The Gateway Pundit
The Gateway Pundit (TGP) is an American far-right[2] fake news website.[1] The website is known for publishing falsehoods, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories.[34]
Type of site
Founded by Jim Hoft in 2004, The Gateway Pundit expanded from a one-person enterprise into a multi-employee operation that is supported primarily by advertising revenue.[35][36] During the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, the site received over a million unique visitors per day.[37] In September 2021, Google demonetized the site for publishing misinformation.[38][39][40]
Staff
Jim Hoft
In March 2013, The Gateway Pundit founder Jim Hoft was awarded the Reed Irvine Award for New Media by the Accuracy in Media watchdog at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).[109][110]
In August 2013, Hoft contracted a serious strep infection, lost his vision in one eye, suffered five strokes, and required 12 hours of open-heart surgery. Three months after his treatment and before the imminent loss of his health insurance, Hoft stated that it was the Affordable Care Act that had caused insurance companies to leave the marketplace in his home state of Missouri.[111]
Following the 2016 mass shooting at the gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, Hoft came out as gay, blamed Barack Obama for the massacre and derided "leftwing gay activists" Sally Kohn and Perez Hilton for blaming the National Rifle Association and Christianity for the attack.[42]
On March 4, 2017, Hoft spoke at the Spirit of America Rally in Nashville, Tennessee, and announced that he was starting an event, "The Real News Correspondents' Dinner", to compete with the White House Correspondents' Dinner. The event occurred as planned on April 28, 2017.[112]
In February 2018, Hoft was scheduled to participate in a Conservative Political Action Conference panel titled "Social Media Censorship". After CPAC preemptively removed him from the discussion on censorship following Hoft's coverage of the recent Florida mass shooting, he stated that CPAC was in effect engaging in its own form of censorship.[113]
Notable writers
Notable writers for The Gateway Pundit, past and present, include Michael Strickland (2015–2016), Lucian Wintrich (2017–2018), Cassandra Fairbanks (2017–present), and Jacob Wohl (2018).