Former President Donald Trump repeated a wide range of false claims, internet rumors and bizarre conspiracy theories during Tuesday night’s presidential debate, much of which would have been incomprehensible without a deep understanding of the obscure corners of far-right social media.
It included a series of unsubstantiated claims about abortion, campaign rallies, the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, and bribes to government officials — not to mention a sensational rumor about immigrants in Ohio stealing and eating pets. And he denied any change in his perspective on the 2020 election, falsely claiming that there was “so much evidence” that he had won it.
While some of the claims may have been familiar whistleblowers to those who spend time on fringe message boards, it’s unclear how the outlandish rumors made their way to everyone. According to ABC, which hosted the debate, the debate drew more than 57.5 million viewers.
Toward the end of the debate, just before the second break, Trump made a flurry of vague claims about corruption within the Biden administration.
“You know, Biden’s not going after people because China supposedly paid millions of dollars,” he said. “He’s afraid to do it — between him and his son, they’re getting all this money from Ukraine. They’re getting all this money from all these different countries. And then you wonder why he’s so loyal to this one, that one, Ukraine, China? Why did he get $3.5 million from the wife of the mayor of Moscow? Why did she pay him $3.5 million? This is a corrupt government and they’re selling our country to hell.”
None of this seems to be based on fact. There’s a debunked claim that Hunter Biden received $3.5 million from the wife of the former mayor of Moscow, which was included in a GOP report four years ago but attributed only to a “confidential document.”
Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday about the amount of conspiracy theories during the debate.
Trump’s embrace of internet rumors disappointed some allies who had hoped that in the debate with Vice President Kamala Harris he would focus on kitchen-table concerns like inflation.
Conservative talk show host Erick Erickson vented his frustration during the debate, posting on X that Trump’s “dumb” advisers “made Trump repeat your lie about the pets.”
And after the debate, some of Trump’s allies advanced a new conspiracy theory about Harris, claiming, without any evidence, that the earrings she was wearing likely contained mini speakers.
Harris, on the other hand, seemed to want to use the debate to appeal to people outside her base, saying she is a gun owner and bragging about how the Biden administration has increased domestic oil production.
The debate offered a sense of how much Trump has been consumed by internet personalities outside the mainstream in his bid to reclaim the White House. Among those on his plane Tuesday was Laura Loomer, a far-right social media influencer and self-described “proud Islamophobe” who has made sharing pro-Trump fringe conspiracy theories her full-time job.
In recent weeks, Trump has done a series of interviews with right-wing influencers like Logan Paul and Adin Ross, whose audiences are primarily young and male.
And Trump’s personal internet brand is now centered on his own social media platform, Truth Social, where his promises to lock up political enemies are more warmly received than on more popular apps like Instagram or YouTube.
Tuesday’s debate was a clash between those two media ecosystems: the relatively small and isolated far-right online world and the more traditional, rural audience.
“Over the last few years, the Democrats have generally been the party that is too online and stuck in a left-wing bubble,” said Josh Kraushaar, a political analyst for Fox News Radio and editor in chief of the political website Jewish Insider. wrote on X.
“During this debate, it was Trump who spread a (false) online meme on social media about migrants eating cats, which his team showed in its own bubble,” he wrote.
It wasn’t the first time Trump made a tactical error by revealing his ties to the insular world of the online far-right. In a 2020 debate with Joe Biden, Trump refused to condemn white supremacist groups, telling one extremist group to “stand aside and stand by.” And in 2022, he promoted several posts on Truth Social about the fringe QAnon conspiracy theory.
During Tuesday’s debate, one of Trump’s more bizarre claims involved abortion. In response to a question from ABC News moderator Linsey Davis about his changing views on the topic, he accused Democrats of supporting “execution after birth” — which, as Davis noted in a fact-check during the debate, is not legal in any state.
Trump specifically said that a former governor of West Virginia, whom he did not name, supported executing newborns. But he likely confused the state with neighboring Virginia and its Democratic former governor, Ralph Northam. In 2019, Northam discussed nonviable pregnancies in an interview that abortion opponents later distorted, according to fact-checks by The Associated Press and Reuters.
Trump addressed some of the Internet rumors only in brief asides, such as when Harris broached the subject of his campaign rallies. He said people were “leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.” (Several news organizations, including The Wall Street Journal and The New Republic, have reported leaving Trump rallies early.)
Trump fired back without evidence that Harris “pays them to attend” her rallies — a claim the independent group PolitiFact labeled false after it was circulated in right-wing media circles last month.
Other times, Trump floated conspiracy theories that were probably too vague to fact-check. Halfway through the debate, Trump talked about election security, claiming that an unspecified “they” are trying to get illegal immigrants to vote.
“They can’t even speak English. They don’t even know what country they’re in, practically. And these people are trying to get them to vote, and that’s why they’re letting them enter our country,” he said in a response, without giving details about who was allegedly involved in the plot.
Trump has claimed in the past that “millions and millions” of votes are being cast illegally, some by non-citizen immigrants. Researchers and news organizations have regularly debunked these claims.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
