that all of the first ladies, at least going back to the 1930s, were”demonically possessed transgender entities.” The narrator, like the one in the video above, makes much of the fact that Herbert Hoover’s wife was named “Lou,” and at one point informs viewers that “Bess Truman was a TRUE MAN.” (The original Youtuber also claimed that Melania is trans — in a portion of his video that’s conspicuously missing from some of the re-uploaded versions of the video.)
These claims don’t come out of nowhere; they’re merely the latest iteration of a long-running transphobic right-wing smear. A surprisingly large contingent of Barack Obama-haters — including, famously, Alex Jones — have been claiming for years now that Michelle Obama is “really a man,” citing as proof a recording in which the supposedly gay Barack supposedly slips up and supposedly calls his wife “Michael.” (Look, it’s transphobia, homophobia, racism and misogyny all at once!) These folks also spend a great deal of time poring over photos of the former first lady searching for, and sometimes convincing themselves they’ve found, telltale penis bulges. @DeepStateExpose has himself posted tweets proclaiming that U.S. intelligence services have “now confirm[ed] the lefts worst fears. Michelle Obama is a man!!!”
Now some of these Michelle Obama “truthers” have become First Lady truthers, and the theory has gained enough traction on the far right that in one discussion of the relative attractiveness of various countries’ “first ladies” earlier this year in 4chan’s /pol/ forum, many of the regulars seemed to treat the trans, er, theory as old news, debating only about the reasons behind this alleged historical fact.
“You don’t reach the very top unless you are a tr**ny or have a tr**ny wife,” wrote one anon. “That is the rule.”
“I’m still finding out why,” added another.
My guess so far is that since there are tr**nies in positions of power, and men can’t be in power unless he has a tr**ny wife, then it seems that tr**nies actually rule the world and any powerful men or male Jew that rules the world are actually just puppets and have a tr**ny as their handler. Tr**nies run the world behind the scenes.
It would be nice if such sentiments were confined entirely to the fringes. But they aren’t — claims like @DeepStateExpose’s are all over Twitter, and YouTube videos claiming that all the first ladies have been trans have been viewed well over 100,000 times.
@DeepStateExpose’s embrace of the theory may presage even wider acceptance of the preposterous claims on the right. @DeepStateExpose isn’t just some random Twitter troll or bot. He’s got nearly a quarter of a million Twitter followers, including a number of influential voices on the right, among them Dinesh D’Souza, former congressman and radio host Joe Walsh, and TurningPointUSA’s Charlie Kirk. His “first ladies were men” Twitter video has itself been viewed more than 10,000 times.
Perhaps more alarmingly. @DeepStateExpose is someone whose tweets are regularly seen — and often retweeted by — President Trump himself. @DeepStateExpose says in his Twitter bio that he’s been retrweeted by the President nine times. Given the limitations of Twitter’s search function, I haven’t been able to confirm this, but as Slate noted in one article “Ranking … Trump’s Sunday Morning Tweets From Least to Most Insane,” Trump has on at least one occasion retweeted the popular conspiracy theorist multiple times in a single day.
Let’s just hope that Trump doesn’t choose to promote this particular tweet; our political discourse is already strange and terrible enough as it is.
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Sigh. As in so many other ways, they come so close to enlightenment, and then turn off inexplicably the other direction. It is true that most First Ladies, historically, have not been as ‘feminine’ as women are encouraged to be today. That is because, historically, most women were not as ‘feminine’ as our toxic culture drives women to make themselves.
Modern standards of ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ are just that-incredibly modern, dating back no more than the 1950’s. But, they just can’t see that, so they create a vast conspiracy to protect their worldview from the facts.
Just when I think the bottom of their barrel of heinous fuckery has reached China, they come out with yet another new low.
I will point out, however, that anyone who is really interested in what gender Michelle Obama was born with can surely access her long-form birth certificates. As well as those of both her daughters.
What the what? So much bizarre fuckassery.
1, I’m pretty sure Michelle Obama being a trans woman (she isn’t, and wouldn’t be a man if she was) is not the left’s worst nightmare. Pretty sure some on the left would be pretty impressed actually.
2, Is this weirdo really including the Republican First Ladies in this nonsense?
3, Trans folk secretly rule the world, higher than the Jews? Bwahahahahahahabshzbsbsbabahahahaha. Seriously? If trans folk ran this place, why do so many suffer from state bullshit?
To clarify that last bit, Jews don’t actually rule the world.
I mean, even if this conspiracy theory were actually true, who cares? I can’t imagine the gender identity of former First Ladies of the United States would really have much bearing on anything at all.
Also, I’ll never understand how people who believe in an ultra powerful government conspiracy can be so proud of trying to buddy up with Trump. If their conspiracy theory really were real, wouldn’t the man seen as the ostensible leader of the entire political system likely be another agent of the shadowy agenda?
Bakunin – your last point kinda reminds me of an old joke about a Jewish man reading some antisemitic newspaper. His friends spotted him and ask “why do you even bother with this rag?”
“Well… you see” – he answers – “while I read our press, it’s always the same: hate, attacks, incidents and pogroms. But here? Jews controls the economy! Jews rule the world! It makes you feel warm inside when you read it”
I think it’s the same thing with fantasy world those people create for themselves: left, feminist, LGBT and what-have-you rule the world! SJW thought police controls every word! Being women give you million-dollar job on the spot!
Man, if some of this was actually true…
Look, as beautiful and as lovely and as model-like as Melania certainly is, from the moment I first saw her back on her hot minute on Celebrity Apprentice I thought she looked like a primo, Grade “A” Drag Queen. And I still do.
I don’t mean this as an insult! Anyone who’s seen RuPaul’s Drag Race or has ever been to a drag revue knows what gorgeous, glorious Queens can look like… and I’ll say it again: Melania looks precisely like drag queens look, beauty-wise.
She looks Fish AF, and gorgeous. But were she not married to Bozo right now, and she wanted to make incredible money, she could be a modern-day Victor/Victoria easily.
@Bakunin
On your point three, I think these conspiracists would probably say that there isn’t any discrimination and that reports of discrimination, violence, etc are fake news and just cover for their control of the world, so people won’t suspect what’s really going on.
I think that if trans women actually ran the world that the world would be a hell of a lot better off.
I’m trans and Jewish — am I secretly controlling the world?
Oh, no, I’m a trans dude and the wrong kind of Jewish, so that’s why my Jew gold isn’t coming in to pay off my student loans and I can’t get disability from the government that I control. Sigh.
I’m not shocked that these right wing doorknobs want to conflate antisemitism and transphobia (Judaism has historically acknowledged four genders, sometimes more, though that bit vanished into the Middle Ages, sadly). It’s just frustrating. We’re easy targets right now. And those of us in the middle feel it on all sides.
Seriously! If every past First Lady had been trans, that would mean that trans medical care had been fantastically comprehensive since the 18th century, offering services far in advance of what is apparently available today!
Do they actually believe all this, or is it just wind? I’d say just wind, but there’s demonology stirred somewhere into the pot, and people who can believe in demons can believe in anything…
What total nonsense. Jackie O was a feminine icon and trendsetter for women around the world. Dolley Madison was widely regarded as charming and beautiful, the quintessential hostess. Helen Taft was elegant and foxy.
Their criteria for who qualifies as a “real woman” are so ridiculously narrow, ad hoc, and delusional that nobody actually qualifies. Women no longer exist. It’s all a conspiracy. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
These people are so willfully ignorant, so ripe for grifting and cult programming. It’s terrifying.
As a trans women I’d really like to know, if trans women rule the world why do we keep getting killed by shitty cis men? you know just saying. Also a world ruled by trans women sounds the closest to a utopia as I’ve ever heard
Damn, if I could convince myself to be soulless enough I could make a mint by being an “undercover” trans person delivering them the “truth” about the global trans conspiracy.
Plot twist: All the presidents were transmen and were married to transwomen!
@Alexis Filth
Right!?
I swear, these fucks all recognise that power is immoral, but instead of doing anything to correct the shitty power structures, they spend hours convincing themselves that they aren’t on the top. It’s exhausting.
And one other thing I’ve wondered, if these women they keep going on about are trans, I wanna know their tricks. Wish I looked like that
So much projection they must have been a drive-in theater in a past life.
Deep State guy, your voice is a nasal mumble.
And what you say is repetitive crapola.
Work on that shit, buddy.
…I don’t think these CHUDs realize that Mamie Eisenhower was the kind of person who wouldn’t have taken any of their shit.
@ Von Ragnar
It might strike some as counter-intuitive, but just as MLK was reminded of the white moderate in his Birmingham Jail cell, this only reminds me how much I despise those mealy-mouthed cowards that don’t want to talk about “identity politics” and use it as a four-letter word. Because the fantasy-indulgers are doing just that: indulging in make-believe to justify all their pathetic grievances. They run into reality pretty fast. Like that Star Trek: TNG episode “Conundrum”, the one where an alien wipes the Enterprise crew’s memories of who they are and what their mission is, then surreptitiously makes himself First Officer to try to destroy another alien race he’s at war with. What I loved about that episode was that it was kinda like a Columbo episode, where we knew who the bad guy was, but we get to see the crew figure it out. And having been told that they’re in this tenacious war with this alien species a century behind them in technology, Picard and Co. were like “Wait, this doesn’t add up….”
Although I could only imagine alt-Right Picard being like “that’s just what the Deep State wanted us to think! Mr. Worf, fire all weapons!” So nevermind, they’re all terrible.
I’d love to see Abigail Adams’ reaction to all this. It would be a searing epigraph that would burn across the centuries.
I want to see a table of organisation which shows the power relationship between our trans rulers, the lizard people, and the Illuminati.
What’s with the five stars in that twitter handle? Right-wingers love their pieces of flair!
This “deep state exposed” guy, Jeremy Stone, has books: “History of the Deep State” and “The Deep State: The Novel”. Check out the reviews on Amazon!
OT, but tangentially related: I was watching Kristi Winters and Kevin Logan break down the recent Patreon crackdown on the deplorables and it struck me that as these guys find their funding streams evaporating, did any of these guys ask themselves what their end game was?
For all the puff pieces and interviews these CHUDs get, that’s the million dollar question that never gets thrown their way. What exactly is their endgame? How do they see their internet celebrity playing out to its logical conclusion and what do you hope to have accomplished?
Because a lot of these YouTube talkers that made bank off of Patreon or their social media streams are now finding themselves as social pariahs in their 20s. It’s one thing for Jordan Peterson to parlay an unassailable academic position into a quote-unquote “self-help” book tour for his dullard fanbase or a YouTube multi-millionaire like PewDiePie to burn up his social media capital, but clowns like Lauren Southern and Laura Loomer are just a few years out of teenagehood and are already finding themselves personae non gratae. They still have 60 or so years of life on an Earth that has borne witness to how terrible they are and in all likelihood considers them irredeemable.
And for what? The right-wing grift? A few years of demi-fame until your funding streams are inevitably taken down? Have none of these people learned that there’s no stability to be found there? Even a guy like Sargon is still in his mid-40s with a kid to support and as much as he raked in on Patreon, I doubt it’s enough to carry him through to retirement.
Do they even think that far ahead? Has the medium reduced forethought so much that they’re just living in an eternal livestream with no set end time? Frankly, I don’t think they have thought that far ahead. I think they’re all such slaves to their fanbases that they have no endgame. Their very livelihoods are in the hands of a very fickle and increasingly extreme group of the dregs of humanity and I don’t think they’ve stopped for a second to really consider that, because the weight of that idea alone would crush their very sense of self.
It’s going to be a long and lonely existence for a lot of these people once this bubble bursts. And it will burst: this state of affairs where big tech companies turn a blind eye is unsustainable and we’re already starting to see the inevitable public reckoning.
@ Katamount:
Really well put!! I think for many, it was a 15-minnits-o-fame thing, then the discovery that there really is $ to be made… then the tailspin when the base tires of them or finds a mew champion….
…
The “deep state” is the logical extension of the “1984” conspiracy fantasies of the ignorant. George Soros serves as the “Emmanuel Goldstein” character, and the “deep state” serves as the “inner party”.
It’s all nonsense, of course, but the igno-right doesn’t need it to be real, at least not “real” in the sense which non-conspiracy-fantasists use the word.
They just need to believe it. When anything can be proven by saying “everybody knows”, and anything can be disproven by saying “nuh-uh”, the concept of reality… changes.
A conservative contends that if you tell the same lie enough times, people will believe it… and they’re right; a conspiracy fantasist contends that if you tell the same lie enough times, it actually becomes the truth… and they’re wrong.
Translation:
“We double-dare you to say a flippin’ word about the FLOTUS facial surgery…’cause if you bring it up, just look what we’ll come back with.
You have been warned.”
“Women no longer exist. It’s all a conspiracy.”
Aw, women are a rumor. Hadn’t you heard?
I’ve stumbled on a few BIZARRE YouTube channels claiming that many famous, !mostly Hollywood types of of persons are really transgender.
One example: Joan Jett. I’ve read she’s only 5 feet tall. If she was born male…well, I think everyone here understands what I’m trying to say.
I hope the people running these channels are trolling.