We\u2019re now in the final full month of the 2024 campaign, and that means politicians and their allies are frantically seeking votes for their side. And for one side, in particular, that means an increasing onslaught of wild claims, conspiracy theories and outright falsehoods.<\/p>\n
That side, of course, is Donald Trump\u2019s. The president who set new benchmarks for false and misleading claims \u2014 more than 30,000 of them during his term, in fact \u2014 leads a MAGA movement that increasingly shamelessly treats misinformation as a political strategy. Democrats have their faults on this front, too, but there is simply no comparison to Trump\u2019s approach to politics, an approach that so many influential people on his side have also gradually adopted as their own.<\/p>\n
The barrage is so constant that it often leaves journalists with a dilemma. How do you tell the story when Trump says for the umpteenth time that he was Michigan\u2019s Man of the Year (an honor the state doesn\u2019t actually award)? Is it a headline every time Trump repeats this fantasy, or do you note the many previous fact checks? Does debunking it just promote it? Trump will often make dozens of false, misleading or baseless claims at a single rally alone, creating a problem of sheer volume as well.<\/p>\n
Well, we thought a good way was to walk through a 24-hour period of MAGA misinformation on Monday.<\/p>\n
To be sure, this list is not exhaustive. But we sought to highlight the biggest claims from the most prominent individuals (including Trump), along with the most ridiculous claims that gained traction on the right.<\/p>\n
1:18 a.m.: Elon Musk promotes a headline claiming former secretary of state John F. Kerry wants to \u201cchange\u201d the First Amendment. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) later promote Musk\u2019s tweet, with Lee adding that Democrats \u201cwant to end free speech as we know it.\u201d (Kerry did not say he wants to amend the First Amendment. He correctly noted that the First Amendment was a major impediment to cracking down on misinformation and more broadly referenced winning elections to \u201cimplement change.\u201d<\/p>\n
1:21 a.m.: Musk promotes a post alleging Democrats are flying undocumented immigrants into swing states to win elections. (There is no evidence of this, and it doesn\u2019t make sense for a host of reasons.)<\/p>\n
7:16 a.m.: Trump ally Dinesh D\u2019Souza claims a new ad for Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019s campaign features \u201cpaid actors pretending to be former Trump supporters.\u201d (The couple in the ad have been repeatedly profiled as former Trump voters, and the man is a longtime Republican township supervisor. The report D\u2019Souza cited from Sky News Australia relied on a random X user whose claim had already been debunked.)<\/p>\n
10:10 a.m.: Politico\u2019s Adam Wren reports that a new ad from Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), who is running for governor, features a doctored image of his opponent in front of supporters holding \u201cno gas stoves!\u201d signs. (The signs actually featured the candidate\u2019s name. Braun\u2019s campaign later added a disclaimer saying elements of the ad had been \u201cdigitally altered or artificially generated.\u201d)<\/p>\n
11:02 a.m.: Trump claims on Truth Social that he was forced to use a 750-seat theater for a Wisconsin rally because the Biden administration wouldn\u2019t provide him more Secret Service protection while it was also protecting the president of Iran at the U.N. General Assembly. Trump claims \u201c50,000 people\u201d were turned away. (The Secret Service was charged with protecting more than just the Iranian president at the large U.N. event in New York. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports the capacity at the theater Trump spoke in was actually around 300, and that just a \u201cfew hundred more people\u201d were unable to get in.)<\/p>\n
11:42 a.m.: Trump claims the federal government and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) are \u201cgoing out of their way to not help people in Republican areas\u201d affected by Hurricane Helene. (When pressed for evidence of this, Trump offered none and merely said, \u201cTake a look.\u201d)<\/p>\n
12:41 p.m.: Trump claims a photo of Harris being briefed on Helene is \u201cFAKE and STAGED\u201d because her earphones are not plugged into her phone. Many allies repeat the claim. (You can\u2019t see the port of the phone where earphones would be plugged in.)<\/p>\n
1:04 p.m.: Cruz claims on X that \u201c425,431 criminal illegal aliens are roaming the streets because Kamala Harris has utterly failed at her job.\u201d (This is false. It refers to recent data from the Department of Homeland Security. The data include those who are in prison, but they are listed as not being detained by immigration officials because they are not specifically in those officials\u2019 custody. Many who complete their sentences cannot be deported for diplomatic reasons. Republicans have also exaggerated Harris\u2019s actual purview in managing immigration, which was focused on the root causes of illegal immigration rather than securing the border itself.)<\/p>\n
1:57 p.m.: Trump says at a news conference in Georgia about Helene: \u201cNobody thought this would be happening, especially now. It\u2019s so late in the season for that.\u201d (Late September is close to the peak of hurricane season, which lasts through November.)<\/p>\n
1:57 p.m.: Trump claims he is contacting Musk about getting \u201cStarlink hooked up, because they have no communication whatsoever.\u201d (The Federal Emergency Management Agency had already announced 40 Starlink satellite systems were available, and 140 more satellites were being shipped out.)<\/p>\n
2:03 p.m.: Trump claims Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) \u201chas been calling the president, hasn\u2019t been able to get him.\u201d (Kemp himself had said hours earlier that he had spoken with President Joe Biden on Sunday and cast Biden as being helpful.)<\/p>\n
7:13 p.m.: House Republicans\u2019 campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee, claims \u201cKamala Harris allowed 13,000 illegal migrants convicted of MURDER to live in the U.S.\u201d (The data pertain to noncitizens who crossed the border at any point in recent decades, not just during the Biden administration \u2014 and including the Trump administration. Similar data from 2015 suggest the vast majority of those convicted of crimes were already in the country back then.)<\/p>\n
7:56 p.m.: Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) echoes the above false claims, as many other Republicans (including Cruz) have in recent days, claiming Harris is \u201cletting in 13,000+ illegal aliens convicted of murder.\u201d<\/p>\n
10:06 p.m.: Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) denies on CNN that Trump proposed \u201cone violent day\u201d to send a message about zero tolerance for crime. (Trump used precisely those words, suggesting \u201cone really violent day\u201d and then saying \u201cone rough hour.\u201d)<\/p>\n
10:07 p.m.: Donalds in the same interview says crime is \u201cmassively up.\u201d (Everyone can cherry-pick data, and the data is imperfect. But the full thrust of it indicates crime is not massively up relative to where it\u2019s been over the past 10 years. In fact, FBI data released earlier Monday showed crime continued to trend downward in the first six months of 2024.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
We\u2019re now in the final full month of the 2024 campaign, and that means politicians and their allies are frantically seeking votes for their side. And for one side, in particular, that means an increasing onslaught of wild claims, conspiracy theories and outright falsehoods. That side, of course, is Donald Trump\u2019s. The president who set […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10426,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}