Critics of Donald Trump eagerly speculate or debate the most recent development in the “Russiagate” narrative in the comment section, which enthusiasts refer to as “branches.” Mark Bradman, the website’s proprietor previously recognized as a resident of Florida, gained fame during the George Zimmerman trial. He publicly identified Trayvon Martin, the teenager Zimmerman shot in Florida, as an “unruly troublemaker, involved in drug dealing, theft, and aspiring to be a gangster,” revealing the identity of an anonymous witness.
As per the data from Alexa analytics, The Conservative Treehouse currently stands at approximately the 4,000th position among the most-visited websites in the United States. Nevertheless, despite the swift debunking of those false reports, the website has become the starting point for numerous false claims that have spread within the right-wing media environment. These claims include allegations that Puerto Rican truck drivers were purposely withholding hurricane relief and that a high-ranking official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was using the coronavirus as a tool to harm Trump.
The site’s commenters and operator, who goes by the pseudonym “Sundance,” are so devoted that even some of Donald Trump’s staunchest allies in the right-wing media find its conspiratorial zeal bizarre. Mark Levin, the host of Talk Radio, has referred to it as a “kook site.” Lee Stranahan, a former Breitbart reporter, has dubbed the site’s owner an “egocentric lunatic” with a cult-like following.
However, regardless of its reputation (or, maybe, due to it), The Conservative Treehouse holds the president’s attention.
On Tuesday, Trump tweeted a conspiracy theory that originated on a site that claimed Gugino, the 75-year-old man from New York who was shoved down by Buffalo police officers, wasn’t actually a peaceful protester but rather a potential “antifa” provocateur trying to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment.
“I observed, he fell more forcefully than he was pushed,” Trump posted on Twitter. “Was targeting scanner. Could this be a setup?”.
The tweet was sparked by a segment on the OAN network, a cable news network known for its uncritical amplification of the president’s penchant for flattery and absolving or flattering those willing to amplify his views, which in turn vaulted the dregs of the Internet’s conspiracy theorists into national prominence once again.
According to Kristian Rouz, a Russian journalist who had dual roles at the Russian state propaganda channel Sputnik and OAN, the OAN segment was described as a “false flag provocation by a far-left group known as antifa.” Rouz alleged that Gugino was employing “typical antifa strategies” and suggested that the incident was supported by evidence from The Conservative Treehouse, which he accessed on his mobile device.
The aforementioned post from The Conservative Treehouse falsely alleged that Gugino utilized a technologically advanced communication device to “scan the mic” of a police officer. It suggested that the device could be traced, replicated, and used to intercept transmissions once the frequency is obtained (i.E., Cloned).
The technology used in your house to electronically rob you warns its followers, nearly 180,000 of them, about the use of “trackers” that are the same technology.
Lacking evidence, the “scanning” he is accused of conducting is considered as technological nonsense. Additionally, Gugino, a dedicated activist of the Catholic Worker movement, is not associated with antifa but is involved in various community-based social justice activist groups. Moreover, there are numerous flaws in the hypothesis that Gugino was engaged in advanced spying activities for antifa.
The comment for return requests wasn’t made by the owner purportedly, and it didn’t come from The Treehouse Conservative website. The post on The Treehouse Conservative aimed at undermining liberals by spreading disinformation, which only underscored the payoff of amplifying Trump’s claims. Naturally, it never made it into the context.
Later, he adopted the alias “Sundance” when he went on trial. Sundance, the owner of Treehouse Conservative, faced charges of racial discrimination. During the trial, commenters praised Zimmerman’s father with “astonishing” research, and the Treehouse Conservative gained prominence during the Tea Party movement.
During the trial of Zimmerman, the Treehouse’s Conservative community commenting site eventually featured narratives that drove much intense discussion. One of the commenters, who referred to themselves as a member of “the think tank treehouse”, had such a disproportionately large influence on Zimmerman’s defense attorney that they were considered amateur-sleuths.
The impeachment of Ukraine, or later, Robert Mueller, the former Special Counsel, was a theory of conspiracy that the investigation into Russia’s interference in the Trump era was cooked up to undermine Trump by members of the deep state with nefarious intentions. The Conservative Treehouse became a hub for this conspiracy theory, with commenters weaving elaborate stories to support it. The Treehouse embraced a wide variety of right-wing causes, including the wildlife refuge standoff at Malheur in Bundy’s era and investigations into Republican causes, such as the 2012 attack on an American compound in Libya. Since then, the trial has taken place.
The Conservative Treehouse has been a fan of President Trump, dating back to his hopeful days as a Republican presidential candidate in 2015.
Rubio and Bush, former Governors of Florida, took particular pleasure in attacking each other, citing the author’s book. Trump, the candidate himself, earned shoutouts and retweets from Conservative Treehouse’s Twitter account, showing that he was the frontrunner in the race for the nomination, and moving his campaign from a sideshow to the main event.
Tops image of the late conservative provocateur Andrew Breitbart, even though the operator of the pseudonymous site “Sundance,” which is hated by Breitbart’s founder, would hate the banner of The Conservative Treehouse’s website. The website has clashed with other conservative personalities and has a loyal audience.
Levin mocked Bradman, a previous employee of Publix supermarket, in his Facebook posts, labeling him as a “displeased former grocery clerk” following the publication of stories by The Conservative Treehouse that implied the talk radio host had a strong bias towards Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) during the 2016 Republican primary. Additionally, the conservative talk radio host, Levin, heavily criticized the website as well.
Levin penned the statement, “We can discover more about this eccentric individual and gain additional knowledge about Bradman by exploring the website ‘Conservative Treehouse’.”
Despite opposition, the Treehouse Conservative has made inroads into more mainstream right-wing media outlets, as praised by Fox Business Network anchor Lou Dobbs, who urged his viewers to check out the blog site’s posts about the FBI investigation into Russia and the Trump campaign.
Dobbs exclaimed, “an outstanding achievement.” — I want to give a shout-out to TheConservativeTreehouse.Com for their amazing job in cataloguing and chronicling.