The Daily Dot’s progressive muckrakers, no, tattletales would love to destroy Lisa Reynolds Barbounis, who dared to misuse the ultra-hip, exclusive app Clubhouse and question a key component of the established narrative of the January 6 Capitol riot.
Beyond parody — That best describes the worst elements of the far left over the last few years.
The Daily Dot is just the latest example in this evermore cringeworthy trend.
Recently, the progressive rag ran a screed under the headline “GOP comms director uses conspiratorial Clubhouse room to accuse Capitol police of killing Brian Sicknick” accompanied by the equally melodramatic sub-headline “She’s accused the police of killing one of its own.”
Ah yes, there’s that downhome, tech-savvy, gumshoe beat journalism we’ve all grown to appreciate.
What a refreshing relief from the stuffy mainstream press that just can’t quite produce this kind of neighborhood-level hounding.
Of course, Barbounis, a communications director for Republican Texas congressman Randy Weber, did not “accuse” anybody of killing Sicknick, the Capitol Police officer who initially was reported to have died from being struck by an insurrectionist fire extinguisher.
The emotionally traumatized Daily Dot writer, Alex Thomas, was apparently so righteously indignant at her that he invoked the Thin Blue Line in his subtitle.
No matter one’s political bias, it must be discomforting to witness an Austin, Texas-based media company pay a writer to bend the truth toward the official story arc set by the elite media, government, and police establishments at the expense of one individual’s reputation.
So, what did Barbounis say?
The Daily Dot included a recording of her audio from the Clubhouse chat, but they didn’t report her full quote.
Here it is:
“It really looks like he [Sicknick] had a stroke or some respiratory issue from police spraying mace and stuff. It wasn’t that he got hit over the head with a fire extinguisher, and yet no one is covering that. There’s no coroner’s report that you can find. Nothing.”
Barbounis did not claim secret knowledge or even say that she was absolutely certain what happened to Sicknick. But her conjecture was not baseless either, as she pointed out there’s no coroner’s report available.
Nothing!
As even the Daily Dot acknowledged, the initial reporting by the New York Times that Sicknick’s head was gashed bloody by a fire extinguisher turned out to be fake news.
This dishonest twisting of words only contributes further to the issue of mass distrust in the media. More importantly, it sharpens the divides in civil society, making productive discourse impossible, and chilling the speech of one whole half of the country that disagrees with the most powerful media outlets.
There is much more unknown than known about the death of Sicknick, as Revolver News has detailed. The officer was cremated soon after death. There’s no toxicology report or autopsy publicly available.
The Daily Dot simply calls Barbounis a conspiracy theorist who must be wrong because the government doesn’t agree with her. Barbounis should take this sort of media attack as a badge of honor.
Where did Barbounis get the idea that Sicknick died of a stroke or some respiratory issue anyway? Not from a QAnon board. Sicknick’s own mother told the Daily Mail that she suspected he died of a stroke, but she wasn’t sure.
Two of the rioters, George Tanois and Julian Khater, are being charged with assault over the use of a bear spray on Capitol officers, including Sicknick. These charges could be upped to murder, but for now, that’s not the case being made against them. The government has released several still images, but no video or even a snapshot of either man spraying Sicknick.
Barbounis is well within reason to doubt the official story that Sicknick was killed by rioters. The Daily Dot fancies itself a news source, but it ultimately offers nothing against Barbounis other than its own prejudiced vitriol for independent thinking conservatives.
Barbounis may also have been a target because she has previously shown no fear to the left even after braving a physical attack from Antifa. She is, after all, affectionately compared to Republican Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene in the Daily Dot article.
There was one more snipe at Barbounis in that article, an even weaker one. The Daily Dot reported that she “repeated the widely disproven conspiracy theory that Antifa, not Trump supporters, stormed the Capitol.”
Did the Daily Dot not think its readers would listen to the audio? Barbounis said that “there were definitely some legit Trump supporters there but there were also people that were not Trump supporters whatsoever. You can look at John Sullivan as an example.”
Barbounis believes that Antifa and Black Lives Matter types stirred up the worst elements of the riots that day, which seems implausible to me. Just as President Donald Trump didn’t incite any riot, neither did a few leftists there that day. But they were there.
Hopefully, Barbounis and others like her take media attacks as desperate as this one in stride or even find inspiration in them to carry on even more boldly. The establishment can’t dismiss and lie about them and get away with it for long.