Is the COVID-19 pandemic a conspiracy manufactured by "Deep State Democrats" and the "mass media" to disrupt, even rig, the upcoming presidential election in a bid to topple Donald Trump? And did the coronavirus provide the perfect cover for the mass racial justice protests since the death of George Floyd after being knelt on for nearly nine minutes by a Minneapolis police officer? No, there is no evidence to support any of this.
The claims appear in a video (archived here) put up on YouTube on June 28, 2020, titled "Covid911 - INSURGENCY." The lengthy written intro to the video read in part:
You're being scammed by enemies of America who occupy powerful positions in government and the media. November 2020 is the way we, the people, can fight back. Know your enemy. Ditch the masks. Rise. #Covid911 I expect a swift deletion, because the enemy we are fighting controls this battleground."
Click below to watch the video on YouTube:
Here are two screenshots from the video, which, because of the content, must be agreed to before viewers can see it:
First, the pandemic is very real, with experts saying as many as 100,000 new cases could soon be reported every day in the U.S. Also, the Democratic Party does not control or own "mass media." In fact, Fox News is the most-watched news channel in America, and news at the network leans very much to the right politically. Moreover, the police officer who knelt on Floyd has been charged with murder; there is no proof Floyd died as some planned action to create chaos in America's streets and ruin business and the overall economy.
The video, which lasts more than nine minutes, makes many claims about the greed of the political left, the mainstream media and other players to suggest that a "coordinated, irregular warfare insurgency" has been launched against America and President Trump. Almost minute-to-minute, the video's claims are all false or misleading.
For example, after more than a minute and a half of talking about war and the "light" that "turned on" with the election in 2016, the build-up ends with the warning that a war being waged against the country is "the biggest political hoax and mass-media disinformation campaign in living history. You may know it as COVID-19."
This is false, despite many conspiracists believing the novel coronavirus is a hoax. President Trump has acknowledged the frightening reality presented by the coronavirus, as Lead Stories has reported. As of June 30, the U.S. had tallied more than 2.7 million confirmed cases of the virus, and it has reported nearly 130,000 deaths from COVID-19.
At minute 1:40, the video makes this claim:
In 2015, as directed by the globalist criminal corruption network known as the Deep State, President Barack Obama authorized millions in funding for the Wuhan Institute of Virology...The research carried out here was to provide the agent for a global biological attack on a scale never before seen -- one that would be timed for release within an election year - starting the very day unsubstantiated efforts to impeach President Trump fell apart.
This is false on many fronts. As Lead Stories has already shown in this story, Obama did not fund the Wuhan lab. And while there have been unsubstantiated allegations that the virus was lab-made, there is currently no evidence that it was a created virus to launch a biological attack, much less as a ploy to topple Trump or be timed with the impeachment hearings and trials against the president. Lead Stories has debunked this last claim.
At 2:13, the video states:
With their base of operations in the Democrat establishment, the Deep State shadow corporation embarked on a coordinated irregular warfare insurgency, with multiple aims, all under the cover of a global pandemic they themselves manufactured for this purpose.
First, there is no evidence of a Deep State as defined by conservatives, despite allegations of the right that this operation exists and is trying to take over all American, even global, interests and institutions. Second, there is certainly no evidence that the Democrats -- or this Deep State -- are engaged in "a coordinated, irregular warfare insurgency." Nor is there evidence of the last part -- that Democrats "themselves" manufactured this global pandemic now responsible for nearly 513,000 deaths worldwide.
At 2:29, the video states this loaded claim:
Enabled by their owned and controlled corporate media monopoly, they instigated a heavy-handed and unjustifiable economic shutdown to reverse Trump's many economic and unemployment gains, with Democrat-controlled states suffering the harshest restrictions in the country. Trump's energetic rallies were halted, hiding from view the surging nationwide passion for his galvanizing message, while Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden was able to avoid interviews and debates where Left-leaning voters would not be shown his obvious inability to govern...or the emerging Ukrainian bribery scandal that earned his family millions in illicit kickbacks by abusing of his office."
Again, the video is talking about the Democratic Party, which it claims is synonymous with the Deep State. On this one, the media is not owned by the Democratic Party -- and the corporations that do run the news, including conservative Fox News -- are independently run, and it would be a conflict of interest for politicians to own a stake in media companies that cover them. This issue was raised when Michael Bloomberg, who owns Bloomberg News, among other entities, was running for president in the primary season.
Also, it is false to suggest that only the harshest quarantines, which have been blamed for helping sink the economy and driving up unemployment, are all in Democratic states. This is especially wrong considering many of the coronavirus spikes we've been seeing have happened in majority-red states, where governors -- many of them Republican -- have had to roll back re-openings of the local economies to stave off further spread of the virus.
Consider this screenshot from the CDC's website:
As for Biden avoiding interviews and debates, that is false. Biden, while he has quarantined, has appeared in many interviews since he became the presumptive Democratic nominee to challenge Trump in November. He also has not declined debates.
As for the issue of Biden's ties to Ukraine, more revelations are coming to light, but no bribery or quid pro quo has been proven against Biden, the former vice president under President Barack Obama. As The Washington Post put it on June 30, new tapes of phone conversations between Biden and the Ukraine while he was vice president have emerged in the Ukraine. But they're only snippets:
The recordings show that Biden, as he has previously said publicly, linked loan guarantees for Ukraine to the ouster of the country's prosecutor general. The tapes do not provide evidence to back Giuliani's long-standing accusation that Biden sought to have him fired to block an investigation of a gas company that had hired his son Hunter.
The next claim comes at 3:12 of the video:
The next major advantage of the pandemic for the Deep State was the case made to the public for mail-in voting, a highly insecure practice proven to be rampant with fraud..."
The two major parties do disagree on the safety and reliability of mail-in voting. The Democrats say it is the safest way to vote during the pandemic, while Republicans have argued this voting system is meant to "rig" the election against Trump and his allies in Congressional races, despite the fact that Trump has used mail-in absentee voting on at least three occasions, including for the 2018 mid-term elections.
At 3:36, the video goes on with this:
With a rapidly rising death toll needed to make the case to the public for even harsher control, normal influenza deaths for the year were recorded as Covid19, artificially inflating the numbers. But this was only the beginning. When this did not yield enough fatalities, the Deep State then initiated a murderous plan to defy federal guidelines and move infected patients into nursing homes where the highest risk age group could be found in large numbers."
Lead Stories has reported on how the charge of medical and government officials inflating the COVID-19 totals is misleading at best; if anything, due to the limited availability of testing and people dying alone from the disease caused by the virus, the figures are undercounted, according to reports. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention makes clear that all counts are "estimates," not actual figures.
And there is no evidence of a Deep State "murderous plan to defy federal guidelines" by moving people with the disease out of hospitals and into nursing homes. This did happen -- moving people into nursing homes to make more hospital beds for COVID-19 patients -- in New York under Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, for example, but there is no evidence Cuomo intended to "murder" these patients by doing so. Up to one-third of all deaths from COVID-19 have occurred in nursing homes, where many people have underlying conditions that contribute to getting the disease. And certainly there is no evidence that the states of New York, New Jersey, California, Pennsylvania and Michigan engaged in a coordinated effort to oversee "the genocide of our elderly loved ones," as the video claims, and push a liberal agenda of fear from the virus as cover for their agenda to take control of America, shutter churches and other places of faith needed during difficult times under a "despotic plan."
At 4:58, this claim is made:
Immediately upon reports of a flattening curve and a reduction in new cases, the mysterious murder of George Floyd hit the headlines. What was presented to the public as a routine instance of racially motivated police brutality turned out to be a strange and coincidental series of events involving two men who once knew each-other working security in a night club."
While there are reports that Floyd and the main officer charged in his death worked at the same nightclub in Minneapolis, there is no proof that Floyd died following a "coincidental series of events," or that the death was anything but what was charged -- an officer using a forbidden practice of kneeling on Floyd's death for nearly 9 minutes led to Floyd's death. The officer, Derek Chauvin, has been charged with second-degree murder and other officers have been charged with abetting murder in the case.
The video goes on to say that Floyd's death was effectively planned to create chaos in the United States and provide more cover for the mass protests and looting that followed.
At 5:38, the video claims this:
Black Lives Matter was funded and designed by the corrupt Democrat establishment as a social weapon to draw crowds of well-meaning protesters into harm's way, using them as human shields while they pushed a savage insurrection on city streets. This was intensified even further by folding in the violent paramilitary group, Antifa, who were given a free pass by Democrat mayors and governors to loot stores, smash up small businesses, and assault innocent bystanders.
It has been debated whether BLM is a political or social movement. But there is certainly no evidence that the "Democratic establishment" funded and designed BLM "as a social weapon" that drew mobs of menacing people into the streets of America to use "well-meaning protesters" as "human shields" so looters could destroy business and further weaken the economy -- particularly at the hands of the "paramilitary group Antifa." And there is plenty of evidence that even Democratic mayors or governors issued "a free pass" to inflame the streets, businesses and "assault innocent bystanders."
Lead Stories has written on the topic. In fact, there have been many instances of police brutalizing protesters pleading for change in a law enforcement and political system fraught with systemic racism -- something acknowledged by some government and police officials.
This claim comes at 6:23:
Knowing that lawless chaos would accelerate their aims, they began calling for the elimination of police while evicting the national guard who were made available to protect the public against the worst of the violence. D.C Mayor Murial Bowser even called for elimination of the White House fence, just days after a close call by rioters who attempted to breach the perimeter.
No, Floyd's death and the protests that followed were not pre-planned events, as there was no way of knowing that the incident that resulted in Floyd's death would happen. The simplest explanation is that, after generations of police killing unarmed Black and other minority people in the U.S., minorities and their supporters simply decided enough was enough and took to the streets and political offices to demand that policing change in America and that laws be enacted to protect everyday residents of this country.
There are many calls to defund the police, and some departments, including Minneapolis -- where the Floyd death occurred -- have seen political movements to, in fact, dismantle the current police department and set up new ways to protect the communites served. But there is much confusion over the idea of "defund the police."
And, it is false to suggest that "D.C. Mayor Murial Bowser even called for elimination of the White House Fence." Rather, the mayor sought the removal of an extra perimeter set up outside the main White House fence meant to keep protesters further away from it.
The video also claims this "insurrection" was planned to lead up to the election in November and weaken Trump, before switching to Biden, Obama and their supposed framing of Michael Flynn at 7:13:
The pandemic was also providing cover of a different kind. Taking place behind the scenes at the justice department is a far-reaching investigation into the Obama Administration's weaponization of the foreign intelligence surveillance court to spy on Trump and his associates during the transition of power. With evidence now emerging that Obama officials, including Joe Biden and Obama himself, colluded to frame General Michael Flynn. They used social distancing guidelines to halt grand jurys and give witnesses the cover of health fears to avoid honoring court-ordered subpoenas.
A June 30 story in the Washington Times was headlined "Michael Flynn: 'Dark forces' are intent on driving God out of everyday American life" -- a story from a conservative outlet that essentially backs the video's claim here. Though Attorney General William Barr moved to drop charges against Flynn, the case is an ongoing matter. And there is no evidence of the video's assertion that Obama and Biden, who were not in power when Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI while serving as National Security Advisor to Trump, colluded to frame the former general. Trump has offered no evidence to support his claim that Obama and Biden committed "treason" in the matter.
Also, social distancing -- often broken in many places in America -- was put in place to protect the public from the novel coronavirus, not to silence grand juries looking into the Flynn case.
A final claim comes at 8:22:
They [Democrats and the Deep State] flooded our streets with deadly drugs to manufacture a devastating epidemic of addiction and mass incarceration. And they did it all with impunity while their completely controlled mainstream media assets kept us distracted and focused on everything else except our one true enemy.
There is simply no evidence to support the claim that Democrats created the narcotics epidemic in this country -- and other than the Bill Clinton-signed 1994 Crime Bill that did dramatically increase prison populations with mostly minorities -- this one is just false. Further, there is no evidence that the mainstream media ignored this problem. In fact, it has been widely covered across the nation and worldwide by all media.
The video, which champions Trump while saying COVID-19 was anything but a "natural event" meant to destroy the president, wraps up with the following:
The 2020 US elections are like none we have ever experienced. Covid19 is being sold as a natural event, but we see now it is an attempt by enemies of humanity to hold onto power. After November they stand to lose it all but they will do everything to keep the crisis alive and the people in fear. To win we must remember what made us strong so that true justice can finally return to what is and always will be the most exceptional Republic ever to exist in all of human history. May God bless America."
