On this show, we've often observed that what happens online rarely stays online.

In the age of Pizza Gate, Trump tweets and WikiLeak data dumps, it's obvious that the conversations online increasingly dominate, even define our politics.

A fact demonstrated yet again last Thursday when the president invited

his favorite online trolls, memers, and political operatives to clink champagne glasses in the White

House and discuss an alleged anti-conservative bias on social media. Will Summer, tech reporter for the Daily Beast, wrote about the odd cast of characters

and what this social media summit tells us about the president's 2020 re-election strategy.

Will, welcome back to the show.

Hey, thanks for having me.

Okay, so we're going to discuss last week's White House Social Media Summit, but first I want to talk about the online forum that has supported many of the so-called influencers that were in attendance at the White House, specifically, are the Donald, which is pro-Trump, subreddit. What is its role in the far-right media? The Donald is one of the

largest forums for Trump supporters online. How large? I believe the official membership, and this

doesn't include people who visit but haven't signed up for the forum, I believe it's somewhat

south of a million. Wow. There's many more people looking at it than just that.

It's a place essentially where people get together.

They share memes, sometimes sort of extremist or hateful ones.

They praise Trump, obviously.

They call him their God emperor.

And so in terms of how stuff spreads on the right-wing Internet,

the Donald often is a place where, from more extremist

sites, whether that's like 4chan or other sites like that, these memes filter up through

the Donald and then from there into the wider pro-Trump internet. Well, the emperor designation

sounds tongue-in-cheek, but what are some of the less humorous memes or conspiracies that have

filtered up through the Donald subreddit?

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