August 15, 2025 • 37 mins
What is a telltale sign of a failed state? To find the answer, we tell the story of Douglass Mackey – the man that faced a decade in prison…for posting a meme. Mackey’s shocking case reveals a major flaw in the American justice system…and what we need to do to fix it.
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Speaker 3 (01:12):
Now onto the show.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
If you listen to our political leaders, you'd think America
was on the verge of collapse.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
Donald Trump, for seven months has led an assault on democracy.
Speaker 5 (01:26):
Year after year, We've kept this democracy thing going. But now,
perhaps well the first and only time since the Civil War,
all of those institutions are under assault. The gravest threat
to our democracy right now does not come from any
foreign capital.
Speaker 6 (01:42):
It comes from our own.
Speaker 7 (01:44):
We're looking at what amounts to a threat to democracy.
Speaker 8 (01:47):
Democracy is under assault before our eyes. This moment we
have feared has arrived.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
But if America was on the verge of collapse, how
would we know what is a critical sign of a
failed state. I'm Patrick CARELCI.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
And I'm Adriana Cortes, and.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
This is Red Pilled America, a storytelling show.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
This is not another talk show covering the day's news.
We're all about telling stories.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Stories.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Hollywood doesn't want you to hear.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Stories.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
The media mocks stories about everyday Americans that the globalist ignore.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
You can think of Red Pilled America as audio documentaries,
and we promise only one thing, the truth. Welcome to
red pilled America. What is the telltale sign of a
(02:46):
failed state? To find the answer, we tell the story
of Douglas Mackie, the man that faced a decade in
prison for posting a meme. Mackie's shocking case reveals a
major flaw in the American justice system and what we
need to do to fix it.
Speaker 9 (03:05):
My fellow Americans, this is America's day, This is Democracy's day.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
It was January twentieth, twenty twenty one, and the Washington
DC ruling class came together to celebrate the inauguration of
the forty sixth president.
Speaker 9 (03:22):
Today we celebrate the triumph not of a candidate, but
of a cause, the cause of democracy. We've learned again
that democracy is precious, democracy is fragile. At this hour,
my friends, democracy has prevailed.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
But just two days after delivering his inaugural address, President
Joe Biden put his brand of democracy into action by
attacking the foundation of our republic.
Speaker 10 (03:51):
It was just kind of knock on the door. FBI
opened up and said, are you Doug. Mackie and I
had some roomates at the time. There's like no idea,
what's going on?
Speaker 1 (04:00):
That's Douglas Mackeie. The agents told MACKI the a warrant
for his arrest.
Speaker 10 (04:04):
And the first word I thought was for what? Because
I had no idea what I could possibly be arrested
for by the FBI. But I know that they could
come up with other so I said for what.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
And to the few that were paying attention, it wasn't
hard to see what was at stake.
Speaker 8 (04:17):
The case against Doug Mackie is the most shocking attack
on freedom of speech in this country in our lifetime.
One of the most important First Amendment cases in the
country is one that you may not have ever heard of.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
It's the case of Douglas Mackie.
Speaker 11 (04:29):
Joe Biden and his Department of Justice. One of the
first things that he did. They decided to go after
this poor young man, Douglas Mackie. What was his crime?
Douglas Mackee was the focus of the Biden Department of
Justice because he made a meme.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
It was a shocking turn of events for a young
man that had come of age around liberal elites.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Douglas Mackie was born in the Washington, DC area in
nineteen eighty nine. His family moved out to Colrado, but
would eventually come back East.
Speaker 10 (05:05):
August two thousand, we moved to Vermont, where my parents
had their families. In two thousand and seven, I graduated
high school and went to college Middlebury College and Middlebury Vermont.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Founded in eighteen hundred, Middlebury College is one of what's
known as the Little Ivy's, a small, highly selective liberal
arts college in the Northeast, considered comparable and prestige to
the Ivy League, but smaller in size. Middlebury is also
known for its politically active and socially progressive student body.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Issues like diversity.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Equity, inclusion, and environmental justice often drive campus activism. This
was Douglas Mackie's home during college, but he didn't quite
fit into the school's dominant political mold.
Speaker 10 (05:49):
I started first make attention to politics, probably around high
school with the Iraq War and George Bush, and then
during college sort of looking into libertarian.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Politicsckie graduated from Middlebury in twenty.
Speaker 10 (06:05):
Eleven, and then that's when I moved to New York,
and even in.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
The liberal Big Apple, his politics began drifting to the right.
Speaker 10 (06:12):
I was moving towards more conservative politics, and especially when
Trump jumped in the race at twenty.
Speaker 12 (06:17):
Fifteen, Ladies and gentlemen, I am officially running.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
For President of the United States, and we are going
to make our country great again.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Prior to Donald Trump entering the race, Douglas Mackie's social
media participation could be categorized as more of an observer.
Speaker 10 (06:45):
So back then Twitter was kind of like an afterthought
for most people. But once I started realizing a lot
of interesting people had things to say on there, it
was kind of growing. So I just created a Twitter
account to follow people and to see what they were saying.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
He named his Twitter handle Ricky Vaughn after the criminal
turned picture character in the nineteen eighty nine film Major
League played by Hollywood bad boy Charlie Sheen.
Speaker 10 (07:18):
The hell League?
Speaker 13 (07:19):
You've been playing it?
Speaker 10 (07:20):
California, Panal?
Speaker 9 (07:22):
Never heard of it?
Speaker 13 (07:23):
How'd you end up playing there?
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Stole a car again, Douglas Mackie.
Speaker 10 (07:27):
So when I started the anonymous account, I didn't want,
you know, people seeing who I'm followings, because you know,
I wasn't really intending to do a bunch of tweeting
or anything like that. I just followed these accounts and
started chiming in for the replies once in a while,
but it was just sort of a way to, you know,
protect my sort of career prospects.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
And it was no doubt a smart move because by
the time Mackie opened his Twitter account in twenty fourteen,
the cancel culture phenomenon had already taken root in America,
and the mob enforcing it used Twitter as their hunting ground.
Speaker 14 (08:03):
This morning, Justine Sacho is without a job, fired after
sparking an international controversy. Her peril began the moment she
tweeted this going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS.
Just kidding, I'm white.
Speaker 15 (08:15):
After twenty years together on the air, Opie and Anthony
are no more serious, exem pulling the plug on Anthony
Kumia this week for his seemingly hate filled remarks on
Twitter after he claimed an African American woman punched him
in New York's Times Square.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Twitter had been gaining a reputation for being the place
where one ill advised post could end your career. Mackie
lived and worked in an environment that was crawling with
cancel culture mobsters.
Speaker 10 (08:43):
I was living in Manhattan, and I was actually working
across the river in Brooklyn at a small economic research firm.
That was when cancel culture was really coming into its own,
So that would have hurt my career at the time.
You know, I was young. I couldn't afford to because
cancel it all that.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
So he decided to go anonymous with his Twitter account.
Speaker 10 (09:10):
I started posting in twenty fifteen, not that much really,
and then just start of you know, shared means and
links and all kinds of takes. And then when Trump
jumped in the race, that's when things really started taking off.
Speaker 16 (09:23):
Obviously, the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake,
all right.
Speaker 12 (09:28):
I want to tell you they lied.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
He said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none,
and they knew there were none. I have a different
vision for our workers. It begins with a new fair
trade policy that protects our jobs and stands up to
countries that cheat, of which there are many.
Speaker 12 (09:51):
When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best.
They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're
bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drug they're bringing crime,
their rapists, and some I assume are good people.
Speaker 10 (10:09):
I didn't really pay a whole lot of attention to
Donald Trump even before he jumped into the race. But
it was really the populism that he brought to the
politics on these issues that were so important, with the
Iraq War and seeing what was going on there, Afghanistan
war and everything that went on with trade and immigration.
I would say those are three planks, but the fourth
(10:30):
is very important. It's woke, which back then we just
called political correctness, which was sort of stifling speech.
Speaker 16 (10:37):
Donald J.
Speaker 17 (10:38):
Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of
Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can
figure out what the hell is going on.
Speaker 18 (10:52):
Trump Your comments about banning Muslims from entering the country
created a firestorm. According to Facebook, it was the most
talked about moment online of your entire campaign, with more
than ten million people talking about the issue. Is there
anything you've heard that makes you want to rethink this position?
Speaker 6 (11:13):
No?
Speaker 16 (11:17):
Fuck, we have to stop with political correctness. Here's the
problem with political correctness. It takes too long. We don't
have time. We don't have time. I talked about anchor
babies at one news conference and one of the reporters,
actually from ABC, said, that's a derogatory term.
Speaker 11 (11:40):
The term anchor.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Bey, that's defensive term.
Speaker 12 (11:43):
Fund you mean, it's not politically correct, and yet everybody
uses it.
Speaker 16 (11:46):
And then I said, well, what would.
Speaker 15 (11:47):
You call them?
Speaker 12 (11:48):
I say, you know what, give me a different term,
Give me a different term.
Speaker 16 (11:50):
What else would you like to.
Speaker 12 (11:51):
Say the American born undocumented? You want me to say that? Okay,
now I'll use the word anchor baby. Excuse me, I'll
use the word anchor baby.
Speaker 16 (11:59):
He gave me like a seven or eight word definition.
I said, we have done for that. Sorry, we don't
have time for that.
Speaker 10 (12:04):
So when Trump was willing to pick up that sword
as well and fight against political correctness, then that was
sort of like the fourth platform in my view, the
fourth plank, let's say.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
With the twenty sixteen election cycle in full swing, Mackie
began posting memes, or pieces of media that are adapted
by social media users to convey an idea, joke, opinion,
or cultural reference in a quick, easily recognizable way. Much
of what Mackie posted were jokes and memes he found
on sites like four chan and Reddit.
Speaker 10 (12:37):
There was a sort of satirical edge. I didn't really
create memes. I would mostly just find memes and post
them on different places, and I would also share news
stories and that kind of thing it takes, and a
lot of back and forth, sparring with the left, trolling
with the left.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
His Ricky Bond Twitter account started off small, just a
few thousand followers, but as the twenty sixteen election cycle
heated up, he quickly gave an audience, racking up around
sixty thousand followers, which at the time was a pretty
big account. One MIT study claimed his Ricky Van account
had a bigger influence on the twenty sixteen election than
(13:15):
NBC News and the Drudge Report. Mackie was obviously good
at the meme game, and that's where his problem started.
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Treat yourself and those you love, and taste the difference.
Welcome back to Red Pilled America. So as the twenty
(14:51):
sixteen election cycle was in full swing, Douglas Mackie began
using his Rickyvon Twitter account to great effect. One MIT
study claimed his account had a bigger influence on the
twenty sixteen election an NBC and the Drudge Report. Mackie
was obviously good at the mean game, and that's where
his problems started, because you see, in the summer before
(15:13):
the election, Twitter started bringing the ban hammer down, including
on Canada, Trump's biggest social media.
Speaker 18 (15:19):
Influencer, Miley Andopolis, a conservative writer for Breitbart dot Com,
was permanently suspended from Twitter.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Conservatives were sensing a coming purge of their Twitter accounts,
so some like Douglas Mackie began making alternative accounts so
that they could keep the party going if their primary
account got nuked. In October twenty sixteen, Twitter did just that,
permanently suspending Mackie's original Rickyvon account.
Speaker 10 (15:45):
They didn't give a specific reason. They had wanted to
ban my account for a long time. I know that
when they wanted to ban someone and they didn't have
a specific tweet that they could point to and say
this breaks the rules, they would just suspend you for
targeted abuse or harassment. That kadamic and so you know
that could mean anything. They don't ban you if you're
(16:06):
not really you know, having an impact.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
But Mackie had already created alternative accounts. They only had
a few thousand followers, but they would allow him to
stay connected with his social media friends in the closing
days of the election. This would eventually come back to
haunt him.
Speaker 10 (16:21):
So about a week before the election or so, there
were a whole bunch of means floating around, and there
was one that said Hillary Clinton supporters or something like that.
You know, you don't have to wait in line. You
can skip the line, stay at home. Text your vote
to five five nine two five and you can skip
the line.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
The number was a text code that was directly tied
to Hillary Clinton's campaign.
Speaker 10 (16:43):
These means were floating around on four Chan, and this
is how a lot of these memes just come about organically.
There was one that was in English, there was someone
made a Spanish language one. So these memes were floating
around on four Chan. I didn't even create the meme.
All I did was say this is funny and I
posted it. Eventually, what happened, the Hillary Clinton campaign got
(17:06):
a hold of this and they put a message on
the short code saying this is not a correct way
to vote. So pretty soon after the whole thing started,
they had a response saying this is not legitimate.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Others posted the meme as well. Only about two hundred
people texted the number from the meme. Most were people
just mocking Hillary Clinton's campaign. They weren't actually trying to
vote by text. But then about a week before the election,
the legacy media picked up the story.
Speaker 12 (17:39):
The last minute warning the voters you cannot vote by text.
Speaker 19 (17:42):
Fake ads have been popping up on social media encouraging
Hillary Clinton supporters to simply text in their vote to
save time. There are several versions of those ads targeting minorities,
so again, you cannot vote by text.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
CNN, the Washington Post, ABC News, and others all ran
stories on the vote from home meme.
Speaker 20 (18:00):
Going to the polls to cast your ballot on election
day it is one of the foundations of democracy. But
on social media, some ads have suddenly appeared telling voters
that you can text your vote. There is no direct
link between these false ads and the Trump campaign, though
The Washington Post identified a Twitter user at the Ricky
Vaughan as a person who tweeted them out and Twitter
(18:20):
suspended his account.
Speaker 10 (18:22):
And that made it funnier that the media picked it
up and was actually taking it seriously. I mean, I
can't speak for anybody else who posted it, but I
never thought that anyone would actually think that you could
text your vote, Especially this is twenty sixteen. It wasn't
like we had the massmail and balloting of twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
When Mackie posted the tweet, it wasn't even from his
original big Ricky Von account. It was from one of
his very small backup accounts. But after the media coverage,
about five thousand text messages were attributed to the meme,
also largely just mocking Hillary Clinton. One of the women
whose picture was used in the meme thought no one
from the black community would fall for it.
Speaker 9 (19:01):
The SAME's kind of racist naive that they would think
that our people would really actually think that they can
stay home and vote by Texan.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
But I think it's an insult to our people either way.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
It was a joke with no actual impact. But then
the unthinkable happened.
Speaker 7 (19:21):
Right now, a historic moment. We can now project the
winner of the presidential racia that projects Donald Trump wins
the presidency. The business tycooon, a TV personality capping is
a probable political journey. With an astounding upset victory, Donald J.
Trump will become the forty fifth president of the United States,
(19:41):
defeating Hillary Clinton at a campaign unlike anything we've seen
in our lifetime. Donald Trump wins the presidency of the
United States. He is now going to be called President
Elect Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
The political establishment couldn't believe what had just happened. How
could this vile, crude reality TV star defeat the machine?
In their eyes, there must have been foul play, a
theory put forward by none other than the outgoing president
Orack Obama.
Speaker 21 (20:11):
It was the consensus of all the intelligence agencies and
law enforcement that organizations affiliated with Russian intelligence were responsible
for the hacking of the DNC materials that were being leaked.
The reason that I'm have called for a review is
really to just gather all the threads of the investigations,
(20:33):
the intelligence work that has been done over many months,
so that the public and our elected representatives going forward
can find ways to prevent this kind of interference from
having an impact on the elections in the future. And
the fact that the Russians were doing this was not
an obsession, This was not a secret. Running up to
(20:55):
the election, the President elect, in some of his political
events specifically said to the Russians hack the Hillary's emails.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
With Hillary Clinton winning the twenty sixteen popular vote, the
Democrats believed they had the people on their side to
begin seeking revenge on what they framed as the illegitimate
winner and his enablers. Douglas Mackie, who controlled what many
claimed to be one of the most influential Twitter accounts
during the election, made their target list thanks in part
(21:28):
to the Democrat senator from Minnesota.
Speaker 13 (21:30):
The title of this hearing is Extremest Content and Russian
Disinformation Online.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
About a year after Trump won, Senators held a hearing
to investigate so called Russian disinformation during the twenty sixteen election.
They summoned executives from the top Internet platforms, including Facebook, Google,
and Twitter, to testify before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on
Crime and Terrorism, and some looked to tie Trump's win
(21:56):
directly to social media advertisements placed by the Russians.
Speaker 13 (22:00):
I doubt if I would be here if it weren't
for social media. To be honest with your president, Trump
told Fox News on October the twentieth, twenty seventeen, So
this is the President of the United States, saying that
from his point of view, social media was an invaluable
tool to help him win an election.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
But it was Senator Klobachar, a Democrat presidential hopeful, that
connected Douglas Mackie's Twitter account to Russian disinformation.
Speaker 22 (22:28):
I had a follow up question actually about voter suppression efforts.
Some of the ads has been discussed contained misinformation telling
voters that they could vote online, which of course wasn't true.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
She presented a large blow up poster of the vote
from home meme posted on Mackie's secondary Ricky Van account.
Speaker 22 (22:48):
In fact, here's one of them telling people that they
could just text Hillary to that number and that's how
they vote. This is voter suppression. Is actually illegal to
do this, It is criminal.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Douglas Mackie's Twitter presence came under scrutiny, but he was
still anonymous. However, that wouldn't last.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
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Speaker 3 (23:35):
Welcome back to red Pilled America.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
In mid twenty eighteen, the Huffington Post ran an article
with the headline.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Trump's most influential white nationalist troll is a Middlebury grad
who lives in Manhattan.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
According to Maggie, the Huffington Post connected with the few
disgruntled Republicans that were looking for revenge against MAGA influencers,
and they knew the identity of the Ricky Vaugh account.
The article revealed that it was run by Douglas Mackie,
effectively doxing him. But the Huffington Post headline got it wrong.
Speaker 10 (24:08):
I don't believe in, you know, white nationalism or white supremacy,
that certain groups are better than others, that we should
sort of create our own whatever, separate states of black people,
white people, you know, I don't subscribe to that.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
The Huffington Post ran with that characterization an act that
ostracized Mackie.
Speaker 10 (24:32):
It was very difficult to be dosed. That's probably the
most difficult thing I've ever had to go through.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
He lost most of his oldest friends.
Speaker 10 (24:41):
It was kind of like having your world shattered for me,
and back then my life was so enmeshed with all
types of people, you know, who were on the other
side or whatever. And then the only way that I could,
i mean, really get out of that situation was, I
would say I had to go into a whole new sphere.
(25:02):
I moved down here to Florida in twenty eighteen after
that to sort of get a fresh star. Fortunately there
were some people to help me get through it. I
would say the positive thing though, is that it's too
much to go through life like walking on eggshells. So
it's kind of liberating in that sense that you do
get this whole new group of people.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Once in Florida, Mackie began trying to put his life
back together. But about seven months after the Huffington Postdoxton,
someone came knocking.
Speaker 10 (25:31):
I had FBI agents knock on my door, and they
always come under a pretext, right, so you don't really
know why they're knocking on your door.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
The FBI initially framed it as asking questions related to
a congressional candidate that Mackie had a falling out with.
Speaker 10 (25:46):
I basically said, you know, you could talk to my lawyer,
and I got a lawyer to talk to them, So
basically the whole thing from my point of view, went away.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
But that was a miscalculation.
Speaker 9 (26:00):
My fellow Americans, this is America's day, this is Democracy's day.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Just forty eight hours into President Biden's term, the FBI
secured an arrest warrant for Douglas Mackie, and within days
they moved in.
Speaker 10 (26:16):
They knocked on my door and arrested me seven days
after Biden was inaugurated, and they dragged me to the courthouse.
Speaker 8 (26:26):
Well, it looks like this is the part of the
revolution where they start throwing their political opponents in jail.
At seven am, FBI hasn't showed up at Mackie's house.
They threw him in handcuffs, and they dragged him to
a cell. He now faces ten years in prison. His
crime he made fun of powerful Democrats on social media.
As the federal criminal complaint puts it, quote, Mackie made
(26:46):
coordinated use of social media to spread disinformation relevant to
the impending twenty sixteen presidential election. This disinformation, the Biden
administration solemnly explained quote, often took the form of memes. Yes,
memes online, mockery. Mockery online is now illegal when it's
aimed at the wrong people.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
To arrest Mackie, the Biden Department of Justice came up
with a novel approach. Mackie had posted a satirical meme
about Hillary supporters being able to vote from home. But
in our constitutional republic, posting a joke is not against
the law. Its free speech protected by the First Amendment.
So to work around this inconvenient constitutional roadblock, they accused
(27:29):
Mackie of a conspiracy to defraud voters, specifically minority voters.
The Biden DOJ connected the memes Mackie posted to one
hundred and fifty year old statute that was used to
fight the KKK. The statute made it a federal crime
to conspire to injure, intimidate, threaten, or oppress any individual
(27:49):
in the exercise of one of their constitutional rights. So
to convict Mackie, they needed to come up with the conspiracy.
Otherwise there was no crime.
Speaker 10 (27:59):
I only knew the charge because I got a sneak
peak of the FBI agent's piece of paper. I was
asking questions like how tall are you? Blah blah blah,
and I look over excuse the direct conspiracy against rights? Well,
I've never heard of this before. How was I inspiring
in somebody's rights?
Speaker 3 (28:15):
On Twitter?
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Now the X platform, users can form what's called chat groups,
where they speak to each other through direct messages. Not
everyone in these chat groups voluntarily joined them. Like text
messaging groups on your mobile phone, users can just add
you to the group. In the case of Douglas Mackie
during the twenty sixteen election, he was added to chat
groups of MAGA supporters.
Speaker 10 (28:36):
So I was involved with some chat groups, and some
of these groups, and some people in the chat group
were in other chat groups where they were designing.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
The meme, the vote from home meme.
Speaker 10 (28:47):
I wasn't even in the group. They had no evidence
that I actually read the messages or that I agreed
with anybody else. But this is how they built their
conspiracy case. And they needed an intent as well. They
needed to prove intent. They had no intent. They had
no real evidence of intent that wasn't circumstantial. They had
no evidence to said, oh, yeah, this is gonna be great.
We're going to post this meme and a bunch of
(29:08):
people are going to skip voting and stay home. They
had no evidence of that it was anything other than
a joke. But they said they look in the group
and said, well, you said that this person, you know
democrats shouldn't vote, or single moms you know shouldn't vote,
or something like this. A year before the tweet. You know,
even if it's just a flippant comment or like a
trolling comment, they use that as their evidence of intent.
(29:32):
So what they did was they dug up all of
the dms, direct messages, and chat groups on Twitter. The
funny thing is that they did still didn't have a
smoking gun.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
So they began leaning on one of the people in
the chat group.
Speaker 10 (29:52):
They threatened him. He was an anonymous account. He didn't
want to be docs, and he felt like he had
a lot to lose if you got docs, if you
got arrested, and it's in the news. They also were
threatening him. There were so we're going to look through
all your old tweets and see what we can come
up with on you. And it's amazing the FBI they
come in because we get the interview reports right in
(30:13):
the preparation for the trial. They interviewed this guy like
twelve times, and at first he was saying basically the truth,
which is there was no conspiracy. There was no grand
conspiracy to steal votes. This is just a one off tweet.
It was a provocation and a joke, and then about
six interviews in he starts sort of repeating back to
(30:35):
them what they're saying to him, feeding back to him.
Oh yeah, I guess you're right. There was a conspiracy.
Oh yeah, I guess we were trying to steal the
votes and all this stuff. And they twisted some guy's arm,
and he testified that there was a conspiracy.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
But the charges were ludicrous. First.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
The prosecution was obviously politically motivated. On the morning of
the election, a Twitter user named Christina Wong posted a
video with the caption that read, hat Trump's reporters skip
poll lines at hashtag election twenty sixteen and text in
your vote text votes are legit end quote. She followed
up the post with the video.
Speaker 23 (31:13):
Hey everybody, this is Christina Wong, and I'm coming out.
I'm a Trump supporter, and I just want to remind
all my fellow Chinese Americans for Trump, people of color
for Trump to vote. Vote for Trump on Wednesday, November ninth,
really important day. We're going to show this country whose boss,
and that's our man, Donald Trump. So don't forget to
(31:34):
vote Donald Trump on November ninth.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
The election was on Tuesday, November eighth, not Wednesday the ninth.
This post was arguably much worse than the meme Douglas
Mackie posted, primarily because it was posted the day of
the election, there was no time to correct the record.
The Biden DOJ never prosecuted Christina Wong, only Douglas Mackie
felt the pressure of Lady Justice. But what also made
(31:59):
the charges ludicrous was that the prosecutor from the Eastern
District of New York couldn't find a single victim again,
Douglas Mackie.
Speaker 10 (32:07):
They went around the Eastern District of New York, which
includes Brooklyn, Stotaten Island, parts of Long Island, et cetera,
as queens, and tried to find people who texted the number,
to find any sort of witness that they could put
on the stand and say, oh, yeah, I texted the number,
I was fooled, or I was fooled for a day
(32:28):
and then, But they couldn't find a single person.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
The real motivation of the prosecution was to scare Trump
supporters into not expressing their constitutional right to peacefully assemble.
The DOJ was ruthlessly going after those that entered the Washington,
d c. Capitol on January sixth, twenty twenty one, prosecutions
that scared Trump supporters into not congregating in the physical world.
(32:52):
With the Douglas Mackie prosecution, they were attempting to scare
macas supporters into not congregating in the digital world as well,
and that was the message that the legacy media pumped
into the American bloodstream.
Speaker 6 (33:04):
What this guy did is what we're all really familiar
with from the Russian Internet Agency. They created fake posts.
There were several unnamed co conspirators in there in the complaint,
but they did include their Twitter IDs, so we have
sort of had an idea of who else was in
this chat room, and those people should be pretty afraid.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
The Biden Justice Department presented their case against Mackie over
just a few days. The jury deliberated over double that time.
Speaker 10 (33:37):
Which was quite a long time on a single count,
and they were fighting over guilty not guilty, and it
took them four and a half days based on this
single count indicament.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
They came back with the guilty verdict.
Speaker 10 (33:50):
And unfortunately, when you're being tried in the ED and
Y and you have these people that immigrated and they
don't even speak well of English from China, Taiwan, ex
Soviet Union, and their point of view is that why
are we here? The government pullt so many witnesses on
the witness stand, they put on this whole show, so
obviously the defendant must be guilty.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Mackie was facing up to ten years in jail for posting.
Speaker 10 (34:15):
A meme that The sentencing was in October of twenty three,
and I was sentenced to seven months in federal prison.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
It was a shocking blow to not only free speech,
but the entire American justice system.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
One of the cornerstones of a functioning government is that
its justice system is impartial, that it does not view
justice through a partisan lens. The symbol of the Western
legal tradition is Lady Justice, a blindfolded woman holding a
scale and carrying a sword. It's a woman to represent
moral virtue and fairness. She's holding a scale to represent
(34:49):
weighing the evidence, and carrying a sword to symbolize the
authority and finality of justice. But perhaps most importantly, she's
blindfolded to represent impartiality. For a state to function properly
justice it must be administered without bias or regard for wealth, power,
or status. But by prosecuting Douglas Mackie, the Biden administration
(35:13):
was ripping the blindfold from the face of Lady Justice.
They chose not to prosecute Christina Wong, obviously because her
politics aligned with theirs, or bringing the full hammer of
the federal government down on the conservative meme poster, Which
(35:38):
leads us back to the question, what's the telltale sign
of a failed state? The answer is the corrosion of
the rule of law. When a judicial system becomes hyper politicized,
the nation eventually fails. Justice must be unbiased, blind to
the political affiliation of its people. In the case of
(35:59):
Douglas Mackie, the Biden administration throughout this crucial principle, but
the American people responded. In the months that followed his sentencing,
many rallied to Mackie's side, including the then forty fifth President.
Speaker 12 (36:12):
Crooked Joe and his henchmen have tried to shut down
free speech with a massive government censorship operation to silence
their critics. They're putting Douglas McKay in jail for sharing
a joking meme about Hillary Clinton seven years ago. Nobody
ever heard of anything like that.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
And in the end, American justice prevailed. Douglas Mackie appealed
the verdict and won.
Speaker 11 (36:37):
He got a unanimous Second Circuit ruling that his conviction
was unjustified, even an A Biden appointee rule in our favor.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
To ensure that the United States does not become a
failed state, our justice system must remain relentlessly unbiased and
ruthlessly go after those that have chosen to politicize one
of the most important foundations of American liberty, regardless of
their status or affiliation.
Speaker 24 (37:04):
They caught President Obama absolutely called what they did to
this country in twenty sixteen, Starting in twenty sixteen, but
going up all the way going up to twenty twenty
of the election. They tried to rig the election. Then
they got caught, and there should be very severe consequences
for that.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Red Pilled America is an iHeartRadio original podcast. It's owned
and produced by Patrick Carrelci and me Adriana Cortez for
Informed Ventures.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
Now you can get.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
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This is Red Pilled America.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
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Speaker 3 (01:12):
Now onto the show.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
If you listen to our political leaders, you'd think America
was on the verge of collapse.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
Donald Trump, for seven months has led an assault on democracy.
Speaker 5 (01:26):
Year after year, We've kept this democracy thing going. But now,
perhaps well the first and only time since the Civil War,
all of those institutions are under assault. The gravest threat
to our democracy right now does not come from any
foreign capital.
Speaker 6 (01:42):
It comes from our own.
Speaker 7 (01:44):
We're looking at what amounts to a threat to democracy.
Speaker 8 (01:47):
Democracy is under assault before our eyes. This moment we
have feared has arrived.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
But if America was on the verge of collapse, how
would we know what is a critical sign of a
failed state. I'm Patrick CARELCI.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
And I'm Adriana Cortes, and.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
This is Red Pilled America, a storytelling show.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
This is not another talk show covering the day's news.
We're all about telling stories.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Stories.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Hollywood doesn't want you to hear.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Stories.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
The media mocks stories about everyday Americans that the globalist ignore.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
You can think of Red Pilled America as audio documentaries,
and we promise only one thing, the truth. Welcome to
red pilled America. What is the telltale sign of a
(02:46):
failed state? To find the answer, we tell the story
of Douglas Mackie, the man that faced a decade in
prison for posting a meme. Mackie's shocking case reveals a
major flaw in the American justice system and what we
need to do to fix it.
Speaker 9 (03:05):
My fellow Americans, this is America's day, This is Democracy's day.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
It was January twentieth, twenty twenty one, and the Washington
DC ruling class came together to celebrate the inauguration of
the forty sixth president.
Speaker 9 (03:22):
Today we celebrate the triumph not of a candidate, but
of a cause, the cause of democracy. We've learned again
that democracy is precious, democracy is fragile. At this hour,
my friends, democracy has prevailed.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
But just two days after delivering his inaugural address, President
Joe Biden put his brand of democracy into action by
attacking the foundation of our republic.
Speaker 10 (03:51):
It was just kind of knock on the door. FBI
opened up and said, are you Doug. Mackie and I
had some roomates at the time. There's like no idea,
what's going on?
Speaker 1 (04:00):
That's Douglas Mackeie. The agents told MACKI the a warrant
for his arrest.
Speaker 10 (04:04):
And the first word I thought was for what? Because
I had no idea what I could possibly be arrested
for by the FBI. But I know that they could
come up with other so I said for what.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
And to the few that were paying attention, it wasn't
hard to see what was at stake.
Speaker 8 (04:17):
The case against Doug Mackie is the most shocking attack
on freedom of speech in this country in our lifetime.
One of the most important First Amendment cases in the
country is one that you may not have ever heard of.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
It's the case of Douglas Mackie.
Speaker 11 (04:29):
Joe Biden and his Department of Justice. One of the
first things that he did. They decided to go after
this poor young man, Douglas Mackie. What was his crime?
Douglas Mackee was the focus of the Biden Department of
Justice because he made a meme.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
It was a shocking turn of events for a young
man that had come of age around liberal elites.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Douglas Mackie was born in the Washington, DC area in
nineteen eighty nine. His family moved out to Colrado, but
would eventually come back East.
Speaker 10 (05:05):
August two thousand, we moved to Vermont, where my parents
had their families. In two thousand and seven, I graduated
high school and went to college Middlebury College and Middlebury Vermont.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Founded in eighteen hundred, Middlebury College is one of what's
known as the Little Ivy's, a small, highly selective liberal
arts college in the Northeast, considered comparable and prestige to
the Ivy League, but smaller in size. Middlebury is also
known for its politically active and socially progressive student body.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Issues like diversity.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Equity, inclusion, and environmental justice often drive campus activism. This
was Douglas Mackie's home during college, but he didn't quite
fit into the school's dominant political mold.
Speaker 10 (05:49):
I started first make attention to politics, probably around high
school with the Iraq War and George Bush, and then
during college sort of looking into libertarian.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Politicsckie graduated from Middlebury in twenty.
Speaker 10 (06:05):
Eleven, and then that's when I moved to New York,
and even in.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
The liberal Big Apple, his politics began drifting to the right.
Speaker 10 (06:12):
I was moving towards more conservative politics, and especially when
Trump jumped in the race at twenty.
Speaker 12 (06:17):
Fifteen, Ladies and gentlemen, I am officially running.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
For President of the United States, and we are going
to make our country great again.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Prior to Donald Trump entering the race, Douglas Mackie's social
media participation could be categorized as more of an observer.
Speaker 10 (06:45):
So back then Twitter was kind of like an afterthought
for most people. But once I started realizing a lot
of interesting people had things to say on there, it
was kind of growing. So I just created a Twitter
account to follow people and to see what they were saying.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
He named his Twitter handle Ricky Vaughn after the criminal
turned picture character in the nineteen eighty nine film Major
League played by Hollywood bad boy Charlie Sheen.
Speaker 10 (07:18):
The hell League?
Speaker 13 (07:19):
You've been playing it?
Speaker 10 (07:20):
California, Panal?
Speaker 9 (07:22):
Never heard of it?
Speaker 13 (07:23):
How'd you end up playing there?
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Stole a car again, Douglas Mackie.
Speaker 10 (07:27):
So when I started the anonymous account, I didn't want,
you know, people seeing who I'm followings, because you know,
I wasn't really intending to do a bunch of tweeting
or anything like that. I just followed these accounts and
started chiming in for the replies once in a while,
but it was just sort of a way to, you know,
protect my sort of career prospects.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
And it was no doubt a smart move because by
the time Mackie opened his Twitter account in twenty fourteen,
the cancel culture phenomenon had already taken root in America,
and the mob enforcing it used Twitter as their hunting ground.
Speaker 14 (08:03):
This morning, Justine Sacho is without a job, fired after
sparking an international controversy. Her peril began the moment she
tweeted this going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS.
Just kidding, I'm white.
Speaker 15 (08:15):
After twenty years together on the air, Opie and Anthony
are no more serious, exem pulling the plug on Anthony
Kumia this week for his seemingly hate filled remarks on
Twitter after he claimed an African American woman punched him
in New York's Times Square.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Twitter had been gaining a reputation for being the place
where one ill advised post could end your career. Mackie
lived and worked in an environment that was crawling with
cancel culture mobsters.
Speaker 10 (08:43):
I was living in Manhattan, and I was actually working
across the river in Brooklyn at a small economic research firm.
That was when cancel culture was really coming into its own,
So that would have hurt my career at the time.
You know, I was young. I couldn't afford to because
cancel it all that.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
So he decided to go anonymous with his Twitter account.
Speaker 10 (09:10):
I started posting in twenty fifteen, not that much really,
and then just start of you know, shared means and
links and all kinds of takes. And then when Trump
jumped in the race, that's when things really started taking off.
Speaker 16 (09:23):
Obviously, the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake,
all right.
Speaker 12 (09:28):
I want to tell you they lied.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
He said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none,
and they knew there were none. I have a different
vision for our workers. It begins with a new fair
trade policy that protects our jobs and stands up to
countries that cheat, of which there are many.
Speaker 12 (09:51):
When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best.
They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're
bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drug they're bringing crime,
their rapists, and some I assume are good people.
Speaker 10 (10:09):
I didn't really pay a whole lot of attention to
Donald Trump even before he jumped into the race. But
it was really the populism that he brought to the
politics on these issues that were so important, with the
Iraq War and seeing what was going on there, Afghanistan
war and everything that went on with trade and immigration.
I would say those are three planks, but the fourth
(10:30):
is very important. It's woke, which back then we just
called political correctness, which was sort of stifling speech.
Speaker 16 (10:37):
Donald J.
Speaker 17 (10:38):
Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of
Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can
figure out what the hell is going on.
Speaker 18 (10:52):
Trump Your comments about banning Muslims from entering the country
created a firestorm. According to Facebook, it was the most
talked about moment online of your entire campaign, with more
than ten million people talking about the issue. Is there
anything you've heard that makes you want to rethink this position?
Speaker 6 (11:13):
No?
Speaker 16 (11:17):
Fuck, we have to stop with political correctness. Here's the
problem with political correctness. It takes too long. We don't
have time. We don't have time. I talked about anchor
babies at one news conference and one of the reporters,
actually from ABC, said, that's a derogatory term.
Speaker 11 (11:40):
The term anchor.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Bey, that's defensive term.
Speaker 12 (11:43):
Fund you mean, it's not politically correct, and yet everybody
uses it.
Speaker 16 (11:46):
And then I said, well, what would.
Speaker 15 (11:47):
You call them?
Speaker 12 (11:48):
I say, you know what, give me a different term,
Give me a different term.
Speaker 16 (11:50):
What else would you like to.
Speaker 12 (11:51):
Say the American born undocumented? You want me to say that? Okay,
now I'll use the word anchor baby. Excuse me, I'll
use the word anchor baby.
Speaker 16 (11:59):
He gave me like a seven or eight word definition.
I said, we have done for that. Sorry, we don't
have time for that.
Speaker 10 (12:04):
So when Trump was willing to pick up that sword
as well and fight against political correctness, then that was
sort of like the fourth platform in my view, the
fourth plank, let's say.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
With the twenty sixteen election cycle in full swing, Mackie
began posting memes, or pieces of media that are adapted
by social media users to convey an idea, joke, opinion,
or cultural reference in a quick, easily recognizable way. Much
of what Mackie posted were jokes and memes he found
on sites like four chan and Reddit.
Speaker 10 (12:37):
There was a sort of satirical edge. I didn't really
create memes. I would mostly just find memes and post
them on different places, and I would also share news
stories and that kind of thing it takes, and a
lot of back and forth, sparring with the left, trolling
with the left.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
His Ricky Bond Twitter account started off small, just a
few thousand followers, but as the twenty sixteen election cycle
heated up, he quickly gave an audience, racking up around
sixty thousand followers, which at the time was a pretty
big account. One MIT study claimed his Ricky Van account
had a bigger influence on the twenty sixteen election than
(13:15):
NBC News and the Drudge Report. Mackie was obviously good
at the meme game, and that's where his problem started.
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Treat yourself and those you love, and taste the difference.
Welcome back to Red Pilled America. So as the twenty
(14:51):
sixteen election cycle was in full swing, Douglas Mackie began
using his Rickyvon Twitter account to great effect. One MIT
study claimed his account had a bigger influence on the
twenty sixteen election an NBC and the Drudge Report. Mackie
was obviously good at the mean game, and that's where
his problems started, because you see, in the summer before
(15:13):
the election, Twitter started bringing the ban hammer down, including
on Canada, Trump's biggest social media.
Speaker 18 (15:19):
Influencer, Miley Andopolis, a conservative writer for Breitbart dot Com,
was permanently suspended from Twitter.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Conservatives were sensing a coming purge of their Twitter accounts,
so some like Douglas Mackie began making alternative accounts so
that they could keep the party going if their primary
account got nuked. In October twenty sixteen, Twitter did just that,
permanently suspending Mackie's original Rickyvon account.
Speaker 10 (15:45):
They didn't give a specific reason. They had wanted to
ban my account for a long time. I know that
when they wanted to ban someone and they didn't have
a specific tweet that they could point to and say
this breaks the rules, they would just suspend you for
targeted abuse or harassment. That kadamic and so you know
that could mean anything. They don't ban you if you're
(16:06):
not really you know, having an impact.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
But Mackie had already created alternative accounts. They only had
a few thousand followers, but they would allow him to
stay connected with his social media friends in the closing
days of the election. This would eventually come back to
haunt him.
Speaker 10 (16:21):
So about a week before the election or so, there
were a whole bunch of means floating around, and there
was one that said Hillary Clinton supporters or something like that.
You know, you don't have to wait in line. You
can skip the line, stay at home. Text your vote
to five five nine two five and you can skip
the line.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
The number was a text code that was directly tied
to Hillary Clinton's campaign.
Speaker 10 (16:43):
These means were floating around on four Chan, and this
is how a lot of these memes just come about organically.
There was one that was in English, there was someone
made a Spanish language one. So these memes were floating
around on four Chan. I didn't even create the meme.
All I did was say this is funny and I
posted it. Eventually, what happened, the Hillary Clinton campaign got
(17:06):
a hold of this and they put a message on
the short code saying this is not a correct way
to vote. So pretty soon after the whole thing started,
they had a response saying this is not legitimate.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Others posted the meme as well. Only about two hundred
people texted the number from the meme. Most were people
just mocking Hillary Clinton's campaign. They weren't actually trying to
vote by text. But then about a week before the election,
the legacy media picked up the story.
Speaker 12 (17:39):
The last minute warning the voters you cannot vote by text.
Speaker 19 (17:42):
Fake ads have been popping up on social media encouraging
Hillary Clinton supporters to simply text in their vote to
save time. There are several versions of those ads targeting minorities,
so again, you cannot vote by text.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
CNN, the Washington Post, ABC News, and others all ran
stories on the vote from home meme.
Speaker 20 (18:00):
Going to the polls to cast your ballot on election
day it is one of the foundations of democracy. But
on social media, some ads have suddenly appeared telling voters
that you can text your vote. There is no direct
link between these false ads and the Trump campaign, though
The Washington Post identified a Twitter user at the Ricky
Vaughan as a person who tweeted them out and Twitter
(18:20):
suspended his account.
Speaker 10 (18:22):
And that made it funnier that the media picked it
up and was actually taking it seriously. I mean, I
can't speak for anybody else who posted it, but I
never thought that anyone would actually think that you could
text your vote, Especially this is twenty sixteen. It wasn't
like we had the massmail and balloting of twenty twenty.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
When Mackie posted the tweet, it wasn't even from his
original big Ricky Von account. It was from one of
his very small backup accounts. But after the media coverage,
about five thousand text messages were attributed to the meme,
also largely just mocking Hillary Clinton. One of the women
whose picture was used in the meme thought no one
from the black community would fall for it.
Speaker 9 (19:01):
The SAME's kind of racist naive that they would think
that our people would really actually think that they can
stay home and vote by Texan.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
But I think it's an insult to our people either way.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
It was a joke with no actual impact. But then
the unthinkable happened.
Speaker 7 (19:21):
Right now, a historic moment. We can now project the
winner of the presidential racia that projects Donald Trump wins
the presidency. The business tycooon, a TV personality capping is
a probable political journey. With an astounding upset victory, Donald J.
Trump will become the forty fifth president of the United States,
(19:41):
defeating Hillary Clinton at a campaign unlike anything we've seen
in our lifetime. Donald Trump wins the presidency of the
United States. He is now going to be called President
Elect Donald Trump.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
The political establishment couldn't believe what had just happened. How
could this vile, crude reality TV star defeat the machine?
In their eyes, there must have been foul play, a
theory put forward by none other than the outgoing president
Orack Obama.
Speaker 21 (20:11):
It was the consensus of all the intelligence agencies and
law enforcement that organizations affiliated with Russian intelligence were responsible
for the hacking of the DNC materials that were being leaked.
The reason that I'm have called for a review is
really to just gather all the threads of the investigations,
(20:33):
the intelligence work that has been done over many months,
so that the public and our elected representatives going forward
can find ways to prevent this kind of interference from
having an impact on the elections in the future. And
the fact that the Russians were doing this was not
an obsession, This was not a secret. Running up to
(20:55):
the election, the President elect, in some of his political
events specifically said to the Russians hack the Hillary's emails.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
With Hillary Clinton winning the twenty sixteen popular vote, the
Democrats believed they had the people on their side to
begin seeking revenge on what they framed as the illegitimate
winner and his enablers. Douglas Mackie, who controlled what many
claimed to be one of the most influential Twitter accounts
during the election, made their target list thanks in part
(21:28):
to the Democrat senator from Minnesota.
Speaker 13 (21:30):
The title of this hearing is Extremest Content and Russian
Disinformation Online.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
About a year after Trump won, Senators held a hearing
to investigate so called Russian disinformation during the twenty sixteen election.
They summoned executives from the top Internet platforms, including Facebook, Google,
and Twitter, to testify before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on
Crime and Terrorism, and some looked to tie Trump's win
(21:56):
directly to social media advertisements placed by the Russians.
Speaker 13 (22:00):
I doubt if I would be here if it weren't
for social media. To be honest with your president, Trump
told Fox News on October the twentieth, twenty seventeen, So
this is the President of the United States, saying that
from his point of view, social media was an invaluable
tool to help him win an election.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
But it was Senator Klobachar, a Democrat presidential hopeful, that
connected Douglas Mackie's Twitter account to Russian disinformation.
Speaker 22 (22:28):
I had a follow up question actually about voter suppression efforts.
Some of the ads has been discussed contained misinformation telling
voters that they could vote online, which of course wasn't true.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
She presented a large blow up poster of the vote
from home meme posted on Mackie's secondary Ricky Van account.
Speaker 22 (22:48):
In fact, here's one of them telling people that they
could just text Hillary to that number and that's how
they vote. This is voter suppression. Is actually illegal to
do this, It is criminal.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Douglas Mackie's Twitter presence came under scrutiny, but he was
still anonymous. However, that wouldn't last.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
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Speaker 3 (23:35):
Welcome back to red Pilled America.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
In mid twenty eighteen, the Huffington Post ran an article
with the headline.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Trump's most influential white nationalist troll is a Middlebury grad
who lives in Manhattan.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
According to Maggie, the Huffington Post connected with the few
disgruntled Republicans that were looking for revenge against MAGA influencers,
and they knew the identity of the Ricky Vaugh account.
The article revealed that it was run by Douglas Mackie,
effectively doxing him. But the Huffington Post headline got it wrong.
Speaker 10 (24:08):
I don't believe in, you know, white nationalism or white supremacy,
that certain groups are better than others, that we should
sort of create our own whatever, separate states of black people,
white people, you know, I don't subscribe to that.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
The Huffington Post ran with that characterization an act that
ostracized Mackie.
Speaker 10 (24:32):
It was very difficult to be dosed. That's probably the
most difficult thing I've ever had to go through.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
He lost most of his oldest friends.
Speaker 10 (24:41):
It was kind of like having your world shattered for me,
and back then my life was so enmeshed with all
types of people, you know, who were on the other
side or whatever. And then the only way that I could,
i mean, really get out of that situation was, I
would say I had to go into a whole new sphere.
(25:02):
I moved down here to Florida in twenty eighteen after
that to sort of get a fresh star. Fortunately there
were some people to help me get through it. I
would say the positive thing though, is that it's too
much to go through life like walking on eggshells. So
it's kind of liberating in that sense that you do
get this whole new group of people.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Once in Florida, Mackie began trying to put his life
back together. But about seven months after the Huffington Postdoxton,
someone came knocking.
Speaker 10 (25:31):
I had FBI agents knock on my door, and they
always come under a pretext, right, so you don't really
know why they're knocking on your door.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
The FBI initially framed it as asking questions related to
a congressional candidate that Mackie had a falling out with.
Speaker 10 (25:46):
I basically said, you know, you could talk to my lawyer,
and I got a lawyer to talk to them, So
basically the whole thing from my point of view, went away.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
But that was a miscalculation.
Speaker 9 (26:00):
My fellow Americans, this is America's day, this is Democracy's day.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Just forty eight hours into President Biden's term, the FBI
secured an arrest warrant for Douglas Mackie, and within days
they moved in.
Speaker 10 (26:16):
They knocked on my door and arrested me seven days
after Biden was inaugurated, and they dragged me to the courthouse.
Speaker 8 (26:26):
Well, it looks like this is the part of the
revolution where they start throwing their political opponents in jail.
At seven am, FBI hasn't showed up at Mackie's house.
They threw him in handcuffs, and they dragged him to
a cell. He now faces ten years in prison. His
crime he made fun of powerful Democrats on social media.
As the federal criminal complaint puts it, quote, Mackie made
(26:46):
coordinated use of social media to spread disinformation relevant to
the impending twenty sixteen presidential election. This disinformation, the Biden
administration solemnly explained quote, often took the form of memes. Yes,
memes online, mockery. Mockery online is now illegal when it's
aimed at the wrong people.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
To arrest Mackie, the Biden Department of Justice came up
with a novel approach. Mackie had posted a satirical meme
about Hillary supporters being able to vote from home. But
in our constitutional republic, posting a joke is not against
the law. Its free speech protected by the First Amendment.
So to work around this inconvenient constitutional roadblock, they accused
(27:29):
Mackie of a conspiracy to defraud voters, specifically minority voters.
The Biden DOJ connected the memes Mackie posted to one
hundred and fifty year old statute that was used to
fight the KKK. The statute made it a federal crime
to conspire to injure, intimidate, threaten, or oppress any individual
(27:49):
in the exercise of one of their constitutional rights. So
to convict Mackie, they needed to come up with the conspiracy.
Otherwise there was no crime.
Speaker 10 (27:59):
I only knew the charge because I got a sneak
peak of the FBI agent's piece of paper. I was
asking questions like how tall are you? Blah blah blah,
and I look over excuse the direct conspiracy against rights? Well,
I've never heard of this before. How was I inspiring
in somebody's rights?
Speaker 3 (28:15):
On Twitter?
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Now the X platform, users can form what's called chat groups,
where they speak to each other through direct messages. Not
everyone in these chat groups voluntarily joined them. Like text
messaging groups on your mobile phone, users can just add
you to the group. In the case of Douglas Mackie
during the twenty sixteen election, he was added to chat
groups of MAGA supporters.
Speaker 10 (28:36):
So I was involved with some chat groups, and some
of these groups, and some people in the chat group
were in other chat groups where they were designing.
Speaker 3 (28:45):
The meme, the vote from home meme.
Speaker 10 (28:47):
I wasn't even in the group. They had no evidence
that I actually read the messages or that I agreed
with anybody else. But this is how they built their
conspiracy case. And they needed an intent as well. They
needed to prove intent. They had no intent. They had
no real evidence of intent that wasn't circumstantial. They had
no evidence to said, oh, yeah, this is gonna be great.
We're going to post this meme and a bunch of
(29:08):
people are going to skip voting and stay home. They
had no evidence of that it was anything other than
a joke. But they said they look in the group
and said, well, you said that this person, you know
democrats shouldn't vote, or single moms you know shouldn't vote,
or something like this. A year before the tweet. You know,
even if it's just a flippant comment or like a
trolling comment, they use that as their evidence of intent.
(29:32):
So what they did was they dug up all of
the dms, direct messages, and chat groups on Twitter. The
funny thing is that they did still didn't have a
smoking gun.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
So they began leaning on one of the people in
the chat group.
Speaker 10 (29:52):
They threatened him. He was an anonymous account. He didn't
want to be docs, and he felt like he had
a lot to lose if you got docs, if you
got arrested, and it's in the news. They also were
threatening him. There were so we're going to look through
all your old tweets and see what we can come
up with on you. And it's amazing the FBI they
come in because we get the interview reports right in
(30:13):
the preparation for the trial. They interviewed this guy like
twelve times, and at first he was saying basically the truth,
which is there was no conspiracy. There was no grand
conspiracy to steal votes. This is just a one off tweet.
It was a provocation and a joke, and then about
six interviews in he starts sort of repeating back to
(30:35):
them what they're saying to him, feeding back to him.
Oh yeah, I guess you're right. There was a conspiracy.
Oh yeah, I guess we were trying to steal the
votes and all this stuff. And they twisted some guy's arm,
and he testified that there was a conspiracy.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
But the charges were ludicrous. First.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
The prosecution was obviously politically motivated. On the morning of
the election, a Twitter user named Christina Wong posted a
video with the caption that read, hat Trump's reporters skip
poll lines at hashtag election twenty sixteen and text in
your vote text votes are legit end quote. She followed
up the post with the video.
Speaker 23 (31:13):
Hey everybody, this is Christina Wong, and I'm coming out.
I'm a Trump supporter, and I just want to remind
all my fellow Chinese Americans for Trump, people of color
for Trump to vote. Vote for Trump on Wednesday, November ninth,
really important day. We're going to show this country whose boss,
and that's our man, Donald Trump. So don't forget to
(31:34):
vote Donald Trump on November ninth.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
The election was on Tuesday, November eighth, not Wednesday the ninth.
This post was arguably much worse than the meme Douglas
Mackie posted, primarily because it was posted the day of
the election, there was no time to correct the record.
The Biden DOJ never prosecuted Christina Wong, only Douglas Mackie
felt the pressure of Lady Justice. But what also made
(31:59):
the charges ludicrous was that the prosecutor from the Eastern
District of New York couldn't find a single victim again,
Douglas Mackie.
Speaker 10 (32:07):
They went around the Eastern District of New York, which
includes Brooklyn, Stotaten Island, parts of Long Island, et cetera,
as queens, and tried to find people who texted the number,
to find any sort of witness that they could put
on the stand and say, oh, yeah, I texted the number,
I was fooled, or I was fooled for a day
(32:28):
and then, But they couldn't find a single person.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
The real motivation of the prosecution was to scare Trump
supporters into not expressing their constitutional right to peacefully assemble.
The DOJ was ruthlessly going after those that entered the Washington,
d c. Capitol on January sixth, twenty twenty one, prosecutions
that scared Trump supporters into not congregating in the physical world.
(32:52):
With the Douglas Mackie prosecution, they were attempting to scare
macas supporters into not congregating in the digital world as well,
and that was the message that the legacy media pumped
into the American bloodstream.
Speaker 6 (33:04):
What this guy did is what we're all really familiar
with from the Russian Internet Agency. They created fake posts.
There were several unnamed co conspirators in there in the complaint,
but they did include their Twitter IDs, so we have
sort of had an idea of who else was in
this chat room, and those people should be pretty afraid.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
The Biden Justice Department presented their case against Mackie over
just a few days. The jury deliberated over double that time.
Speaker 10 (33:37):
Which was quite a long time on a single count,
and they were fighting over guilty not guilty, and it
took them four and a half days based on this
single count indicament.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
They came back with the guilty verdict.
Speaker 10 (33:50):
And unfortunately, when you're being tried in the ED and
Y and you have these people that immigrated and they
don't even speak well of English from China, Taiwan, ex
Soviet Union, and their point of view is that why
are we here? The government pullt so many witnesses on
the witness stand, they put on this whole show, so
obviously the defendant must be guilty.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Mackie was facing up to ten years in jail for posting.
Speaker 10 (34:15):
A meme that The sentencing was in October of twenty three,
and I was sentenced to seven months in federal prison.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
It was a shocking blow to not only free speech,
but the entire American justice system.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
One of the cornerstones of a functioning government is that
its justice system is impartial, that it does not view
justice through a partisan lens. The symbol of the Western
legal tradition is Lady Justice, a blindfolded woman holding a
scale and carrying a sword. It's a woman to represent
moral virtue and fairness. She's holding a scale to represent
(34:49):
weighing the evidence, and carrying a sword to symbolize the
authority and finality of justice. But perhaps most importantly, she's
blindfolded to represent impartiality. For a state to function properly
justice it must be administered without bias or regard for wealth, power,
or status. But by prosecuting Douglas Mackie, the Biden administration
(35:13):
was ripping the blindfold from the face of Lady Justice.
They chose not to prosecute Christina Wong, obviously because her
politics aligned with theirs, or bringing the full hammer of
the federal government down on the conservative meme poster, Which
(35:38):
leads us back to the question, what's the telltale sign
of a failed state? The answer is the corrosion of
the rule of law. When a judicial system becomes hyper politicized,
the nation eventually fails. Justice must be unbiased, blind to
the political affiliation of its people. In the case of
(35:59):
Douglas Mackie, the Biden administration throughout this crucial principle, but
the American people responded. In the months that followed his sentencing,
many rallied to Mackie's side, including the then forty fifth President.
Speaker 12 (36:12):
Crooked Joe and his henchmen have tried to shut down
free speech with a massive government censorship operation to silence
their critics. They're putting Douglas McKay in jail for sharing
a joking meme about Hillary Clinton seven years ago. Nobody
ever heard of anything like that.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
And in the end, American justice prevailed. Douglas Mackie appealed
the verdict and won.
Speaker 11 (36:37):
He got a unanimous Second Circuit ruling that his conviction
was unjustified, even an A Biden appointee rule in our favor.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
To ensure that the United States does not become a
failed state, our justice system must remain relentlessly unbiased and
ruthlessly go after those that have chosen to politicize one
of the most important foundations of American liberty, regardless of
their status or affiliation.
Speaker 24 (37:04):
They caught President Obama absolutely called what they did to
this country in twenty sixteen, Starting in twenty sixteen, but
going up all the way going up to twenty twenty
of the election. They tried to rig the election. Then
they got caught, and there should be very severe consequences
for that.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Red Pilled America is an iHeartRadio original podcast. It's owned
and produced by Patrick Carrelci and me Adriana Cortez for
Informed Ventures.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
Now you can get.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Ad free access to our entire catalog of episodes by
becoming a backstage subscriber. To subscribe, just visit Redpilled America
dot com and could join in the top menu. Thanks
for listening.
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Adryana Cortez
Patrick Courrielche
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