MAGA kooks seem to flock around Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. If being followed around the hallways of Congress by Marjorie Taylor Greene wasn’t bad enough, she now has to deal with Tina Forte, another bleached-blonde Republican whose only true interest in politics appears to be bringing AOC down.
Forte, who would be a shoe-in for a role in a Jersey Shore reboot for 50-somethings, has made no secret of her dislike for AOC, as evidenced by her campaign video, which you can watch below. (It’s a rare find.) However, according to Raw Story, there are a couple considerably more troubling things that the video doesn’t reveal, which Snopes discovered about the congressional hopeful. Specifically, Forte supported and attended the “Save America” protest in Washington, D.C. on January 6—the event that led to the Capitol insurgency—in addition to advocating a number of QAnon ideas and routinely posing with Proud Boys.
According to Snopes, Forte used hashtags connected to QAnon conspiracy theories several times. The QAnon mentions also included chants of “Save the Children,” a reference to a bogus conspiracy theory that alleges Democrats are guilty of mass pedophilia and “Satanic blood-drinking.” In October, November, and December 2020, she photographed Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, the head of the far-right Proud Boys. We also found evidence that Forte promoted fake electoral conspiracy theories, such as the phrase “Stop the Steal.”
Forte’s accounts on Facebook, Instagram (which is owned by Facebook), Twitter, and YouTube that promoted potentially harmful content were still active months afterwards. Even more remarkable was Forte’s attendance at the Capitol riot, which she livestreamed on Facebook. She grabbed photographs with other attendees who referred to her as a “superstar.” She pushed attendees at then-US President Donald Trump’s event on the Ellipse to make their way to the Capitol in a live broadcast. We even discovered that she reached a prohibited area after the throng overturned law enforcement barriers. All of her posts promoting the date in the weeks before Jan. 6 appeared to reach at least tens of thousands of people, but likely many more.
Forte live-streamed her visit to our nation’s capital, and the Capitol, via Facebook Live, where she urged her viewers to “Get your asses to the Capitol,” adding that, “We need to fight for our freedom, fight for our country, fight for our president, fight for our Constitution.”
Snopes reached out to Forte’s team for comment about their report—which goes much, much deeper—but so far has not received a response.
