Unraveling viral disinformation and explaining where it came from, the harm it's causing, and what we should do about it.
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Trump’s total embrace of Powell and Flynn, and the QAnon conspiracies they have been pushing, is the culmination of six weeks of increasingly wild and dangerous claims from Trump and his allies as they try to overturn last month’s election, which President-elect Joe Biden won decisively.
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Biden won the election by over 7 million votes, and two weeks ago the states confirmed his Electoral College victory by a margin of 306-232.And yet Trump will not concede and instead spends his days hunkered down inside the White House, watching highly partisan news channels like One America News Network and Newsmax, both of which facilitate his delusions by refusing to say Trump has lost.Trump has also increasingly relied on Twitter to vent his anger at his loss, retweeting supporters who are still backing his thoroughly debunked claims. On Sunday, he retweeted at least 11 QAnon accounts that were sharing conspiracy theories, while also boosting an account linked to the militia group known as the 3 Percenters.
On Sunday night, while she was in discussions with White House officials — though not Trump this time — Powell also found time to boost some QAnon accounts on her Twitter account.
Powell became infamous after she participated in the Trump legal team press conference in which Giuliani’s hair dye dripped down the sides of his face. During the event, Powell made a series of unhinged claims about conspiracies involving Venezuela and China interfering in the vote.At the time, the claims were too wild even for the Trump campaign, and she was ousted from the official legal team. Yet she continued to fight on Trump’s behalf, filing four so-called “Kraken lawsuits” alleging election malfeasance in Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, and Arizona — all of which were laughed out of court.The typo- and error-strewn lawsuits were filled with claims from unreliable sources, including Ron Watkins, the man who, until recently, ran the website where the person or people posing as QAnon’s anonymous leader post messages.As Trump’s legal avenues to challenge the election results have dwindled, he has increasingly come to rely on QAnon-linked individuals — including Watkins — to allow him continue the charade of pretending he won the election. By doing so, Trump has brought fringe ideas and conspiracy theories into the mainstream, a process some experts have called the “mass radicalization” of the American people, and one that has led to deep divisions within the Republican party.“It seems like the constant fight in the Republican Party is trying to stop the lunatics from taking over the asylum,” out-going Republican Rep. Denver Riggleman from Virginia, told the New York Times on Sunday.