‘Psych war’: How a childhood ‘evil neighbor’ readied woman for life under Trump
Reporter Elle Reeve, known for her deep dive into issues of white supremacy for Vice and CNN, wrote in a new article Monday that her childhood experience with a stalker armed her to handle fascists in today's political climate.
Reeve's article for Slate detailed how she learned to handle "evil" after years of dealing with her next-door neighbor, an angry man who stalked and harassed her family for years.
"I spent my entire teenage years at war," she wrote. "Not a real war, but a psychological war, followed by a legal one. It did not have a happy ending. At the time, when explaining it to my high school friends, I referred to the situation as “my evil neighbor.” Decades later, I understand what happened: My family had a stalker."
When her family reported how the neighbor burned obscenities into their lawn with weed killer or stared her down as she walked to the school bus each day, the police advised them, “If you don’t get it on video, we can’t do nothing about it.”
That tip, plus learning how to remain calm and cool in the face of cruelty, served her reporting well, she said.
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Reeve said she's able to interview such figures as white nationalist Richard Spencer not because her blonde hair appealed to their racist predilections.
"After my reporting in Charlottesville in 2017, I heard one comment over and over," she wrote. "The only reason I had gotten interviews with white nationalists was because I was a blond woman and those guys wanted to make Aryan babies with me. I know that’s not what everyone thinks, but I heard it a lot, and it p---ed me off, so I wanted to tell the story my way.
"The reason I was able to do it was not my hair. It was because I was forced to learn at a very young age that most bullies are cowards, that confrontation is necessary, that you must get it all on tape," Reeve wrote.
"When I was surrounded by hostile armed lunatics in Charlottesville — and Oregon, and Michigan, and the United States Capitol — I didn’t tap into my years of experience with shampoo and conditioner. What got me into those crowds, and what got me through them, was spending my adolescence preparing for confrontation with this kind of man."
Steve Bannon to plead guilty to fraud charges for ‘We Build the Wall’ scam: report
MAGA influencer Steve Bannon, a former strategist for President Donald Trump, will reportedly plead guilty to fraud charges in New York to avoid more jail time.
Law360 first reported on Monday that Bannon would enter a guilty plea.
Bannon's trial for allegedly duping contributors to his "We Build the Wall" charity was scheduled to start on March 4 after being delayed.
"I've been smeared by a political prosecution — persecution — for years, and I need someone who's a little more aggressive," Bannon told a judge after shaking up his legal team last month. "I need every tool in the tool box."
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Last year, Bannon spent four months in federal prison after being found guilty of contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before the Jan. 6 Committee.
Elon Musk’s Cybertruck found to be more dangerous than infamous Ford Pinto: report
A new report has come to a disturbing conclusion for Elon Musk's Tesla Cybertruck — the model is far more dangerous than even the infamously "explosive" Ford Pintos of the 1970s.
Automotive site FuelArc compiled the report after gathering "a full year of data for the Cybertruck" and pitting it against a decade worth of statistics for the Pinto, which was produced from 1970-1980.
FuelArc found that the fatality rate per 100,000 units was 14.52 for the Cybertruck and 0.85 for the Pinto, concluding that the Tesla model was "17 times more likely to have a fire fatality than a Ford Pinto."
The Ford Pinto had a troubled safety record. Its rear-mounted fuel tank design made it prone to fires in collisions, resulting in numerous fatalities. The company was accused of prioritizing cost-cutting over safety and faced billions in lawsuits. The Pinto recall and its impact on automotive safety regulations became a landmark case in consumer protection.
The site considered two Cybertruck crashes and one "incident" that happened "in their first full year on American roads." A crash in Piedmont CA killed 3 people, while a crash in Baytown TX killed one person.
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"The authors of the Cybertruck analysis openly acknowledge caveats in their methodology," reported Mother Jones. "First off, Tesla— the car’s manufacturer and one of Musk’s companies — has not confirmed how many Cybertrucks it has sold. FuelArc puts its best guess at 34,438, based on 'a variety of means, including piecing together public reporting.'
"Secondly, the five Cybertruck fatalities include the one that occurred in Las Vegas ... outside Trump International Hotel, when an Army soldier fatally shot himself before the car, packed with fireworks, exploded. Musk claimed in a post on X that the explosion was “unrelated to the vehicle itself.” Thus, the FuelArc analysis acknowledges that this fatality is 'controversial' since the driver’s cause of death was reportedly a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and the burns occurred after his death."
Musk threatened to sue reporters who implied the vehicle's design contributed to the explosion and fire in the Las Vegas incident.
Despite the "caveats," Mother Jones reported that "There are other reasons, beyond the latest analysis, to be skeptical" of the Cybertruck's safety.
For one, "It has reportedly not been crash-tested by the NHTSA or the nonprofit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, nor has Tesla released its own safety data on the Cybertruck."
Mother Jones concluded, "Musk bragged around the time of its release that it would “be much safer per mile than other trucks.” But his claims of superiority were quickly disproven, given that Tesla recalled the truck seven times last year alone — an astonishingly high amount — including once over a trapped accelerator pedal that could increase the risk of a crash, estimated to affect more than 3,800 units, according to the NHTSA."
Read the Mother Jones article here and the FuelArc report here.
