WorldNetDaily, it seems, can’t stop lying about the money a Mark Zuckerburg-funded group gave out in 2020 to help fund elections that were hindered by a pandemic. Some recent examples:
- “While Americans were listening to the political candidates and making up their minds about voting in 2020, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook worked with a couple of foundations to hand out $400 million plus. It was a cash influence on the nation’s elections that never before had happened, and it went mostly to leftist elections officials who used it to recruit Joe Biden voters.” — Bob Unruh, Jan. 31
- “The facts are that the election results are suspect, as Mark Zuckerberg handed out $400 million plus to various elections officials to influence the results. They used the money largely to recruit Biden supporters.” — Bob Unruh, Feb. 29
- “Of course, evidence of blatant 2020 election rigging is everywhere: Mark Zuckerberg handed out $400 million to elections officials who mostly used it to recruit Democrat voters, in an influence operation never seen before in American elections.” — Bob Unruh, March 11
Note that Unruh moved from Zuckerberg funding the groups to baselessly asserting that Zuckerberg himself was personally handing out the money.
Unruh started a March 13 article this way:
During the 2020 election it was Zuckerbucks that were used to influence the outcome of the presidential race.
More than $400 million that Mark Zuckerberg handed out to elections officials, who often used that cash windfall to recruit Joe Biden voters.
Never before had American elections been subjected to such an influence operation, and significantly, those Zuckerbucks flowed into bank accounts outside of the ordinary processes through which American elections and campaigns are funded.
This claim came in the context of a Mississippi officials bizarrely claiming that it’s “election interference” to encourage people to vote, claiming that a federal program to encourage people to vote “creates numerous opportunities for ineligible prisoners to be registered to vote in Mississippi.” Unruh didn’t mention that this comes in the wake of a federal court striking down the state’s arbitrary lifetime ban on voting by people convicted of certain felonies, though the state is doing little to help eligible voters gain their rights back.
Unruh repeated the “Zuckerbucks” lie again in a March 15 article:
During the 2020 presidential race, Mark Zuckerberg handed out, through organizations like the partisan-founded Center for Tech and Civic Life, some $400 million that essentially was used by many local elections officials to recruit Joe Biden voters.
Never before in American elections had such a richly funded influence operation been conducted, and some states reacted by banning the injection of private money into those public election processes.
But a report compiled by The Federalist shows that CTCL still is trying to influence election results, only in a different way.
Unruh has never provided evidence that any Zuckerberg money was specifically used “to recruit Joe Biden voters.” In fact, any election office could have received the money — intended to help run an election during a pandemic when local jurisdictions failed to offer all the funding needed — and, indeed, more Republican-dominated jurisdictions than Democratic-dominated ones accepted the money. And despite Unruh’s implications, it’s not against the law to encourage people to vote. Unruh went on to write:
The Zuckerbuck election influence operation is considered by many, along with the FBI’s interference, to have turned the results in 2020 from President Trump to Joe Biden. The FBI’s agenda included warning media companies to suppress accurate but damaging information being reported about Biden family scandals, and a subsequent polling shows that likely gave Biden the victory.
That’s an apparent reference to the Media Research Center’s conspiracy theory that right-wing obsession with Hunter Biden’s laptop — promoted by a right-wing pro-Trump rag without any independent verification offered — didn’t sway enough voters to vote against Biden; the polling the MRC did to support its conspiracy theory was conducted by Trump’s own election pollster and a polling firm founded by Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, so its veracity can be reasonably questioned.
Unruh then unhappily quoted CTCL officials calling out right-wing lies:
Josh Goldman, a manager at CTCL, said it is election “experts” whose voices must be considered.
Because others are offering “misinformation.”
“That’s not good for you, your office, your voters, or our democracy,” he said.
Kurt Sampsel, another manager for CTCL, suggested whose information should be valued.
“Trump’s statements on voting by mail, voter fraud, and whether or not he’ll accept the results of the election have had the effect of undermining confidence in our democratic processes on just a bigger scale than we’ve ever seen before,” he said in the report.
Unruh made no effort to prove Sampsel or Goldman wrong — a sign, perhaps, that he knows he’s lying to his readers and simply doesn’t care about the truth.