Chances are good that you’ve never heard of Matt Wolking, and the odds are even better that you don’t want to read his political thoughts from his college days.
But Wolking recently joined President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign team as a communications staffer responsible for “refuting attacks and exposing the fake news media.” That makes his decade-old WordPress musings, with the apt name “Wolking’s World,” surprisingly relevant.
Making the blog even more relevant is his resume. Despite Trump’s charge to “drain the swamp,” Wolking’s political history includes communications work for a number of high-profile Republican politicians, including former House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) and former Rep. Trey Gowdy, who led the House Select Committee on Benghazi.
Talking Points Memo reported on Friday that Wolking’s circa-2008 blog contained anti-Muslim sentiments, including one post where he called Muslims “murderous thugs.” In response, far-right site The Daily Caller downplayed and deflected Wolking’s positions in a piece that claimed Talking Points Memo “wildly misrepresented” Wolking’s college-era writings. That’s not the case.
Fact or fiction: Did Wolking call Muslims “murderous thugs”?
Yes. The Daily Caller and Wolking himself walk around his words this way: A Gallup poll from back in 2008 surveyed Muslims around the world and found that 7 percent believed the 9/11 attacks were completely justified. Wolking did the math and worked out that 7 percent of the 1.3 billion Muslims in the world amounted to more than 90 million “murderous thugs.” Wolking said on Twitter Friday, “If you condone the 9/11 attacks, what other description is there?”
I didn’t find the full text of the Gallup study online, but an excerpt posted on National Public Radio’s site mentions another finding – that “Muslims and Americans are equally likely to reject attacks on civilians as morally unjustified.” And according to the report, “When asked to describe their dreams for the future, Muslims don’t mention fighting in a jihad, but rather getting a better job.”
In Wolking’s post on the Gallup poll, he also claimed that Muslims danced in the streets on 9/11, a bite-sized piece of propaganda that Trump also pushed for years.
Fact or fiction: Did Wolking support banning construction of mosques?
Yes. In a post from 2008, he wrote, “Somebody’s awake,” before block-quoting a Daily Mail story about a Church of England member calling for mosque construction to be banned. The church leader parroted a familiar conspiracy theory that Muslims usher in rule by sharia law.
Fact or fiction: Did Media Matters President Angelo Carusone also have a blog with racist content?
Yes. Carusone’s own college-era blog used racial slurs and the term “trannies.” The Daily Caller, which was co-founded by far-right Fox News host Tucker Carlson, ran a report about the blog in March after Media Matters circulated old clips from Carlson’s appearances on a radio show amazingly called “Bubba the Love Sponge Show.”
The Daily Caller report links to angelocarusone.com, a site that swears to “expose the truth about the corruption of Media Matters for America and the hateful people that run it’s (sic) operation.” The site doesn’t identify who runs it, but it’s safe to assume that part of someone’s job at The Daily Caller is churning out content for this little corner of the internet. All of the content attacks Media Matters, which it identifies as a “left wing hate group” (it’s not).
Fact or fiction: Did an American Bridge employee get fired for attacking a Republican campaign manager?
The founder of Media Matters, David Brock, also founded liberal super PAC American Bridge 21st Century, which conducts opposition research against Republicans. Last year, American Bridge employee Mike Stark was arrested and charged with battery after he twisted the arm of Kristin Davison, then the campaign manager for former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, a Republican.
American Bridge fired Stark after the incident.
Note: American Mythology is a series where we factcheck an entire piece or debunk a topic across multiple publications or platforms. You can learn more about our approach to factchecking here.
Contact Mollie Bryant at 405-990-0988 or bryant@bigiftrue.org. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
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