Americans went to the polls on Tuesday against a backdrop of misinformation – much of it suspected to have originated in Russia – as the FBI warned of fake videos and non-credible threats of terrorism aimed at disrupting the US presidential election and discouraging voting.
These tensions were stoked by Donald Trump supporters and the former US president himself. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and Trump’s most vocal surrogate, tweeted a video of support that appeared to reference the far-right QAnon ideology.
The video, showing footage of the January 6 insurrection and featuring Van Halen’s song Jump as a soundtrack, came after an earlier social media post from the entrepreneur that repeated elements of the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy theory from the 2016 presidential election.
“The hammer of justice is coming,” read that earlier post.
The flood of untruths was fed by Trump on Tuesday as he falsely claimed he had a “big lead” in opinion polls while casting doubt on the reliability of voting machines. Having already baselessly claimed that there was Democratic “cheating” in Pennsylvania, the Republican nominee said it was “an outrage” that it took so long to count votes in swing states.
The former president also took liberties with the truth in an early election day video on his Truth Social platform. In an apparent reference to transgender boxers, the video featured Trump complaining that “men could beat up women and win medals” – a supposed example of how American...
Public records request tied to case in Bloomfield have gone unanswered A Bloomfield woman who claims a San Juan County Sheriff’s deputy in plain clothes assaulted and falsely arrested her at her wo...