MI GOP Launches 'Migrant Invader Bus' Hoax on Gonzaga Hoops Team
Republican paranoia over migrants has reached a new level of absurdity, as a State Representative and the State GOP Chair launched a conspiracy that buses of migrants were invading Michigan. It turns out it was the Gonzaga basketball team arriving for the game in the NCAA tournament.
Right-wing media plays endless loops of clips of migrants all day every day. Right-wing social media does the same. Teams of people work day and night scouring the country to find any crime or incident involving a migrant that they can blow up into a national story for political purposes and clicks for monetized accounts. It is the one and only issue that Donald Trump and the Republican Party is running on because they have no other accomplishments. So they offer fear of migrants with plenty of racist overtones to Americans and hope that fear will get them elected.
As the team buses for the Gonzaga University basketball teams departed the Detroit Metro airport to participate in the NCAA March Madness tournament with a police escort, members of the Michigan Republican Party began posting on social media that they were secret "migrant invaders" being transported into the state by Joe Biden.
The hoax was started my Michigan State Rep. Matt Maddock, whose bio on twitter describes himself as, 'Trump-endorsed, Ranked Most Conservative State Rep, Freedom Caucus, Anti-Communist.' Maddock posted that three buses of "illegal invaders" just loaded up at the Detroit Metro Airport." He had no evidence or proof whatsoever that these were migrants, but Republican hysteria and conspiracies don't require proof.
Maddock tagged Michigan GOP Chair Pete Hoekstra, who promptly retweeted it to amplify the hoax to his followers, only to be mocked by the excellent Democratic Senate Whip Mallory McMorrow.
Rep. Eric Swalwell then weighed in, urging Maddock to resign for his stupidity. Don't count on it.
As someone who monitors right-wing media and social media, these hoaxes about migrants are endless. The Baltimore bridge disaster launched hundreds of them. The car accident near the Canadian border several months ago was a "terrorist attack" by a migrant, according to Fox (it was a guy coming back from a casino). Of course, Rep. Clay Higgins has also launched his investigation of "ghost buses" that supposedly contained hundreds of FBI agents to infiltrate and incite the crowd on J6.
The insanity of these people never ends, but while we are debunking this in this game of disinformation whack-a-mole, they are already launching new conspiracies.
