The 2024 presidential campaign has been awash with fake stories about Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz in recent months, all spread by supporters of Donald Trump. But nowhere are these stories more abundant than X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, which was purchased in 2022 by far-right billionaire Elon Musk. And we can probably expect the ridiculous lies to get even worse in the last two weeks of the campaign as Musk pours millions into getting Trump elected.
What do we mean by ridiculous lies? Take a recent story that went viral on X, purporting to be a testimonial from a former student of Tim Walz. The person in the video, falsely identified as a man named Matthew Metro, claimed they were sexually abused by Walz. But anyone actually from Minnesota would immediately notice some big red flags. For starters, the person claimed they were a student at Mankato West, the high school where Walz worked in the 1990s and early 2000s. But the person mispronounces the word Mankato and somehow even the word Minnesota sounds weird.
🚨BREAKING NEWS JUST ANNOUNCED:
Tim Walz's former student, Matthew Metro, posted a video online claiming he was sexually assaulted by Walz back in 1997. If this is true, she's done. The Kamala Harris/ Tim Walz combo is done. It's over.#KamalaDumpsterFire pic.twitter.com/n6cgr70VrG
— Matthew Cottrell (@MatthewLovesUSA) October 17, 2024
Why was this going viral? Because it was being promoted by X’s algorithm in the For You feed, as I personally experienced on October 6. But the Washington Post spoke to the Matthew Metro, apparently a name identified by the disinformation agents through a publicly posted yearbook, who now lives in Hawaii.
“It’s obviously not me: The teeth are different, the hair is different, the eyes are different, the nose is different,” the 45-year-old Metro told the Washington Post. “I don’t know where they’re getting this from.”
Wired talked with analysts who believe the video is the work of a Russian-aligned disinformation operation called Storm-1516, which also spread the false claim that Harris participated in a hit-and-run in San Francisco in 2011. But Wired also believes the video was created AI, something that not all experts are agreed on. All we know for certain is that the video is clearly fake and is being spread inorganically on X.
Or take the viral video purporting to be an explosive bombshell about the time cocaine was found at the White House. Previously right-wing actors insisted without evidence that the cocaine must have belonged to Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son. But ever since Biden dropped out of the race in July, many of those same conspiracy theories have been repurposed to somehow fit Harris.
The video is made to look like an undercover hidden camera exposé, complete with night-vision green tinting, disguised voices, and a blurred face. But it’s all of these poorly executed details that make the video so obviously fake. For starters, if this was a real undercover video being shared by Trump supporters, why would they want to hide the identity of someone in the Biden White House, especially if the camera was ostensibly hidden? The creators mashed up two different techniques, undercover exposé and identity protection, which simply doesn’t make sense for the ostensible reason behind this video when you think about the context of this video for even a second.
So the cocaine in the White House was Kamala Harris’s….. No wonder why Joe Biden is pissed…. pic.twitter.com/QSR3V9HdUh
— Zade Smith (@ZadeSmith4) October 3, 2024
There are also things about the video that are just laughably fake, like the crowd noises for what’s supposed to be a “bar.” Cellphone videos have been around long enough now that we all know what background noise for various environments sound like on camera. And this one is clearly just an audio file of stock background noises laid on top. It’s pretty pathetic.
The script is full of right-wing ways of talking about Harris, pointing out her laugh and other things MAGA faithful hate about the vice president. Even the visual elements are just clearly someone’s basement rather than an actual bar.
An account with the name Zade Smith that uses what appears to be an AI-generated image for an avatar was one of many that helped spread the fake video, racking up over 2 million hits alone. There’s also a line that seemed to be popular and spread on X by various accounts in a coordinated fashion, logging millions of views for the claim, even without the video: “New leaks indicate that it was Kamala Harris, not Hunter Biden who brought cocaine to the White House back in 2023.”
Another story that went viral on X recently was the claim that a whistleblower with ABC News has tapes that would prove there was some kind of improper coordination between the Harris campaign and the news network before the presidential debate in September. The claim was started by an account known as “The Black Insurrectionist” but after spreading far and wide, while the “whistleblower” complaint even included a poorly photoshopped “affidavit” swearing to the authenticity of the claims, which got X’s legion of Trump fans really excited. The whistleblower even sent a letter to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, according to the Black Insurrectionist.
But even right-wing influencers like former Fox News host Megyn Kelly had to admit it sounded fishy. And when Kelly reached out to Johnson’s office, they confirmed he never received any such letter.
“We are now able to confirm the speaker’s office did not get the letter,” Kelly wrote on her website. “We have spoken with a source with direct knowledge who said Speaker Johnson’s office never received the document in question. Additionally, the alleged tapes have never been made public. The alleged whistleblower has never come forward. We were told he was possibly filing a lawsuit. That didn’t happen.”
But that didn’t stop Trump from claiming collusion between the network and the Harris campaign. Whoever this supposed whistleblower was never came forward, obviously. And the original account that first spread this nonsense was deactivated by whoever was running it sometime around October 18, according to a BBC fact-checker.
It really shouldn’t be any surprise that people who want to get Trump elected are spreading misinformation. They’ve been doing it for years. The only difference is they’re now getting major support from Musk to make sure as many people as possible see their garbage on big platforms like X.
For its part, the Trump campaign is also spreading fake news even in official campaign events. Over the weekend, Trump appeared at a McDonald’s location in Feasterville-Trevose, Pennsylvania where he claimed to be “working” at the restaurant. In reality, the McDonald’s location was closed and supporters went through the drive-thru line to make it look like they were surprised to find Trump serving food. The video from the event is much funnier when you know that context, as people in the various cars try to act shocked that Trump was there. It was all staged to the last person.
Trump is also repeatedly spreading bullshit about everything from FEMA to immigrants, sometimes combining the two lies, like he did Monday during a photo-op in North Carolina.
“Now, you know, in theory, they’re supposed to have it, but they spent a lot of money on bringing illegal migrants, people that came into our country illegally, to the United States,” Trump said, lying through his teeth, “and taking them in, and all of the money they’ve spent, numbers that nobody can even believe. So they don’t have any money for the people that live here.”
Trump on disaster aid: They are supposed to have it, but they spent a lot of money on bringing illegal migrants.. so they don't have any money for the people that live here.. pic.twitter.com/o16iUBy76X
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 21, 2024
Trump has helped fuel conspiracy theories about Hurricanes Helene and Milton, which have both devastated people living in many southern states. But FEMA has dispersed millions in aid to people impacted by the hurricanes, no matter what Trump says. Roughly $1.8 billion in federal money for individuals and communities affected by both Helene and Milton has been approved by the White House as of last week.
“Federal assistance for those affected by the hurricanes includes $597 million to support survivors with housing repairs, personal property replacement and other essential recovery efforts,” according to a FEMA press release dated Oct. 16. “Additionally, over $934 million has been approved for debris removal and emergency protective measures, which are necessary to save lives, protect public health and prevent further damage to public and private property.”
There are precisely 15 days until the election is held on Nov. 5 and many people are already voting. But the polling is so close that it’s clearly a toss up at this point between Harris and Trump. Again, we’re almost certain to see many more dirty tricks on X over the next two weeks. But voters need to take everything they see with a grain of salt, especially on social media platforms owned by MAGA billionaires who are donating $75 million and counting to Trump.
