For the second time, Matt Johnson, an animal rights activist with Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), has tricked a television news crew into believing he is the CEO of a major animal protein producer.
Several days ago, Johnson went onto the Newsmax program Cortes and Pellegrino, pretending he was Tyson Foods CEO Donnie King, totally fooling the hosts. In December, Johnson pretended he was then-Smithfield Foods CEO Dennis Organ while speaking to Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo.
The strategy
I’m noticing a pattern here, and even though I deplore what he is doing, I have to admit his strategy is pretty brilliant.
Both networks targeted so far are very much right-leaning. And it appears they are so intent on making the left look bad that they aren’t even paying attention to who they are interviewing. But Johnson likely isn’t too concerned about making either political party look bad. He just wants the animal agriculture industry to look bad.
Johnson, posing as King, went on to complain about the “tax and spend routine” in Washington D.C. and that the “fallout of the Biden administration’s entitlement spending,” is starting to be seen, and how it is impacting consumers in ways they don’t even consider. The costs, Johnson said, that are being incurred by Tyson Foods are being passed on to consumers.
At this point, he has the Newsmax personalities hook, line and sinker.
So now, he moves into addressing his true agenda of attacking animal agriculture, saying the company he professed to lead was doing everything it could to reduce costs.
“Last spring, as you may recall, there were widespread COVID outbreaks at meatpacking plants. There was just nowhere to send the pigs, and they unfortunately had to be put down,” said Johnson.
He then told the Newsmax crew a story about how one supplier looked at the most economic way to depopulate, which he said was called ventilation shutdown. But he went for all the drama he could, claiming they were “roasting pigs alive,” and that the animals “were squealing non-stop for hours on end.”
“It’s a little rough to watch, but what do you do?” Johnson said to the interviewers.
Shortly afterward, Johnson humiliated the Newsmax team by holding up a news article with his photograph that identified him properly.
It happened before; it can happen again
I said this earlier when Bartiromo was punked, but Newsmax should have done its research before interviewing who its staff thought would be the leader of a very high-profile animal agriculture company, but apparently didn’t. Johnson looks nothing like Organ and he looks nothing like King. That should have been their first clue. Bartiromo paid no attention to Johnson’s smirks and body language, and neither did the Newsmax personalities.
And just as Bartiromo chose to play on the anti-China sentiment fueled by our then-president, Cortes and Pellegrino played on the anti-Biden sentiment.
Johnson gets that there are people who are incapable of non-partisan thinking, who worship Donald Trump like a golden calf and consider Joe Biden the anti-Christ. He also gets that there are networks that cater to people with those mentalities.
But on the other side of the coin, there are also Democrats who are incapable of non-partisan thinking who think Biden is their savior and blame Trump on all the ills of society. Sadly, there are networks out there that cater to people with that mentality, too.
And there is a pretty good chance that Johnson will try to weasel his way into some airtime on one of those networks with a leftist agenda.
This could get to be a real problem. I said it before and I’ll say it again. If you are in the agrifood industry, do whatever you can to develop relationships with the media, because if you don’t, this sort of thing, sadly, can and will happen.
