It's probably both, but leaning much more towards the grifting side of things. There's something about conservative politics in the US which encourages grifters and cons.

When my very Republican stepfather fell into dementia, I helped my mom monitor his mail so he'd stop spending so much money on things he didn't understand. It was a deluge of stuff every day. Often from groups I had never heard of who wanted money to stop Sharia law or stop the "war on Christmas" or whatever the big conservative cause was that day. And even the mainstream GOP got into the act. More than once, a FedEx envelope would show up with a plea that everything was doomed unless a check was overnighted. Once the GOP FedEx solicitation contained a letter accusing my stepfather of no longer being a member of the Republican Party, but he could clear up this misunderstanding by writing a check.

A great, in-depth article on this is here:

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-long-con

The conservative movement is elder abuse on a grand scale.

And on the flip side it's Donate or get deported. Scare tactics work, both sides use it.

Except the stated policy of this executive is to deport large numbers of people, whereas there is no danger of Christmas being outlawed, or of Sharia becoming the law of the land.

That’s funny given that deportations are down 80% since the previous admin, also far less wall has been built than the previous admin was able to build on a yearly basis...

Wouldn’t you characterize that as scaremongering given the facts?

Certainly not. The only things keeping the official policy from progressing faster are the utter incompetence of the administration and the relative sanity of the court system. Both can change.

I don't think he cares. The goal is to muddy the waters and make it harder to do real journalism.

The story on right wing websites tomorrow will probably be "one of the accusers was obviously lying - this raises questions about the other ones," never mind the lying one was paid by a right wing site.

> I don't think he cares. The goal is to muddy the waters and make it harder to do real journalism.

I think, generally, the result has been that it's harder to do fake journalism; at least when it comes to the undercover work.

Why is it a self-own? If his objective (cast shade on real allegations) is achieved, then he's doing fine, he'll be paid by his funders (and protected).

He is a political hitman and stalking horse.

Because it’s yet another poorly executed bumbling failure. People talk like O’Keefe is some American version of Vladislav Surkov playing four dimensional chess and that we are all falling into his little trap. But they’re just too incompetent to warrant the comparison. If they could execute any of their bizarre little pranks then they would maybe deserve some of this and I’d maybe consider them as some kind of threat. But tthey come undone in the most hilarious ways, like leaving a voicemail for one of their marks and forget to hang up and immediately start talking about the scam they are conducting.

https://twitter.com/willsommer/status/935274569778319360

I’d be quite happy for his funders to continue wasting their money on things like this

> If they could execute any of their bizarre little pranks then they would maybe deserve some of this and I’d maybe consider them as some kind of threat.

But, they can: the refunding and destruction of ACORN succeeded, as in many jurisdictions has the defunding of Planned Parenthood, both on the back of O'Keefe propaganda stunts (that we debunked in the mainstream media rapidly, sure, but that did little to blunt the political impact of the resulting propaganda.)

The propaganda isn't to persuade the broad public, it's to mobilize a sufficient segment of the activist base of the right. And, sure, only one in a dozen or so has any real effect, but it's that one in a dozen or so that keeps him getting funded through the other 11. Because the losses don't have much political cost.

It's a self-own because this doesn't cast shade on real allegations, it does the opposite by showing that the WaPo is doing diligence on the allegations. It probably doesn't matter though: folks who trust the WaPo already know they do diligence, and folks who don't trust them won't care.

My point being, that the intersection set of group "readers of this WaPo piece" and "voters of Alabama" are already polarized such that the gain from the in-group (i.e., Trump supporters in Alabama) might be greater than publication of the own-goal.

Consider: what if O'Keefe is just a decoy?