Karma (n.)- When the "dumbest man on da Interwebz" finally gets his

Jim Hoft fucked around for years and finally found out. Where's my popcorn and Schadenfreude??

Going back years, I’ve long ridiculed idiot punditJim Hoft, owner and chief correspondent for The Gateway Pundit, once one of the preeminent Conservative blogs on da Interwebz. Hoft’s site may have been preeminent, but his intellectual capacity and ability to research and construct an airtight, rational argument certainly weren’t.

Intellectually lazy, morally vacant, and too self-absorbed to care about the damage he did, Jim Hoft was a character defamation suit looking for a place to happen. Then, along came Ruby Freeman and Wandrea "Shaye" Moss, who took him down and demonstrated Hoft to be the frightened, dumbass bully he’s always been.

I may need more popcorn….

Most of the unreadable crap Hoft wrote was of questionable provenance and could be deservedly ridiculed with a few short minutes of the most rudimentary research imaginable. It seemed that Hoft wasn’t intellectually agile enough to understand how to construct an argument that wasn’t as much conspiracy theory as rumor, half-truth, propaganda, lies, and character defamation.

Pardon me while I dance in the ashes of his media “empire.”

Karma has caught up with Hoft, and while I’m tempted to wash my balls in the deep end of the Schadenfreude River, making fun of Hoft’s incompetence and ineptitude stopped being enjoyable long ago. I referred to him as The Dumbest Man on the Internet © for years, but even that lost its entertainment value.

Jim Hoft makes Jesse Watters look like a dual Ph.D. candidate in Nuclear Physics and Butterscotch Sexual Therapy.

I suppose you can hope someone will recognize the error of their ways and figure out how to do things the right way, but Jim Hoft was always firmly wrapped up in the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Worse, he lacked the self-awareness to recognize the direction in which he was heading.

The Gateway Pundit, an influential website that regularly peddles falsehoods and conspiracy theories, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy as it faces multiple defamation suits.

In a statement on The Gateway Pundit website, Jim Hoft, the outlet's owner, blamed the "progressive liberal lawfare attacks against our media outlet" and admitted no wrongdoing. The company did not respond to emails from NPR seeking more information.

The Dumbest Man on the Internet © to the very end. Arrogant, self-righteous, and unable to understand that lies, innuendo, unsourced propaganda, and conspiracy theories would eventually lead him to where he finds himself today, he persisted.

Unsurprisingly, instead of recognizing his responsibility for the judgments against The Gateway Pundit, Hoft lashed out at “progressive liberal lawfare attacks.” It’s always the Liberals, don’tchaknow?

David Pecker, f’rinstance, might be a slimeball of the first order. Still, he understands that being a self-righteous Conservative who recognizes and respects no guardrails is a recipe for disaster when running a media company.

Hoft believes he has the right to do and say whatever materialized in his pointy li’l skull. Unfortunately for him, the targets of his scurrilous, defamatory broadsides have become increasingly able and willing to fight back over the years. That’s not “lawfare,” as Hoft and many other Conservatives whine; it’s an increased willingness and ability to stand up for one’s rights.

The 1st Amendment is not absolute, and publishing knowingly false statements about someone because you believe yourself to be above the law is a ticket to receiving a swift (figurative) kick in the nuts from Karma and her Harvard-educated attorney.

Stupidity and recklessness in the service of a “Conservative” agenda, or this case, the ridiculous and frequently disproven belief that the 2020 election was fraudulent, is no defense. That’s not free speech. In Hoft’s case, he’s long lacked the subtlety to recognize the line separating slander from reasonable political commentary.

When you believe you can do no wrong and that free speech- your free speech as a Conservative, not THEIRS as Liberals, of course- is absolute, you’re treading a dangerous, mine-laden path. Hoft wasn’t proceeding carefully down that path, he was blithely tapdancing.

This predictably yawn-inducing stupidity is precisely why I long ago became bored with chronicling his arrogance, ineptitude, and incompetence. There was no longer any challenge in it. Debunking The Dumbest Man on the Internet © wasn’t fun anymore.

The website, founded by brothers Jim and Joe Hoft, is facing a lawsuit from Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea "Shaye" Moss over false claims about election fraud in the 2020 U.S. presidential election that resulted in their harassment. Protect Democracy, the nonprofit representing Freeman and Moss, declined to comment on the bankruptcy announcement. The Gateway Pundit also settled a lawsuit from a former official at voting technology company Dominion Voting Systems, which was targeted by election fraud conspiracy theories in 2020.

Unfortunately for Hoft, he doesn’t understand what a Chapter 11 bankruptcy is for. Not that this should be particularly surprising, I suppose. Jim Hoft has always believed himself to be smarter than anyone else, which is laughable. I’m not sure he could spell “cat” if one spotted him the “c” and “a.”

His colossal ignorance, arrogance, and pride were his downfall.

In the statement, Hoft said the bankruptcy is a way to consolidate lawsuits against the outlet. But Chapter 11 bankruptcies are meant to help small businesses restructure, said Mark Bankston, an attorney at law firm Farrar & Ball who represented parents of slain Sandy Hook school students in a defamation suit against conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his outlet Infowars.

"It's not actually meant to be used as a tool of what they seem to be using it for," Bankston said. "This process is being used by defendants who are facing libel lawsuits. And in particular, it tends to be right-wing, extremist publications or individuals."

I’m not an attorney, but I know that Chapter 11 isn’t a “get out of jail free” card for extremists looking to avoid accountability for their words and actions. Jim Hoft may well be in for a helluva surprise. This tactic hasn’t worked well for Alex Jones, and if Freeman’s and Moss’ attorneys are any good at all, they should be able to make him look pretty silly in short order.

Hey, it’s Jim Hoft; making him look silly shouldn’t be much of a challenge for any attorney worthy of the title.

The Gateway Pundit's parent company's bankruptcy filing shows that the company has between $100,001 and $500,000 in liabilities and between $500,001 and $1 million in assets.

Jones also filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after Sandy Hook families were awarded more than $1 billion in damages against him in 2022. Because of the drawn-out proceedings of the bankruptcy, the families are still waiting for compensation.

The election workers who sued The Gateway Pundit also sued former Trump campaign attorney Rudy Giuliani, who filed for bankruptcy in December after a $148 million judgment against him.

Of course, winning a case against Hoft and The Gateway Pundit and collecting their judgment may prove challenging. The Sandy Hook families' attempts to collect their $1 billion judgment against Alex Jones have been frustrated by a process akin to trying to affix Jell-O to a wall. Trying to collect from Hoft might prove similarly tricky.

Yeah, he’s the kind of self-righteous asshole who might feel justified in dragging out the process long enough to drain his resources to the point that his adversaries have nothing to recover from him.

From 2017 until 2021, the United States was run by WWE fans and National Enquirer readers.

- Jack Ohman

I don’t take any joy out of seeing Hoft get his comeuppance, richly deserved though it may be. Not that I give a damn about Hoft or his business, but he and his carelessness (combined with that of the rest of the Right-wing echo chamber) helped to put Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss through almost literal (and wholly undeserved) Hell.

For their sake, I hope they’re able to take Hoft for everything down to the skidmarks on his tighty whities and then some. He had multiple opportunites to make things right, but chose not to. At some level, he knew what he was doing was wrong and immoral, yet he made the conscious and reprehensible choice to continue.

Jim Hoft is unworthy of anyone’s pity. He created his own mess, and he’s shown no remorse. I don’t believe in Hell, but if I did, I’d hope he’d be on a rotisserie over an open flame for eternity. The Dumbest Man on the Internet © deserves nothing less.

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