A local news website run by a disgraced former state lawmaker who has faced child sex charges and espoused racist views is taking fire for posting racist AI-generated cartoons aimed at a Republican state lawmaker.
Prescott eNews, which covers news in Prescott and the surrounding communities in Yavapai County, is facing pointed criticism for publishing multiple AI-generated “political cartoons” that depict Prescott Valley Republican lawmaker Quang Nguyen in a racist manner.
Nguyen’s family fled communist Vietnam when he was a child and immigrated to the United States and he became a naturalized citizen.
In a cartoon titled “Going To The Dogs,” Nguyen is depicted being investigated by the police for stealing and eating neighborhood pets, a racist anti-immigrant trope that dates back to anti-Chinese immigrant rhetoric of the 1880s. Republicans in 2024 employed the racist trope against Haitian immigrants, even as they acknowledged it was untrue.
“The racist depiction of Representative Nguyen as a ‘dog-eater’ and ‘threat to America’ echoes harmful stereotypes that have long fueled exclusion and violence against Asian Americans,” Stop AAPI Hate said in a statement to the Arizona Mirror. “Our latest report found that 53% of AA/PIs experienced hate in the past year — much of it driven by xenophobic rhetoric and anti-immigrant policies. No one should feel unsafe because of their race or where they were born. We must stand together to reject hate and protect our communities.”
Other cartoons questioned Nguyen’s loyalty to America, both because he is an immigrant and he supports legal immigration. One cartoon suggested he was falsely claiming to be a naturalized citizen.
The AI-generated cartoons also purposefully misspell Nguyen’s first name and use other racially charged imagery in its depictions.
In an interview with the Mirror, Nguyen said he has been avoiding publicly calling out the website and its owner, David Stringer, for the “vile” attacks against him because doing so would give the disgraced former legislator a broader platform.
He said he believes that Stringer is using his publication to attack him because he doesn’t support ending all immigration to the United States.
Nguyen said that, during a Q&A with a local Republican group, Stringer asked if he would support the moratorium on all immigration that was being proposed by U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, who similarly believes immigration is the root of all problems in America and has close ties to — and has employed — white nationalists and antisemites. Nguyen said he does not back Gosar’s proposal, as it would prohibit legal immigrants such as himself from entering the country.
“Why would you want to take that away from good, contributing future Americans?” Nguyen said, noting that his daughter, who is now serving in the military, would have been swept up in the moratorium. Nguyen still has supported a hardline stance on immigration issues, such as supporting additional money for state troopers for beefed up border enforcement.
Nguyen also responded to a cartoon published by Prescott eNews that claimed the lawmaker did not understand English, something Stringer also alluded to in a post about a court ruling that found a $15.3 million payout to the Prescott Rodeo violated the state’s constitution.
“I understand laws quite well, to a point where not to commit a crime,” Nguyen said.
The response to one of the more recent cartoons on Facebook was overwhelmingly negative, with commenters decrying the racism in how Nguyen was depicted. Many noted that they were unsubscribing or unfollowing Prescott eNews.
“This is awful. It’s racist. It’s offensive and completely out of line,” one commenter wrote on the post.
Anti-Asian hate crimes have seen a rise since 2020 and studies have shown that online rhetoric can lead to increases in real-world violence.
Nguyen said he is aware of the increase in violence towards the AAPI community, but said Yavapai County has been “extremely kind” and that the increase in those attacks has not been felt there. He said he is worried that Stringer is trying to inflame those attitudes with his comics and said that the attacks claiming he has allegiance to Vietnam, the country his family fled from, are an “insult to his family” and the many others who similarly fled or were killed.
“For me, this issue is a moral issue. It is not a political issue. It is wrong in so many ways,” Nguyen said.
Who is David Stringer?
Stringer used to hold the Arizona House of Representatives seat that Nguyen currently does, but he resigned from the legislature in disgrace in 2019 after refusing to cooperate with an ethics investigation into child sex crime charges he faced in 1983. Stringer took a plea deal on charges that he had repeated sexual contact with two boys younger than 15 years old, including one who was intellectually disabled.
Prior to that, Stringer had faced pressure to resign after racist comments he’d made became public. Additional comments emerged after the Prescott Republican won reelection in November 2018.
The racist cartoons attacking Nguyen are attributed to “Promptology Engineering by Terry” and a post by Stringer about the addition of political cartoons says that Terry is the “in-house AI guru” who also designed some features of the website.
“It seems to us here at Prescott eNews, that when it comes to lampooning local political figures, there’s plenty of material to work with,” Stringer wrote in his post about the launch of the cartoons. “Maybe a little humor can take the edge off some of the meanness we’ve seen recently in local politics.”
The source code of the Prescott eNews website revealed it was designed by a man named Terry Baeseman, who previously worked as the webmaster for the Prescott Valley Police Foundation. A spokesperson for the Prescott Valley Police Foundation said he “retired several years ago and is no longer involved” with the organization.
After the Arizona Mirror sent emails to Baeseman about the cartoons, his last name was removed from the Prescott eNews source code.
Stringer and Baeseman did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Stringer has long cozied up to white nationalists and espoused nakedly racist views.
In 2023, Stringer attended an event at Arizona State University that featured white nationalist Jared Taylor as a speaker and was put on by College Republicans United, which supports white nationalist Nick Fuentes and whose members have been caught sharing racist views. The group also recently gained controversy for a tabling event it planned at ASU encouraging students to report other students to ICE. Stringer has long been an ally of the group and promoted the event on Prescott eNews.
Taylor also has nearly 20 articles published on Prescott eNews, including one that pushes the racist trope that white men are the most intelligent people, with non-white people, Jews and women less intelligent to varying degrees. Taylor has a long history of racism dating back to the 1990s, when he created a think tank that aimed to create research proving the superiority of whites.
Stringer has published his xenophobic views on immigration on Prescott eNews over the years, espousing views that have their roots in unabashedly racist organizations like Stormfront, and he has said there “aren’t enough white kids to go around” and that immigration was “an existential threat” to America.
None of that has stopped local politicians from embracing Stringer and his website. Several have appeared on the site’s programs, such as a show called Yavapai Speaks hosted by Lyle Rapacki.
Sen. Mark Finchem, R-Prescott, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne and Yavapai County GOP Chairwoman Kristin Baumgartner have all been guests on Rapacki’s show.
Rapacki has a long history of conspiratorial views and is connected to far-right extremists.
Rapacki is affiliated with the anti-government Oath Keepers militia and is the vice-chairman of an organization that was involved in the 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. That organization, the Coalition of Western States, consists of politicians and militia members and is led by former Washington state lawmaker Matt Shea, who was expelled after it was found he helped the militias in their standoffs with federal authorities.
Rapacki is also an online columnist who pens articles about alleged satan worship at naval bases and the QAnon conspiracy theory that liberal elites run a global cabal of pedophiles. He has called himself a “satanism expert.”
The Oath Keepers themselves also are represented on Stringer’s site with Yavapai County Oath Keeper leader Jim Arroyo having his own section on Stringer’s website as well as videos on the YouTube channel with titles like “Preparing for Civil Unrest” and “The State of the World and What to do to Prepare for Disorder.”
Stringer also appears to be boosting the candidacy of a Republican who hopes to unseat Nguyen in the state House of Representatives.
He interviewed Matthew Tucciarone and, though he noted that his site does not endorse candidates, published a glowing announcement of Tucciarone’s candidacy.
Tucciarone is a member of the sovereign citizen movement. In 2023, video of him being arrested by Sedona Police went viral after he told the officer he is a “sovereign” and contended a fraudulent license plate he had affixed to his car was legal. It was not, and he was forcibly restrained by a police officer after repeatedly ignoring the officer’s commands.
Tucciarone was also arrested during the pandemic for refusing to comply with mask policies at a local grocery store in Sedona, and his social media feeds contain references to the QAnon conspiracy theory.
This story was first published by Arizona Mirror, which is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
