Doctor Mike

And then they go and they take it and they really make it something that is like central to the campaign.

All of the online people are talking about it.

This isn't something that comes like from the top down the way you would think political communication does or used to.

Instead, it kind of comes, you know, this groundswell from the bottom up.

J.D.

Vance picks it up.

Donald Trump talks about it on the debate stage.

It becomes something that then all of a sudden is an immigration, you know, becomes a propaganda slogan that is really about immigration.

They're using it to talk about immigration.

There's no reality to it.

There's no truth to it.

But it's something that the base rallies around.

And then what you see happen is as it gets mocked on the left, as Democrats

Republican leaders in Ohio say there's no truth to this.

Nothing is actually happening here.

As it ceases to be funny, it becomes much more serious.

It stops being fun.

Then they really begin to double down and it becomes something where you start to see bomb threats called in.

You start to see people who, you know, media influencers actually on the right kind of descend on the community trying to find evidence of it after the fact.

These are the moments where the things that start out as these little moments of online weirdness that people feel like they're participating in, again, because it's entertaining for them, wind up snowballing and becoming these huge things.