Conservative Media Makes Up a Fake Florida Mansion for Nancy Pelosi - The Bulwark
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Anatomy of a viral lie. by Jim Swift November 29, 2021 2:41 pm (Photos: GettyImages / Shutterstock) Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare via emailPrint
Over the weekend, Conservatism Inc. found a new scandal to promote: A false report that Nancy Pelosi had purchased a $25 million mansion in Florida, home to 2024 hopeful, Gov. Ron DeSantis and former President Trump. To underscore: This story is false. Nancy Pelosi has not bought a $25 million mansion in Florida.
But watching how the fake news blew through the conservative ecosystem is illuminating.
The lib-owning idea went something like this: Nancy Pelosi and her ilk have overreacted to COVID-19 at every turn. Ron DeSantis is a freedom loving governor of the greatest state in America. And now Pelosi was all but admitting that DeSantis was right by spending $25 million on Florida real estate. What an elitist hypocrite!
The story appeared to get its start on a fringe webpage called Big League Politics. Note the site's ads. You can't make this stuff up.
Here's how the story was sourced:
Corrupt Democrat oligarch Nancy Pelosi is reportedly finalizing the purchase of a $25 million mansion in South Florida, departing California amid the state's decline as a result of policy she's long supported.
Pelosi is slated to become a resident of Jupiter Island in Martin County, an elite community with the distinction of its residents possessing the highest per capita income of any municipality in the United States.
Sources cited elite South Florida real estate brokers who confirmed Pelosi was in the closing stages of the purchase of the property.
Nancy Pelosi just went into contract to buy a Florida oceanfront mansion listed for $25,000,000
Just checked with top broker in area who confirmed this information
10,000 sf property on Jupiter Island just changed to "pending" on MLS pic.twitter.com/jDsweOQeec
— Gabe Hoffman (@GabeHoff) November 23, 2021
Pelosi was observed scouting out properties in Florida earlier this year, with some speculating the powerful Speaker of the House and oligarch would retire in the aftermath of the 2022 midterms.
In case you're wondering about the sourcing, that @gabehoff tweet seems to have disappeared. And as for the idea that Pelosi has been "house hunting" in Florida, that link goes to another Big League Politics story which makes the assertion based on a tweet from Marjorie Taylor Greene.
So this wasn't crackerjack stuff to begin with.
The Big League Politics story was then picked up by Fox News contributor and "Investigative Reporter" Sara Carter's site, though the story on Carter's site carries the byline of "Staff Writer."
As is usually the case, after these fringe outlets write vague, unsourced stories, slightly more respectable conservative sites aggregated them under the guise of "according to" various "reports" without noting how disreputable the sources of the reports are, or making any attempt to confirm them. These aggregations exist solely to farm clicks.
Consider this report from Washington Examiner staff reporter Haisten Willis, reprinted in The Gazette :
The internet is buzzing with rumors that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is purchasing a $25 million mansion on Florida's Atlantic coast, just 25 miles from former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home.
Pelosi, one of the richest members of Congress, reportedly owns nine properties worth a combined total of more than $20 million already. But if she picks up the 10,000-square-foot beachfront property on prestigious Jupiter Island, it would give the speaker a big presence in a state led by defiant Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Several south Florida Twitter users say they have sources confirming that Pelosi is in fact buying the house, which is listed for sale on several real estate sites. Local property tax records list the home as having last changed hands in 2015 and still list that buyer as the current owner. But Zillow and other listing services state that a sale is "pending."
That same reporter, Haisten Willis, eventually re-wrote the story—still leading with a slightly altered paragraph—and no indication that the story had been edited:
An internet rumor that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is purchasing a $25 million mansion on Florida's Atlantic coast, just 25 miles from former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home, may just be too juicy to be true.
Note the word "may"—as if no one really knows if this rumor is true or not. It's not until four paragraphs later that Willis gives the relevant information:
Drew Hammill, Pelosi's deputy chief of staff, told the Washington Examiner the speaker of the House has no interest in buying a house in the Sunshine State.
"This is completely false," Hammill said. "There's no such pending sale nor is the family looking or interested."
So random people on Twitter said that Pelosi had already bought a $25 million dollar house. Pelosi's office called the story "completely false." And the Washington Examiner could only say that the story "may just be too juicy to be true." After all, can any of us truly know anything?
By then, the DeSantis stans and were on the case. The governor's spox, Christina Pushaw—whose Twitter bio says she is here to "debunk false Narratives about Florida…"—tweeted out the story with a hand smack to the face emoji.
Sean Hannity also tweeted it out
Fancy Nancy Bought $25 Million, 11,000 sq ft Beachside Mansion…in @GovRonDeSantis State of Florida! https://t.co/R2BUPUpnjZ
— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) November 24, 2021
As did Dinesh D'Souza:
Pelosi buys HUGE mansion in Florida. https://t.co/00f4bwgnlg
— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) November 24, 2021
The good news is that someone was willing to do actual journalism.
The bad news is that the someone was Realtor.com, where a writer named Claudine Zap—who does not appear to be an "investigative reporter" at Fox News—actually made some calls, got to the truth, and wrote a responsible piece headlined "No, Nancy Pelosi Did Not Buy a $25M Mansion in Jupiter Island, FL."
"This is completely false," said Drew Hammill, deputy chief of staff for the speaker. "There's no such pending sale, nor is the family looking or interested."
The $25 million mansion in question is pending sale, which means the property has found a buyer. It's just not Pelosi.
"I have no idea where the rumor started in regards to Nancy Pelosi," says the listing agent, Beth Bourque with Southern Shore Properties, who has been swamped with calls for the last week asking about the supposed Pelosi purchase.
"I keep saying I can't disclose who the buyer is, but it's not Pelosi," she says.
The new owners are just as displeased by the unwelcome fuss about their newly purchased home.
"They definitely don't want the rumors out there," Bourque says. "They don't want that sort of attention."
I'm sure the corrections and apologies will be flooding in now that Realtor.com has done the shoeleather journalism to debunk this wildly false claim.
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Say it ain't so Joe. Conservative media lied?
[Deleted]
You will get no argument from me.
[deleted]
"secular progressives", huh? Damn those people that don't want the bible shoved up our arse.
"Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness!" Does that sound like a mere suggestion to you?
Ok, so, let's do the sandbox thing.
I know you are, but what am I?
Do you deny that the story is true? If so, tell me in what way.
He's just trolling your seed.
Amen. He's gotta get his attention crave fed somehow.
Don't hold your breath waiting for a coherent response.
I expect no reply [Deleted]
[Deleted]
[Deleted]
Your comment is imbecilic, and you're trolling again.
Take a hint: No one cares.
Besides the countless other lies you've posted, you said on another seed within the last day or so that fetuses can live outside the womb at 15 weeks when the world record for premature births that survived is 21 weeks 1 day.
So what else can we call your false claim but a blatant bald faced lie? And with such a clear definitive lie proven, what else can anyone call you but a liar?
[deleted]
My comments were all right on and accurate. I not only stand by each and every one of them for your benefit I double down on them all!
There’s plenty here that says otherwise.
Curtis Means survived ( his twin sister did not) but at what price?
He spent 90 days on a ventilator.
He is permanently on Oxygen and still has a feeding tube.
After 16 months
He doesn't use his mouth yet and they are trying therapy to correct that.
If they adjust Roe v Wade to 20 weeks I have no issue with that,
but 23-24 was the correct call in 1973
and should remain that way.
Doubling down on nothing is still nothing. Your comment was an imbecilic nothing.
No, there aren't.
They probably got Nancy mixed up with Don Jr and his girlfriend Gilfoyle who bought a home in Juniper for $9.7 million.
Ya think that's possible...LOL
One of the interesting aspects, for me at least, is the the site used 'unnamed sources'. Which of course, the right loves to berate the left media for using.
Unnamed sources and fake news, the battle cry of the right-wing.
Now it has come back to bite them in the ass since they are the fake news and unnamed sources.
That's my favorite part of the story. Don't let honesty get in your way of a good story.
Man...and we hear about the fake MSM all the time
So, for the record, Bulwark is not just an anti or never Trump site. It is now an open and outright anti conservative site. Another tool of the political left.
No. Not a 'tool of the political left.' But rather a force to blunt the Putin influence on what was once the GOP. Trump brought it and the GOP bought it.
It was the one, Hitlery, and Brandon who colluded with Russia and were the pawns of Putin.
Your Dear Leader, Shit-for- Brains, as Trump is now and forever known, worships at Putin's feet.
For the record, The Bulwark is an actual conservative web site. It is an anti-trumpublican sight it is true. But true conservatives actually have ideas. Trumpublicans only know they are against things, but have no idea what they are for.
Trumplicans are Putin's patsies. Or would pasties be a better fit?
Oh man. Now you have gone and reminded me of another article about trumpublicans and russians. Oh the irony.
Trump supporting conservatives know exactly what we are for.
[deleted]
We all know what Trump supporting reactionary extremists are for. That would be fascism.
Sorry, this is a No Troll Zone.
Please do articulate those positions.
It’s been done often enough here. We have the advantage of not being domestic shills for foreign dictators that the never Trump folks lack. Biden is a tool of chairman Xi.
Do you know what the word 'articulate' means? I didn't ask whether it had been done some place else. I asked you to do so here. You play nothing but a game of dodge ball.
The entire purpose of Trumpist media is to promote disinformation, falsehoods and lies.
Which is exactly what Putin and his fellow autocrats need to survive.
That is correct. Putin's neo-fascist ideology is well-documented by Prof. Timothy Snyder in his excellent book "The Road to Unfreedom".
No, that’s the purpose of the MBFC backed Soros approved media.
Comment 4.2 -- combining ignorant trolling with a dose of anti-Semitism.
But but but if we repeat the lie enough it becomes fact - right?
Yes. And proven by Goebbels.