Walter Wang was headed down Interstate 5 to a family get-together on March 13 when his phone dinged. A WhatsApp message flashed across the screen from an old friend in Taiwan posing a puzzling rhetorical question: Weren't he and his wife, Shirley, American citizens?
"Can you read this?" he said, handing the phone to Shirley. She clicked the link included in the message. After a couple of minutes, she looked up at her husband. "This is wrong."
The friend in Taiwan had spotted a story published that day on the far-right-wing site the Daily Caller, co-founded by Fox News showman Tucker Carlson. It focused primarily on former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti but featured Wang as a supporting character. In a hit piece devoid of damning facts, heavy on innuendo and liberally sprinkled with the words "alleged" and "allegedly," the article painted Garcetti and Wang as dangerous stooges of the Chinese Communist Party.
