On Monday, CEO of Tesla and X (formerly Twitter) Elon Musk, who has endorsed Donald Trump and promised hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions, posted a computer-generated image of Vice President Kamala Harris decked out in some kind of red communist military outfit.
“Kamala vows to be a communist dictator on day one. Can you believe she wears that outfit!?” he wrote.
While many have pointed out that the image violates Musk’s own company policy concerning “misleading images,” no one was surprised by his post. A look at the last 48 hours on Musk’s social media account on X is a snapshot into how fact free and manipulative his posts are in service of Trump and the GOP culture war agenda.
On Tuesday, after posting red-scare computer-generated images of Harris, he retweeted Libs of TikTok. The famed homophobic, racist, and disinformation-filled account was originally created and operated by Chaya Raichik, who developed its following by frothing up anti-LGBTQ+ hate-mongers, and has expanded into throwing hate at anyone not white on the right.
Libs of TikTok posted a claim that “A group of 32 armed Venezualans took over an apartment building in Chicago tonight. Here’s the audio of the 911 dispatch call. First they did this in Aurora, CO and now Chicago? Which city will be next? This invasion happened on Kamala’s watch.”
The problem is that no such thing happened. Book Club Chicago followed up on this claim, speaking to neighbors in the area and the Chicago police department, all of whom told the outlet nothing even remotely like this happened. “Not true. That did not happen,” Alderwoman Jeanette Taylor told the website.
Musk followed up this bit of general xenophobia by tweeting a New York Post article claiming “Migrants flooding NYC’s justice system—making up ‘75% of arrests in Midtown’—as ‘pathetic’ sanctuary city laws handcuff cops.”
Musk wrote “When is enough enough? My mother lives in NY and her friends have been assaulted 3 times this year, with no punishment for the attackers!”
Not unlike Musk’s misinformation, the Post article is filled with paragraphs of anecdotal statements from former law enforcement conservatives before finally giving up the basis of their big headline claim:
“I would say about 75% of the arrests in Midtown Manhattan are migrants, mostly for robberies, assaults, domestic incidents and selling counterfeit items,” a Midtown officer said.
He said the figure is an estimate because “you can’t be 100% sure [they’re migrants] unless you arrest them in a shelter or they’re dumb enough to give you a shelter address.”
So … an anonymous guy says, based on anecdotal evidence that he himself cannot prove is true because he doesn’t even know if the people are actually migrants, that there’s a crime wave. Just, wow. Add to that that the myth of a migrant “crime wave” has been debunked multiple times, including by data collected by the NYPD itself. In fact, calling this story misleading would be a gross understatement.
On Wednesday, Musk was back to the GOP classic line of attack: phantom voting fraud.
Noncitizens voting in elections isn’t a real problem. Every investigation into it has turned up absolutely nothing. For one, it is already illegal to vote in an election unless you are a citizen of the U.S. The idea that someone who is afraid of getting in trouble with the law, and could face possible deportation as a result, would go to a voting booth to illegally cast their vote is ludicrous.
Since purchasing Twitter in 2021, the world’s richest public midlife-crisis-haver has gutted the business, lost billions of dollars of investors money, and turned the social media site into a cesspool of right-wing extremism. During that time his political posts have increased, while posts about his own businesses have diminished.
Musk has a huge following on the site with almost 200 million followers. That gives him a gigantic platform and a megaphone to blast out all his unchecked, right-wing propaganda. That reach can have an impact on voters and potentially the election.
Here is Musk this morning:
Sad.
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