'We Don't Hate Journalists Enough': The Story of an F-ed Up Deepfake

Summary

Podcast Summary

Podcast: Question Everything
Episode: "We Don't Hate Journalists Enough": The Story of an F-ed Up Deepfake
Host: Brian Reed
Producer/Reporter: Zach St. Louis
Date: November 13, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode investigates the increasingly hostile environment journalists face, focusing on the experiences of Argentinian journalist Julia Mengolini. Through Mengolini's harrowing story of being targeted by a malicious AI deepfake and a coordinated online harassment campaign, the show unpacks the complexities and implications of deepfake technology for press freedom, online abuse, and political power.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Ubiquity and Dangers of Deepfakes

• Introduction of Deepfake Technology

  • Zach St. Louis opens the episode discussing the viral “trampoline rabbit” TikTok video and a recent South Park episode that employed lifelike AI deepfakes for satire. (02:21–04:16)
  • Highlights both the harmless, entertaining use cases and the malicious potential: “Deepfakes are a new horrendous problem. Uncharted territory for disinformation.” (03:01)

• Deepfakes as a Tool of Harassment

  • Deepfakes' reach extends beyond celebrity or political targets, affecting everyday people, especially public figures and journalists.

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2. Julia Mengolini: Journalist Under Attack

• Profile of Julia Mengolini

  • An established journalist in Argentina, co-founder of an independent radio network, known for openly criticizing President Javier Milei and championing progressive causes. (06:11–06:44)
  • “In Argentina everything is going to shit...I think that journalists have a mission to say what is happening.” –Julia Mengolini (06:44)

• Why She Was Targeted

  • Julia’s criticism of Milei’s character and policies, particularly her comment about his close relationship with his sister, leads to backlash from Milei’s right-wing supporters. (07:44–08:33)
  • “I think that that's probably why I am a target, to take down.” (10:17)

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3. The Harassment Escalates

• Wave of Threats

  • Julia begins receiving hundreds of threats, including doxxing and violent death threats, some targeting her family. (10:58–11:48)
    • “Just like, ‘You're going to experience something very bad, something bad is going to happen to you.’”
    • “Do society a favor and kill yourself, bitch.” (11:18)

• Release of Deepfake Content

  • Julia discovers a doctored photo of her and her brother making out, spreading virally on Twitter, followed by a pornographic deepfake video distributed via direct messages and encrypted apps. (12:35–15:09)
  • Julia reflects: “I don't think that it was made for people to believe it...the goal was to mortify me.” (16:42)

• Psychological Impact

  • Julia describes the terror of potential public exposure, fearing her family’s reaction, and feeling unsafe even in public spaces. (19:51–22:15)
    • “If people in a restaurant, they look at me. I cannot be alone.” (21:36)
    • “I felt torture.” (22:34)

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4. The State Responds—And Joins In

• Government Officials Amplify the Harassment

  • High-profile figures, including the President’s propagandist and party officials, publicly reference and spread the deepfake, escalating the attack. (25:43–27:31)
    • President Milei tweets about Julia 93 times in one weekend, retweeting the deepfake and using phrases like “we don't hate journalists enough.” (27:40)

• Press Freedom in Argentina

  • Since Milei's election, Argentina plummeted 47 places in the World Press Freedom Index. (28:47)
  • Record of Milei attacking, suing, and maligning journalists:
    • “Once out of the hospital, a bruised up Navarro got in front of the camera...’I hold President Milei responsible for what happened to me and what might happen to me.’” –Roberto Navarro (30:35)

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5. Legal Recourse & Systemic Barriers

• Julia’s Response

  • With few legal avenues through platforms, Julia considers her options and decides to go public and pursue legal action.
    • “I’m not going to look the other way, but we’re going to focus. I’m going to use this in my favor.” (33:21)

• Filing Criminal Charges

  • She files a criminal complaint against President Milei and several associates, charging them with public intimidation, inciting hatred, threats, illegal association, and misuse of public funds. (36:00–36:44)
  • “Because I started to receive calls from different lawyers in Argentina…we have to do something with this.” (36:20)

• Barriers to Justice

  • US-based platforms are shielded by Section 230; Argentina has little relevant law.
    • “She can sue the president and other political leaders in Argentina...[But] suing them [tech companies] is not an option...because of section 230.” –Brian Reed (45:03)

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6. Transformation: From Victim to Symbol of Resistance

• Turning Point

  • Publicly sharing her audio message crying on TV sparks a wave of support that alters the narrative:
    • “If Julia choosing to broadcast herself crying invigorated her trolls again, she didn’t care. This time, the support was much louder and she felt it more.” (35:39)

• Lasting Effects and Lessons

  • Julia’s visibility and support in Argentina increase; being a survivor and resister of the attack becomes part of her public identity. (41:06–41:48)
    • “Now I walk down the street and I’m not afraid anymore. Strangers come greet me...They made me into a hero, which I wasn’t before.”
    • “I feel that I won already in ethical terms...To keep on saying the horrors of Milei’s government.” (41:48–41:59)

• Advice for Others

  • Julia urges public denunciation and collective action against digital violence.
    • “Maybe I would say that you need to denounce this publicly, make it public, to have a public discussion about it, to start fighting against these things, not naturalize them.” (40:19)

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7. The Political Context: International Implications

• US-Argentina Relations
  • Brian Reed and Julia discuss the political consequences of US President Trump’s support for Milei during the recent elections, which helped bolster Milei’s party in parliament. (42:11–44:00)
  • “I feel more vulnerable. It’s not the same to be confronting a weakened president as it is to be confronting a president with renewed power.” (42:50)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Deepfakes are a new horrendous problem. Uncharted territory for disinformation...These videos come with a whole assortment of thorny ethical questions.” –Zach St. Louis (03:01)

• “I felt torture. The word torture in our country is very heavy...Nevertheless, I have no doubt that I was being tortured and that the fact that it was spiritual didn’t make it less real.” –Julia Mengolini (22:34)

• “Javier Milei, the President of Argentina, liked and retweeted and piled on and raised the profile of a deepfake porn video attacking Julia nearly 100 times in three days...On many of his tweets, he added a favorite catchphrase of ‘we don’t hate journalists enough.’” –Zach St. Louis (27:40)

• “I decided to file a complaint against the President. The crimes are public intimidation with assignment to hatred, illegal association, threats, and embezzlement of public funds.” –Julia Mengolini (35:54, 36:50)

• “The pain I felt is real as the pain of a punch. So why shouldn’t this be a crime, a violence like this?” –Julia Mengolini (39:59)

• “They made me into a hero, which I wasn’t before...Now... I feel that I won already in ethical terms. And that is something that gives me a lot of strength.” –Julia Mengolini (41:06–41:59)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [03:01] Introduction to deepfakes’ threat to truth and journalism
• [06:11] Julia’s background as a political journalist in Argentina
• [10:17] Roots of online abuse tied to Julia’s criticism of President Milei
• [11:18] Gruesome threats and doxxing targeting Julia and her family
• [12:35] First appearance of AI-doctored incest photo with her brother
• [14:53] Circulation of deepfake pornographic video
• [22:34] Julia describes impact of “spiritual torture”
• [27:40] President Milei’s public escalation, retweets, and “we don’t hate journalists enough”
• [36:00] Julia files criminal charges against Milei and others
• [40:19] Julia’s advice for targets of similar harassment
• [41:48] Julia’s transformation in the public eye and her resilience
• [42:11] US involvement in Argentina’s election and implications for journalism

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Tone & Language

The episode is serious, urgent, and at times rawly human—with Julia Mengolini’s vulnerability, determination, and candidness at the center. Zach and Brian maintain a tone of journalistic inquiry, underlining the moral stakes and systemic challenges with empathy and clarity.

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Conclusion

This episode offers a powerful, unvarnished look at how new technologies like deepfakes are weaponized in concert with political power to silence and intimidate the press. Julia Mengolini’s personal ordeal exposes the limits of current legal remedies, the global interconnectedness of online abuse, and the central role of public solidarity in resisting digital violence. Her journey ends on a note of hard-won moral victory and a call to collective action.

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Transcript

[Brian Reed]

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[Brian Reed]

Hey y'. All, I've been hearing from a lot of you on social in my DMs on substack about how you're enjoying the show, appreciating it, which I really appreciate. Just a friendly reminder here to please rate and review Question everything highly. I hope wherever you're listening to podcasts and share it with a friend. Today on the show, a journalist gets dragged into the nightmarish side of the Internet, the dark new world of AI deep fake videos.

[Zach St. Louis]

Hi, I'm Zach St. Louis, a producer and reporter on Question Everything. Maybe three months ago, I was scrolling through TikTok and I came across a video. It was an equally adorable and captivating video. It looked like security cam footage of someone's backyard with a trampoline in it. And then some bunnies come along. They're on the edge of the trampoline. Then walking out in the middle, you can see where this is going. There's like six or eight of them. One starts jumping, they all start bouncing around.

It's a video of a trampoline rabbit party. I loved it. I was like, it's hilarious that these bunnies love this trampoline. I let it play on a loop like five times.

Maybe you've seen this video. If not, please google it. But know this, that that video is total bs. It's AI of something cute. Yes, and it goes to show that you can really get sucked into these videos sometimes in a feel good way. But then of course the opposite is true too. They can be totally malicious. And even when we know a video is fake, it can wreak havoc. Deepfakes are a new horrendous problem. Uncharted territory for disinformation. And even when they aren't deceitful, these videos come with a whole assortment of thorny ethical questions. I mean, have you seen south park this season?

I'm going down south park, gonna have myself. The show is a cartoon, but at the end of the first episode they break their standard cartoon format and show a hyper realistic Deepfake AI video they made of Donald Trump.

So again, this is a quote seen in a South park episode showing a very convincing realistic looking video of Trump.

It's a parody of a campaign ad, complete with voiceover. It shows Trump in the desert wearing an ill fitting suit. He starts stripping down to reveal a chubby, fully naked Trump walking slowly, desperately through the desert heat. He falls to his knees and rolls over to reveal a tiny penis with plastic googly eyes stuck on it.

Again, this is not a cartoon, but a very lifelike deepfake. It sets up the recurring joke of the series about the President's small penis. If you can believe it, the penis talks.

[KCRW Announcer]

I'm Donald J. Trump and I endorse this message.

[Zach St. Louis]

It's a pretty shocking kind of new satire. Shocking in that it looks so real. And that's thanks to AI.

Satire aside, these videos can and will be used against any number of people. They will and are being used to make people say and do things they simply have not said or done to target, to humiliate. And this problem is so new, there doesn't seem to be any conventional wisdom on what to do if you are the target. Even if people realize it's fake, some things cannot be unseen or forgotten. From KCRW and Placement Theory, this is question everything. And today we have the story of a journalist who falls victim to a Deepfake video as an act of online trolling. That is among one of the more despicable means of harassment I've heard of. It begs the question, if you become the subject of a Deepfake video, what the hell do you do?

Stick around.

[Brian Reed]

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[Zach St. Louis]

Hola.

[Julia Mengolini]

Hola.

[Zach St. Louis]

How are you?

[Julia Mengolini]

Bien bienbos.

[Zach St. Louis]

Pretty good.

Julia Mengelini is a journalist in Argentina. She's covered politics and Argentinian TV and public radio going back some 20 years. Today she's the co founder of an independent radio network.

She has a daily show where she interviews politicians and other public figures. Culia is known for being openly critical of Argentina's president Xavier Milei and his policies. Policies that in her view are not helping Argentina's bad economic situation.

[Julia Mengolini]

In Argentina everything is going to shit.

[Zach St. Louis]

Basically this is Julia talking to me with an interpreter.

[Julia Mengolini]

We are having a very bad time and people in our society suffering a lot and I don't want to live in that country. I think that journalists have a mission to say what is happening.

[Zach St. Louis]

Back when Milei was running for president, this was over two years ago, Julia and others were noticing some eccentric details about the then presidential candidate Milei. Not married, no kids, lived at home with a whole bunch of identical dogs. Dogs that he'd cloned from his favorite dog. He also lived with his sister who was running his presidential campaign. Before the election, Julio went on one of those TV panel shows on what's basically Argentina's version of CNN called C5N and she said this on the this is a man.

Who lives with eight dogs.

And is in love with his sister. Milei has said he only has five clone dogs, not eight. Regardless, online, Milei supporters did not like Julia's comments and they did not like her. They were like, wait, he's in love with his sister? What are you getting at? And basically, how dare you? Did that particular comment strike you as different than anything else that you had said about him? Did it seem more malicious?

[Julia Mengolini]

I didn't thought that it was going to generate so much attention at the time, I didn't say that he had sexual relationships with his sister. What I said is that he was in love with his sister.

I am not the only one that said it. I am not the only one that noticed it. In fact, some days before that he said that he wishes he become president to make his sister the First Lady. And at the time it generated a lot of controversy. So I choose to focus on this part of Milei's character. I did this as a last resort to prevent him from winning. But it happened. He won.

[Zach St. Louis]

Milei has been the president for almost two years now and Julia has continued to criticize him. Less so for his dog cloning habit, more for his policies, like the massive cuts he's made to public programs, cuts that Milei says he's doing with his Moto Sierra or chainsaw. This image taking a chainsaw to the Argentinian government has become something of a symbol for Milei. Maybe that sounds familiar. You might recall one of Elon Musk's viral moments standing on stage at CPAC last winter.

[Brian Reed]

This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy.

[Zach St. Louis]

Trench off.

Musk, the US government's then head of Doge, swinging a chainsaw around over his head. Well, Musk was given that chainsaw by Milei. One bureaucracy slasher to another.

[Brian Reed]

Well, President, President Milei has a gift for me. Javier Milei from Argentina.

[Julia Mengolini]

You guys know who that is, right?

[Zach St. Louis]

All of Julia's criticism of the President has come with a growing number of online haters, haters who support Milei, haters on the right, haters who would eventually target Julia with their deepfake skills.

[Julia Mengolini]

I have a long story with right wing trolls in this country and they have been worse and worse. I would tell you that there are a series of values that I defend that are all the things that they attack with, which is feminism, environmentalism, human rights, all of these things I defend for more than 20 years. And I think that that's probably why I am a target, to take down.

Julia's thick skinned.

[Zach St. Louis]

She usually doesn't let these haters get her down. But this past summer, the trolling reached a new level.

[Julia Mengolini]

The first thing that I started seeing were threats in my Instagram inbox, threats with my address, awful things. Just like you're going to experience something very bad, something bad is going to happen to you.

[Zach St. Louis]

Julia says she got hundreds of threats. She sent me a few dozen of these messages from June. Here's a sample. I swear I'm going to kidnap you and you're going to end up lying in a Ditch going gutted, you fucking bitch or filthy leftist piece of shit or take care of your family. Your little daughter who's in kindergarten is going to be left without parents and do society a favor and kill yourself, bitch.

[Julia Mengolini]

Que fuera encomotan. I've never received such direct threats. I remember I was in the bus arriving at work and I got a message with my work address, which is where I was going. And I remember jumping off the bus and I saw a policeman in the corner and asked him to escort me to the door. And this was one of the first moments that I was actually afraid.

[Zach St. Louis]

Some of these threats mentioned Julia's six year old daughter and gave her home address. And then one day in June, Julia was on the air hosting her radio show. She had her laptop out and opened Twitter and she saw all of these tweets that showed an old picture of Julia and her brother that someone took off of her Instagram.

In the picture they're posing for the camera, smiling, arms around each other while swimming in a lake. Then she saw other tweets of that photo, only it had been realistically brought to life using AI so that you see Julia and her brother turn toward each other and start making out.

It's a few seconds long, a gif basically playing on a loop.

[Julia Mengolini]

Chloe.

I saw it and I closed it immediately because I couldn't lose focus because I was in my radio show.

[Zach St. Louis]

Julia's a pro. She put it aside and continued her show. No one listening would have known what she saw. But later she would look at these tweets more closely. So many tweets sharing this AI doctored photo with commenters saying that Julia had an incestual relationship with her brother. She didn't know if people actually believed it or not. Many were laughing at her, making fun of her. Some called her incestolini, a play on her last name, Mangolini. And she continued to receive mountains of threats, death threats, to her inbox. A few days later, Julia finally alluded to what was happening to her her radio show. Not directly at first. She tries to make light of it. This is her on the show.

[Julia Mengolini]

I said, hey, it looks like a sport to be killing Melgolini all the time. When I tell this in the radio, my voice breaks a little bit.

[Zach St. Louis]

Julia pauses mid sentence. Her eyes well up.

She puts her hand to her chest and takes a beat before continuing.

Her co host jumps in to say, it's a tense day, isn't it?

Julia's haters smelled weakness and pounced. They posted this clip of her Crying on the air with comments like, it's a noble sport to beat up on mangolini and you reap what you sow. Mangolini. Never forget that. That doctored photo was just a taste of what was coming for Julia. The trolls released another video of Julia. This time it's a full on deepfake video that starts circulating online. It's even worse than the photo.

[Julia Mengolini]

Que es un videosexual Tambien comirmano tambien echo con intelicens artificial. Also with my brother, made with AI pornographic video. And they have sent it to me via email, via Telegram, Instagram inbox.

[Zach St. Louis]

The video was sexually explicit, so it wasn't being posted to Twitter directly. Instead, people would post that they had access to this video and if you messaged them, they could send you a link. But of course, people were sending this video to Julia directly. At first, Julia could not bring herself to watch it. She didn't want to see it. You've never seen it.

[Julia Mengolini]

So, yes, eventually I've watched it.

[Zach St. Louis]

I mean, I'm sorry to have to ask this, I know it's kind of sensitive, but just to really understand, because I haven't seen this video, can you summarize what it depicts?

[Julia Mengolini]

It's a video with a fellatio that I am doing to my. To my brother. You can see like my face and my hair, my curls, but you cannot see his face very well.

Something like that. It's along that way, the video.

[Zach St. Louis]

I'm so sorry.

Julia started thinking about just how many people would have access to this video online. There seemed to be endless posts about it, and the quality of the video wasn't even that good. So why do this? She wondered if the goal was to humiliate her. She felt that if the goal was to frighten her, she felt that too.

[Julia Mengolini]

I don't think that it was made for people to believe it. The goal was not to convince people that I have ancestral relationships with my brother. The quality of the video was always secondary. The goal was not to be believable. I think that they made it with another goal to mortify me.

At the beginning, I said, okay, I'm not going to say anything and this is going to pass by. I'm not going to respond. Not in Twitter, not on the radio, not anywhere. Because what is it that I'm going to say? Do I need to clarify that I have sex with my brother and I'm also feeding this stupid situation?

There was nothing to defend, nothing to discuss. There was no defense, because we're not even discussing an idea here. What is this? Their objective, their target, was to break me.

[Zach St. Louis]

I'm curious if you see what you said about his sister, then as related in any way to why these trolls on the right focused on a video of you and your brother?

[Julia Mengolini]

Yeah, totally. I think that it was a revenge.

[Zach St. Louis]

Julia didn't know who exactly made the video. There wasn't a way to find the source. It just emerged from the cesspool of right wing trolls with anonymous accounts. For the most part, no one Julia knew her left wing friends and colleagues even knew this video existed. But it was getting a lot of attention on the right. For example, there was one post on Twitter that bragged about seeing the video and invited others to send a DM for the link. It got over 4 million views and hundreds of replies. Still, she knew that people in her life, people she's close to, might see it. Can I ask you about your brother? When did you tell him or did he see it on his own?

[Julia Mengolini]

At the time, my brother was my main concern because he's not a public figure and he's my older brother and I'm his little sister. If he was involved in something like this, well, that could affect him. It could be very hurtful for him. And he was on vacation and I didn't want this to ruin his vacation. He's not a public figure. He doesn't even have a Twitter account. Finally, he got news after his vacation, thank God. And I asked him, how do you feel with this?

And he said, I'm only worried about how you feel.

[Zach St. Louis]

Do you know if your brother ever saw the video?

[Julia Mengolini]

No, no, no. He didn't watch it.

[Zach St. Louis]

Julia had to consider how this video might impact her family. Julia says her husband was supportive. They're close, almost like the same person, but they had other family to think about and protect, like their six year old daughter and Julia's mom.

[Julia Mengolini]

The only thing I wanted was my mom not to find out because how is my mom going to deal with something so horrendous?

[Zach St. Louis]

Yeah. Do you think she ever saw it in the end?

[Julia Mengolini]

No, no, Grio, no, no, I don't think that she has.

She knew about it, but I am not the one that told her. I couldn't bring myself to talk about it directly with her. I didn't want to go through that because there are some pains that when you talk to your mom, like when you're a little kid and you hit your knee and you start crying, then you get over it and then crying again when you see your mom. So there was Something there that I wanted to avoid any conversation with her.

And I thought I could manage it myself.

[Zach St. Louis]

Was it affecting your life in other ways? I'm thinking, if it were me, I'd be out at the store being like, I wonder if this person has seen this video of me. Like, was that getting to you at all during that time?

[Julia Mengolini]

Yes, during that time. I really remember that, for example, a night that I went to the theater and I agreed to meet with some friends. And being in the taxi and asking my friends if they have arrived, because I didn't want to be standing alone in a corner. So I was asking, are you there? Are you there? What's going on? Yeah, everything's okay. So when I arrived, they asked me, what is going on that you're so self conscious?

And I said, I don't want to be alone. I feel unsafe. If people in a restaurant, they look at me.

I cannot be alone.

I remember a night which was terrible for me. My husband was out and I was putting my little girl to sleep. Once she was asleep, I grabbed my phone and I entered Twitter and I saw again the video and all types of threats. I saw death threats and rape threats.

And things like, since I look like your brother, surely you're going to like fucking me.

The video must have had more than 1 million views easily. I called my husband and asked him to please come back home. And he did. And that night he comforted me.

Day after day. They wouldn't stop. Threats wouldn't stop. And so I was holding it, holding it, waiting for it to pass by. And I realized that it was not going away. I felt that they wouldn't stop. I felt torture. And this word. The word torture in our country is very heavy. Because in the 70s we have disappearances, tortures and killings. So the word torture is not said lightly. Nevertheless, I have no doubt that I was being torture and that the fact that it was spiritual didn't make it less real.

And I broke.

I wanted to stop being a journalist. I wanted to move to my mom's house. I felt that I didn't want any of this anymore, that nothing were worth this amount of pain. Because now the people that were threatening me and were generating all of these deep fake were directly linked to the President of Argentina.

[Zach St. Louis]

After a quick break, the president joins the pylon and Julia fights back.

[Brian Reed]

So I found a new use for my Plaud device. Just the other night, I was in an Uber. All right, so I have to give a speech in a few minutes to accept an award which is very Exciting Special Achievement award for Question Everything. Question Everything was being honored, the Signal Awards and I hadn't written anything. So I pulled out my plod. It's this AI powered device. It listens, organizes, summarizes my ideas anytime, anywhere. It's like the size of a Twix candy, a mini Twix candy. And it's got a little clip. I clipped it on my lapel and just started talking. I'm gonna give you some ideas and I need you to consolidate it basically into a coherent speech. I didn't need to overthink it, so I just told it what I wanted to say. Being a journalist right now is really uncertain. It's really stressful. It's really hard. We're trying to take on that fundamental issue in our storytelling and reporting. Trying to create a show where we're trying to cut through that head on, you know, rather than just like putting work out and hoping for the best. I then went into my app on my phone. The AI is really good. You can ask it questions. And I told Plaude to pick the best points of what I said and put it into quick bullet points for my speech. And it did. It walked into the venue and I killed. Search for Plaud. That's P L A U D in Google or Amazon. I'm gonna keep sharing ways that I'm learning how to use it with you. Give it a whirl.

[Zach St. Louis]

As the anonymous online mob escalated their attacks against Julia, she started to notice people weighing in who were not nameless trolls, but well known public figures. People who were part of the President's administration. Government officials writing posts chiming in, calling attention to this deep, fake pornographic video of Julia and her brother.

[Julia Mengolini]

Por genplo ta Santiago Orilla.

[Zach St. Louis]

Santiago Urrea. His official title is Director of Audiovisual Productions for the Presidency of the Nation. Though many call him a propagandist for the President. He's made several films about Milei. Odia tweeted about the video, saying if Julia thought being accused of incest was wrong, then she shouldn't have accused the president of it.

[Julia Mengolini]

Una di puta Nacional. There is a national deputy called Linya Lemoine.

[Zach St. Louis]

Then there's Lilia Lemoine, another government official who posted about Julia on Twitter. She's a makeup artist turned politician who briefly dated Milei and often did his makeup for TV appearances. She was elected to Argentina's Congress in 2023 in Milei's party.

[Julia Mengolini]

And she's still the one that makes up his chin because Milei has a big Complex around his chin. She's one of the people that viralized this video. The most.

When Lili and Moyne tweet about it, I think that that's the moment in which the bubble burst.

[Zach St. Louis]

As in suddenly more prominent people in Argentina saw that this video was going around, which meant that it was no longer only happening in the far right online circles. Articles were being written bigger name. Right wing commentators were talking about the harassment against Julia on their shows. Posting online, the posters were largely laughing at Julia's situation and saying this was karma, basically for attacking their guy Milei. In one example, a right wing commentator named Mariano Perez posted a photo of Julia on Twitter holding up a copy of a book she wrote last year. The title has been photoshopped to say Incest as a way of life. The caption reads, does anyone know where to buy Mangolini's book? It has nearly 650,000 views.

[Julia Mengolini]

And then un finece semana un del presidente la nacione.

And then there was a weekend in which the president of the nation write about me 93 times. 93 tweets referring to this.

[Zach St. Louis]

Javier Milei, the President of Argentina, liked and retweeted and piled on and raised the profile of a deepfake porn video attacking Julia nearly 100 times in three days. Some have been deleted now, but they were mostly him retweeting his supporters who were posting about Julia, calling journalists basura trash. On many of his tweets, he added a favorite catchphrase of we don't hate journalists enough.

[Julia Mengolini]

The message was not.

Incest. No, no, it was, you deserve it.

[Zach St. Louis]

God, that must have been a really intense weekend.

[Julia Mengolini]

The truth is, this whole story is really a nightmare.

[Zach St. Louis]

Since Milei took office in 2023, Argentina has fallen 47 spots on the World Press Freedom Index. They were 40th. Now they're 87th in the world. Reporters Without Borders, the group who puts out the list, cites Milei's hostile rhetoric toward the press, especially on his social media, as part of the reason for the drop. Another big reason, a rise in physical attacks against journalists in Argentina. Also, like the US President, Milei makes a habit of suing journalists he doesn't like on little to no grounds. In April, the journalist and historian Carlos Pagni wrote a column where he compared Milei's rise to Hitler's in Nazi Germany. Milei sued Pagny, unsuccessfully, for defamation. Milei has appealed. In May, Ari Lihilad, another columnist, wrote a similar piece where he compared Milei's rhetoric to the arguments Nazis used to justify The Holocaust. Milei also sued him for defamation. The case was also dismissed. Milei sued TV journalist Viviana Canossa for comments she made on the air, including that Milei wants us as slaves and submissives. The case is ongoing. In April, Milei tweeted about his disdain for journalists, saying, I think people don't hate these hit men with press credentials enough. If people knew them better, they would hate them even more than politicians, calling the press lying journalists and lying garbage. Just two days later, another journalist, head of the progressive outlet El Destape Roberto Navarro, was assaulted in a hotel lobby in downtown Buenos Aires by two men, one screaming, calling him a son of a bitch and a fucking liar. The other came up behind Navarro and struck him in the head. Navarro was hospitalized for two days. He was badly bruised, swollen, and had trouble speaking. Once out of the hospital, a bruised up Navarro got in front of the camera to speak about his attack, describing what happened in detail and saying. The President posted a tweet that began with the same words as this guy, lying journalists. I hold President Milei responsible for what happened to me and what might happen to me.

[Julia Mengolini]

Navarro was hit in the name of Milei. The hate speech end up having very concrete effects. There is people that in the streets can be very violent.

[Zach St. Louis]

That attack on Roberto Navarro happened just two months before the trolls came for Julia with their AI generated deepfake of her and her brother. Julia didn't know of any other journalists who'd been targeted with a video like this. She was determined to do something. But what? She could report it to the platforms. But remember, the pornographic video wasn't being posted directly on social media. People were sending the link privately. And while Twitter does have a zero tolerance policy for non consensual nude images, including AI, that policy has not been enforced. Well, last year, researchers at Cornell did a study where they uploaded 50 AI generated nude images that violated Twitter's policy. They reported half of them to the platform. After three weeks, zero posts were removed. At the same time, the man who owns Twitter, Elon Musk, has used his platform to denigrate reporters with Milei's you don't hate the media enough.

In May, the US did pass the Take It Down Act. It's a new law that criminalizes the distribution of, quote, non consensual intimate images. It's the first federal law to specifically target the removal of deepfakes. It requires that social media companies remove that content when notified. Though platforms have until May of next year to start complying and the FTC has not yet said how they plan to enforce it. Argentina has no such laws. There is a bill currently in their Congress that would address deepfakes, but it hasn't passed. And if you're a regular listener of this show, you know that Julia can't sue the platforms directly. They're American companies protected by section 230. All that's to say, it was really unclear what Julia could do. She and her husband strategized.

[Julia Mengolini]

There was a point in which I remember talking with my husband and we decided, we have to flip it. And I remember perfectly the moment of the decision of saying.

I'm not going to look the other way, but we're going to focus. I'm going to use this in my favor.

[Zach St. Louis]

They decided that Julia shouldn't just stay silent and wait for it to pass, that she should face it head on and share her experience in her own words. She was nervous about that strategy at first. It might mean pushing the video into corners it hadn't been before among her left wing friends and colleagues. But she started talking to some other female journalists about what she could do. Julia sent an audio message asking for advice to one of her friends who's a popular TV host in Argentina. While Julia was explaining the deepfake video and how far reaching it was, she started crying.

[Julia Mengolini]

This journalist asked me if she could play and broadcast the audio on the tv she had the TV show, and I said no because I didn't want people to hear me crying. And she insisted because she told me, I'm telling you as an older sister, it doesn't matter now that you feel humiliated facing the trolls. What you need now is support because you always show that you're very strong, but people need to know that this is damaging you. So allowed me to play this audio cry. And after insisting a little bit, I said, okay. And on Friday night, in a TV show that a lot of people watched, and she start her editorial.

It was focused on hate, hate as fuel for politics. And she's saying, Julia Megolini is receiving a smear campaign. This is the audio that Julia sent me.

And she broadcast it.

And that generated a mass support. Clearly, hearing me crying awakens something. And that night I received messages, messages, messages and more messages on Twitter. It was like a milestone because I didn't want to know anything about this anymore. I wanted to move to Mars. And that support changed the whole perspective.

[Zach St. Louis]

If Julia choosing to broadcast herself crying invigorated her trolls again, she didn't care. This time, the support was much louder and she felt it more Julia made up her mind.

[Julia Mengolini]

I decided to file a complaint against the President.

[Zach St. Louis]

Eventually, Julia filed criminal charges against milei, along with 17 others involved with spreading the video, including the President's filmmaker, Santiago Orilla, and Lili Lemoine, the makeup artist turned congresswoman. What made you decide to file the criminal complaint?

[Julia Mengolini]

Because I started to receive calls from different lawyers in Argentina that offered their services. I want to represent you. We have to do something with this. And one of them is a very well known lawyer in Argentina. And he convinced me that we have to do something. And that's when I decided to do this.

[Zach St. Louis]

What are you accusing Milei of exactly?

[Julia Mengolini]

The crimes are public intimidation with assignment to hatred, illegal association threats and embezzlement of public funds.

[Zach St. Louis]

Public intimidation, threats, those are easily understood. But for the embezzlement charge, which translates more closely to misusing public funds, Julia and her lawyers are arguing that because government officials were involved, the harassment campaign was publicly funded. In a retaliatory move, Milei sued Julia too. Like the way he sued all those other journalists for defamation for her two year old comments about him, his sister and his dogs. A judge dismissed the case. As far as Julia's complaint against Milei, it's moving forward and it's a new kind of complaint In Argentina, no journalists have filed criminal charges against a sitting president for his hateful comments online.

Do you know if Milei has ever been the target of a deepfake of some kind? Are people making AI videos targeting him?

[Julia Mengolini]

No, no.

He is constantly showing AI videos in which he's a hero, these naughty fakes, but they are made by his own political force. He's using all the time AI to show how powerful he is or to show him more with more muscle, fighting Peronist zombies. And they show him as a gladiator or as a lion, a powerful lion. I think that Trump does something very similar.

[Zach St. Louis]

As someone who's covered Milei for years now, how would you expect him to react if there were a similarly humiliating video made of him that was circulated online?

[Julia Mengolini]

He has a lot of power now. Therefore what he's doing with the people that say things that he doesn't like is that he starts suing them. And if he would receive some kind of beef fake, I don't think that he would like it, of course.

[Zach St. Louis]

So your criminal complaint, do you expect this to go to trial? Do you expect to have to face Milei in trial?

[Julia Mengolini]

Well, to be honest, Milei needs to stop being the president for that to happen. He needs to have less power because Power equals impunity. In this case.

I think that this is going to happen, but in the long term.

[Zach St. Louis]

So part of this is you're not necessarily just looking for justice for yourself. You're trying to set a precedent for the country.

[Julia Mengolini]

Yes, a precedent that would be ideal. We need to take this violence more seriously. I think that our societies will have to start admitting that what happens in the virtual world happens in reality. The things happen for real.

The pain that I felt is real as a pain of a punch. So why this wouldn't be a crime, a violence like this.

[Zach St. Louis]

If somebody else were this target, what advice would you give them?

[Julia Mengolini]

Maybe I would say that you need to denounce this publicly, make it public, to have a public discussion about it, to start fighting against these things, not naturalize them. I think that the acts in digital world still don't have any consequence, and I think there should be consequences. And I think that humanity needs to start having this conversation right now.

[Zach St. Louis]

Are you still receiving attacks, harassment?

[Julia Mengolini]

No.

[Zach St. Louis]

I don't know why not. Do you think what changed?

[Julia Mengolini]

I think they broke their tool, they broke their toy. They went too far. After harassing me for 10 years, you create an a video where I'm having sex with my brother.

After that, what else can you possibly do? And also they went so far that they created a public support. They made me into a hero, which I wasn't before. And now I walk down the street and I'm not afraid anymore. Strangers come greet me and they go like, let's go, Julia, we support you. People want to hug me, kiss me, take pictures with me. It's like in Argentina. They raised my public figure in Argentina.

Now, even though I don't know what may happen with my lawsuit.

I feel that I won already in ethical terms. And that is something that gives me a lot of strength.

To keep on saying the horrors of Mile's government.

[Zach St. Louis]

When I first spoke to Julia back in mid September, she was feeling cautiously optimistic that the political tides in Argentina might be changing. Milei's Libertarian Party had just lost a key election in Buenos Aires province, the most populous in the country by more than 13 points, a larger margin than many expected. Milei, Julia thought, might be losing public support here in America. President Trump must have thought the same thing, only he really did not like it. A month after those local elections where Milei's party lost, Trump threw the weight of his presidency behind Milei to help him. In Argentina's national congressional elections that were coming up, Trump promised Argentina $40 billion if and only if, milei's party held onto their congressional seats. Then, four days before the elections, Trump announced that the US was looking at quadrupling the amount of beef it buys from Argentina, which would likely mean hundreds of millions of additional dollars going to Argentina from the US And Trump's plan seemed to work. Milei's party did way better than they were projected to do, won a bunch of new seats. The results, Julia said, were quite tough for me. I feel more vulnerable. It's not the same to be confronting a weakened president as it is to be confronting a president with renewed power. She thinks the promises made by the US Played a role in the results. Trump certainly thinks so, too. The day after Argentina's elections, he said.

[Julia Mengolini]

In Argentina, I want to congratulate the victor. And he was a big victor, and he had a lot of help from us. He had a lot of help. I gave him an endorsement, a very strong endorsement. Not only did he win, he won by a lot.

[Zach St. Louis]

The night his party won, Milei, who's up for reelection in 2027, took the stage in front of a huge crowd, singing along to a rock song blasting through the speaker.

I am the king of a lost world, he sang. I am the king and I will destroy you.

[Brian Reed]

That's our producer Zach St. Louis, who reported that story. I did, by the way, feed Zach one question to ask Julia when he was interviewing her.

[Zach St. Louis]

Do you wish that you could sue Twitter or these platforms for allowing this to happen?

[Julia Mengolini]

Oy se y to talment.

Yes, I would love to. Completely.

[Brian Reed]

Julia's clearly not afraid to fight. But while she can sue the president and other political leaders in Argentina because of their involvement with this deepfake video, the social media companies which allowed it to be boosted and amplified to many, many people allowed it to overrun her life. Suing them is not an option for her because of section 230.

[Julia Mengolini]

There is a huge responsibility that they have, the owners of these platforms and they are understanding all the harm that these tools that they created are doing to us. That is already a problem.

And I think that is urgent.

[Brian Reed]

I'll be continuing my section 230 crusade next time. I was in D.C. last week chasing senators around. Go check out my TikTok Brihread one to see some of that action. We're also just as a reminder on substack? Everything.substack.com where we're bringing you more stories and reporting about truth attacks on free press and holding tech accountable.

Today's episode was edited by executive producer Robin Simeon. I'm Brian Reed, the other executive producer of Question Everything. Our team also includes Managing Editor Kevin Sullivan, producer Sophie Kazis, Associate producer Kevin Shepard, contributing producer Sam Egan and Contributing editor Jen Kinney. This episode was fact checked by Annika Robbins and mixed in sound design by Brendan Baker. Our interpreter for this episode was Macarena Funes. Our music is by Matt McGinley. Special thanks to Daniel Politi, Marianne Franks and the team at futurock. Our partners at KCRW include Arnie Seiple, Pedromera, Natalie Hill and Jennifer Farrow. We'll see you.

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