Over the past 18 months, Elon Musk’s X has become a hotbed of misinformation, particularly around breaking news such as the Gaza conflict and the Baltimore bridge collapse. But the flood of misinformation and conspiracy theories that flooded the platform following Thursday’s presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump did not happen as expected.
Instead of sharing intrigue about the debate, Trump posted multiple uncensored clips of Biden’s responses on his platform, Truth Social.
“Whoa, what is he talking about!” one post said, along with a video of Biden making incomprehensible comments about Medicare.
Another montage of Biden’s worst debate moments, shared by Trump on Truth Social, was then widely shared on other platforms, including X, Facebook and Telegram, garnering millions of views.
Biden’s performance in the debate, seen as a key opportunity to reassure his supporters that he is fit to serve a second term as president, was widely criticized by lawmakers, political commentators and viewers across the political spectrum for lacking energy and coherence. Biden’s campaign tried to excuse the president’s performance by saying he had a cold, and even Vice President Kamala Harris said Biden “got off to a slow start.” And Trump used the debate to spread conspiracy theories and misinformation on issues like immigration, abortion and January 6, most of which went unchallenged. But Biden’s performance was the most discussed detail of the night.
On X, pro-Trump accounts that are usually happy to share even the most outlandish conspiracy theories about Biden were happily sharing unedited clips of Biden from the debate stage.
Many Trump supporters also criticized the media for what they called cheap fake news before the debate, a reference to video clips shared online that were deceptively edited to make Biden look old, frail and dazed.
“Hey @PressSec, was tonight’s entire debate a ‘cheap fake’ video? Analysis please. Thanks,” right-wing radio host Clay Travis posted on X after the debate. “Is the Biden campaign going to claim this entire debate was a cheap fake?” political commentator Crystal Ball added.
In addition to sharing footage from the debate, Trump supporters online also widely shared footage from left-leaning media outlets like CNN and MSNBC, where commentators depicted “panic” among the Democrats they were speaking to following Biden’s performance.
Even in more extreme corners of the internet, such as pro-Trump message boards and QAnon Telegram channels, the majority of shared posts juxtaposed Biden’s response with Trump’s grimacing face.
“The online community has taken the debate to be all about a few minutes in which Biden appears to be awkwardly mumbling, losing his train of thought, and staring blankly at Trump on a split screen,” Tauhid Zaman, a professor at the Yale School of Management, told WIRED. “What’s surprising is that no videos supporting Biden have been seen. Instead, Democratic social media users have been criticizing Biden’s debate performance and discussing alternative candidates.”
