Banned from Twitter and Facebook after his supporters’ attack on the Capitol in Washington in January 2021, Donald Trump has been back on his own platform Truth Social since April, where he has been increasing the references to conspiracy theories surrounding voting in the upcoming midterm elections the USA.
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According to an AFP count, out of 1,200 publications by the ex-president on his social network in 58 days, around 100 question the integrity of the November 8 elections.
“Here we go again!” he wrote on Nov. 1, sharing a misleading article about absentee voting in Pennsylvania, a key state where a senator seat at stake on Tuesday could decide the fate of the upper Senate majority of the congress.
“Fixed election!” added the man who still hasn’t acknowledged his November 2020 loss to Joe Biden and is aiming to run again in 2024.
This strategy is reminiscent of the one he implemented in 2020 when he pointed out that postal voting was facing widespread fraud before dozens of courts dismissed those allegations.
But the spread of such misinformation could undermine Americans’ confidence in the electoral process when voters return to the polls, experts warn.
“When leaders tell their supporters that elections are unreliable, their supporters believe them,” Russell Muirhead, a professor of political science at Dartmouth College, told AFP.
“Trump’s claim that the election would be flawed undermines American democracy,” he added.
“poison”
The former Republican president posts to Truth Social up to several dozen times a day. For the past two months he has attacked Joe Biden and the Democrats, criticized the investigation against him and touted his own campaign rallies and accomplishments.
Donald Trump also praises Republicans who are taking up his baseless allegations of a stolen election. Like Kari Lake, an Arizona nominee for governor, who has hinted that she might not accept the outcome of her own election if she lost, despite assurances given by Conservative Party leader Ronna McDaniel on CNN on Sunday had done in this regard.
And the real estate tycoon has approached the QAnon conspiracy movement.
Although his audience on Truth Social is relatively small — 4.5 million followers compared to 88 million previously on Twitter — experts warn that the misinformation he spreads is spreading across the internet.
“If Trump puts poison in the water, the whole lake will be contaminated,” said Russell Muirhead.
Contacted by AFP, neither Donald Trump’s team nor his Save America organization responded.
“Disproportionate Influence”
The former president exposed hundreds of pro-Trump articles, polls and memes, one of which, for example, called Joe Biden a “pedophile Hitler.”
“Trump still wields outsized influence in the Republican Party and the broader right-wing media ecosystem, and any claims he makes are bolstered,” said Rebekah Tromble, director of the Institute for Statistics, Democracy, and Politics at George Washington University.
In October, he notably shared posts from Melody Jennings, founder of a group organizing polling stations surveillance in Arizona to uncover suspected fraud.
One of the posts included a photo of a voter who, he later explained in a complaint, put down his ballot and that of his wife, who remained in the car.
The incident was reminiscent of one of Donald Trump’s false claims in 2020 about Georgia poll workers being accused of counting whole “cases” of fraudulent ballots, though investigations found nothing wrong.
But the damage was done: two of the campaign workers received death threats and one had to leave her home for two months at the request of the FBI.
“Do you know what it’s like to be targeted by the President of the United States?” the latter, Ruby Freeman, asked during a hearing before a parliamentary inquiry.
New Twitter owner Elon Musk has opened the door for Donald Trump to return to the social network, but not before Tuesday’s election.