As Right Wing Watch has been reporting, many of President Donald Trump’s religious-right backers are parroting and amplifying his unjustified clams that he won the presidential election and that Democrats are out to steal it from him. One of the most ardent pro-Trump media outlets, the Pentecostal-oriented Charisma, has now erased whatever blurry line might have existed between partisan propaganda, conspiracy theory, and outright misinformation.
In a Monday evening post, Charisma contributor Amir George quoted religious-right activist Franklin Graham saying the election isn’t over and calling on his followers not to give up or “stop asking for God’s help and mercy on this country.”
George’s post then went off the rails, talking about the “stunning news that a powerful supercomputer known as ‘The Hammer’ has been combined with a software system called ‘Scorecard’ to alter 3% of the votes when they are sent from local ballot offices to central counting systems.”
The Charisma post cites “government contractor Dennis Montgomery” as the source for the claim, arguing that “it is imperative for citizens to stand up for the blatant attempt to overthrow an election dramatically won by President Trump.”
Reporter Will Sommer exposed the dubious source of the “Hammer” supercomputer hoax at The Daily Beast. “The head of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has called the claim about supercomputer election fraud ‘nonsense,’ and urged Americans not to promote it,” Sommer reported.
Sommer noted that “Montgomery has a long history of making outlandish claims that fail to come true” and “was behind what’s been called ‘one of the most elaborate and dangerous hoaxes in American history,’ churning out allegedly fictitious data that one prompted the Bush administration to consider shooting down airplanes.”
The “Hammer” hoax has been debunked by Snopes and Lead Stories. It has been spread by former White House aide Steve Bannon, guests on Fox News, other right-wing media outlets—and now Charisma.
Montgomery’s credibility is not exactly enhanced by the fact that his lawyer is right-wing crank and conspiracy theorist Larry Klayman, who once held a far-from-successful rally in Washington D.C. that he hoped would draw millions to “occupy” the nation’s capital and force then-President Barack Obama to leave office.
