BBC
How social media assassination conspiracies are uniting pro- and anti-Trump voters
2 days agoShareSave
Marianna Spring
Disinformation and social media correspondent
Wild Mother – the online alias of a woman called Desirée – lives in the mountains of Colorado, where she posts videos to 80,000 followers about holistic wellness and bringing up her little girl. She wants Donald Trump to win the presidential election.
About 70 miles north in the suburbs of Denver is Camille, a passionate supporter of racial and gender equality who lives with a gaggle of rescue dogs and has voted Democrat for the past 15 years.
The two women are poles apart politically – but they both believe assassination attempts against Mr Trump were staged.
Their views on the shooting in July and the apparent foiled plot earlier this month were shaped by different social media posts pushed to their feeds, they both say.
I travelled to Colorado – which became a hotbed of conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being stolen – for the BBC Radio 4 podcast Why Do You Hate Me? USA. I wanted to understand why these evidence-free staged assassination theories seemed to have spread so far across the political spectrum and the consequences for people like Camille and Wild Mother.
Dozens of evidence-free posts I found suggesting both incidents were staged have racked up more than 30 million views on X. Some of these posts came from anti-Trump accounts that did not seem to have a track record of sharing theories like this, while a smaller share were posted by some of the former president’s supporters.
For Democrat Camille, Trump’s team orchestrated this to boost his chances of winning the election.
Wild Mother – who already follows QAnon, the unfounded conspiracy theory which claims Donald Trump is involved in a secret war against an elite cabal of Satan-worshipping paedophiles – wants to believe Trump’s own team staged the attack in order to frame his supposed enemies in the “Deep State”.
The Deep State is claimed to be a shadowy coalition of security and intelligence services looking to thwart certain politicians.
There is no evidence to support either of the women’s theories.
The idea that news events have been staged to manipulate the public is a classic trope in the conspiracy theory playbook. Wild Mother says she is no stranger to this alternative way of thinking.
Camille, however, says this is the first time she has ever used the word “staged” about an event in the news like this. She always believed Covid-19 was real and she was extremely opposed to false claims the 2020 election had been rigged.
But on 13 July this year, when she was sitting in front of her TV at home watching live as Donald Trump was shot at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, she says she immediately thought: “Oh, that’s staged.”
The way Donald Trump was able to pose for a photo and raise his fist in the air was what ignited Camille’s suspicions.
She had questions about how the US Secret Service allowed the shooting to happen in the first place. The director of the service has since resigned over failings that day.
Watch now on iPlayer
Conspiracy in America
The shooter was a 20-year-old called Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was killed by Secret Service snipers. His motives remain unknown – which left many questions wide open. And so Camille’s thoughts continued to spiral.
Already sceptical that something did not add up, Camille turned to X for more answers. In the years before the shooting, she had already started spending more and more time on the social media site, formerly known as Twitter. She had taken an interest in pro-Democrat anti-Trump accounts and followed some of them.
“I would admit to you that I spend too much time on social media now, and it, in my mind, is kind of a problem,” she tells me.
Recent changes to how X’s “For You” feed works meant she started seeing more posts from accounts she does not follow, but that pushed ideas in line with her political views. Lots of these accounts had also purchased blue ticks on the site, which give their posts more prominence.
So when the first assassination attempt happened, unfounded conspiracy theories suggesting it had been staged were not only recommended directly to her feed – but were all the more convincing as they came from other profiles with the same political views she holds about Donald Trump.
Most of the social media companies say they have guidelines to protect users and reduce harmful content. X did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.
Why Do You Hate Me? USA – Episode one
Marianna Spring travels from Colorado to Baltimore and New York to uncover how social media is shaping the Presidential race. It’s social media’s world and the election is just living in it.
Listen on BBC Sounds.
‘Like watching a magic show’
Wild Mother had also turned to social media to find her tribe – having been called “a weirdo, an alien, a diamond in the rough” offline – and has built a following of thousands.
As we stand chatting in a waterfall in the small town she calls home, she explains how she began sharing her views on natural medicine and motherhood in 2021.
Then she started posting unproven theories about what was happening behind the headlines – such as on the Princess of Wales’ health or the Baltimore bridge collapse earlier this year – and saw her views and likes rack up.
She says she has been immersed in what she calls this “alternative idea about reality” from a young age and believes we have been lied to about what really happened when John F Kennedy was assassinated in the 1960s, when 9/11 happened in 2001, and during the Covid-19 pandemic.
She started to like Trump when she began spending more time online during the pandemic and became exposed to the QAnon movement, which she believes could be linking all these events. As a mum, she was especially concerned about allegations around child abuse and trafficking its supporters often talk about.
“I would never in my life even imagine some of the stuff that I’ve had to hear is going on right now, under our noses. And it blows my mind. We have to be able to protect our most innocent,” Wild Mother says.
QAnon supporters were among the crowd that stormed the US Capitol building on 6 January, 2021, in a violent protest against Joe Biden’s election victory. Now Wild Mother wants to believe the idea she has seen on social media that they might have been involved somehow in staging Trump’s shooting in July – in order to frame the Deep State.
But Wild Mother says, according to the posts she has seen online, “good guys in the military”, known as White Hats, had been doing covert operations to counter the Deep State. And one theory that popped up on her feed claimed the July assassination attempt was staged by them to show the public the threat Trump is under.
Wild Mother doesn’t claim to know for sure if the QAnon theory is true – but she does know what she wants to believe.
“I think our country needs rescuing from our government right now. It’s a horrible mess. A horrible mess,” she says.
Once Wild Mother started to question whether a news event could have been staged, it seemed as though any of them could be.
“It’s like going to a magic show as a kid and then that you find out for the first time that the magician is pulling one over on you. Now, every time you go to a magic show, you know what they’re doing,” she tells me.
As both Camille and Wild Mother came to rely more on social media, the beliefs they picked up contributed to a fracturing of their relationships in the real world.
Camille finds it hard to have conversations with some of her close family who support Trump, while Wild Mother says it played a part in her separating from her now ex-husband, who she says strongly opposed conspiracy theories.
“Does it make it difficult? Yes. Did it create a wedge? Was it possibly one of the things that ended my marriage? Maybe,” Wild Mother says.
Meanwhile, Camille also found herself embroiled in arguments on X which left her with her guard up in the real world, too. “It’s a little scary because I feel like every time I leave the house, it’s a potential for conflict,” she says.
This atmosphere of suspicion and conflict doesn’t just have consequences for these women’s personal lives – but for society too.
Officials, election workers – and politicians around the USA have found themselves subject to hate and threats as a consequence of this wider belief that almost anything and everything – including elections – is being rigged and staged.
For Wild Mother, people are “walking a really fine line” between seeking justice and harmful behaviour.
“It’s not writing your senators and calling them racist names. But if you were somebody who truly did your research and found that there was an issue, do I agree that you should use your voice? Absolutely,” she says.
“I think that we all have ways of doing that. For them, it just so happens to be harassing people.”
While Wild Mother and Camille say they have never threatened anyone themselves – and strike me as empathetic, kind people – the mistrust fostered in part by their social media feeds has eroded their faith in society and its institutions.
Camille, who was so opposed conspiracy theories, now finds herself using the language of them.
She appears to be one of many recruited into this way of thinking – by July’s assassination attempt and the social media algorithms drawing people deeper into an online world detached from reality.
22 hours agoShareSave
Ben Bevington
BBC News, Washington
With just one day to go, the race for the White House is deadlocked – both at the national level and in the all-important battleground states.
The polls are so close, within the margin of error, that either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris could actually be two or three points better off – enough to win comfortably.
There is a compelling case to make for why each may have the edge when it comes to building a coalition of voters in the right places, and then ensuring they actually turn out.
Let’s start with the history-making possibility that a defeated president might be re-elected for the first time in 130 years.
Trump could win because…
1. He’s not in power
The economy is the number one issue for voters, and while unemployment is low and the stock market is booming, most Americans say they are struggling with higher prices every day.
Inflation hit levels not seen since the 1970s in the aftermath of the pandemic, giving Trump the chance to ask “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”
In 2024, voters around the world have several times thrown out the party in power, partly due to the high, post-Covid, cost of living. US voters also seem hungry for change.
https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/20094987/embed?auto=1
Only a quarter of Americans say they are satisfied with the direction the country is going in and two-thirds have a poor economic outlook.
Harris has tried to be the so-called change candidate, but as vice-president has struggled to distance herself from an unpopular Joe Biden.
2. He seems impervious to bad news
Despite the fallout from the 6 January 2021 riot at the US Capitol, a string of indictments and an unprecedented criminal conviction, Trump’s support has remained stable all year at 40% or above.
While Democrats and “Never-Trump” conservatives say he is unfit for office, most Republicans agree when Trump says he’s the victim of a political witch-hunt.
With both sides so dug in, he just needs to win over enough of the small slice of undecided voters without a fixed view of him.
3. His warnings on illegal immigration resonate
Beyond the state of the economy, elections are often decided by an issue with an emotional pull.
Democrats will hope it’s abortion, while Trump is betting it’s immigration.
After encounters at the border hit record levels under Biden, and the influx impacted states far from the border, polls suggest voters trust Trump more on the immigration – and that he’s doing much better with Latinos than in previous elections.
https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/19926257/embed?auto=1
4. A lot more people don’t have a degree than do
Trump’s appeal to voters who feel forgotten and left behind has transformed US politics by turning traditional Democratic constituencies like union workers into Republicans and making the protection of American industry by tariffs almost the norm.
If he drives up turnout in rural and suburban parts of swing states this can offset the loss of moderate, college-educated Republicans.
5. He’s seen as a strong man in an unstable world
Trump’s detractors say he undermines America’s alliances by cosying up to authoritarian leaders.
The former president sees his unpredictability as a strength, however, and points out that no major wars started when he was in the White House.
Many Americans are angry, for different reasons, with the US sending billions to Ukraine and Israel – and think America is weaker under Biden.
A majority of voters, especially men who Trump has courted through podcasts like Joe Rogan’s, see Trump as a stronger leader than Harris.
Harris could win because…
1. She’s not Trump
Despite Trump’s advantages, he remains a deeply polarising figure.
In 2020, he won a record number of votes for a Republican candidate, but was defeated because seven million more Americans turned out to support Biden.
This time, Harris is playing up the fear factor about a Trump return. She’s called him a “fascist” and a threat to democracy, while vowing to move on from “drama and conflict”.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll in July indicated that four in five Americans felt the country was spiralling out of control. Harris will be hoping voters – especially moderate Republicans and independents – see her as a candidate of stability.
2. She’s also not Biden
Democrats were facing near-certain defeat at the point Biden dropped out of the race. United in their desire to beat Trump, the party quickly rallied around Harris. With impressive speed from a standing start, she delivered a more forward-looking message that excited the base.
While Republicans have tied her to Biden’s more unpopular policies, Harris has rendered some of their Biden-specific attack lines redundant.
The clearest of these is age – polls consistently suggested voters had real concerns about Biden’s fitness for office. Now the race has flipped, and it is Trump who’s vying to become the oldest person to ever win the White House.
https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/20098216/embed?auto=1
3. She’s championed women’s rights
This is the first presidential election since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade and the constitutional right to an abortion.
Voters concerned about protecting abortion rights overwhelmingly back Harris, and we’ve seen in past elections – notably the 2022 midterms – that the issue can drive turnout and have a real impact on the result.
This time around, 10 states, including the swing state Arizona, will have ballot initiatives asking voters how abortion should be regulated. This could boost turnout in Harris’s favour.
The historic nature of her bid to become the first female president may also strengthen her significant lead among women voters.
4. Her voters are more likely to show up
The groups Harris is polling more strongly with, such as the college-educated and older people, are more likely to vote.
Democrats ultimately perform better with high-turnout groups, while Trump has made gains with relatively low-turnout groups such as young men and those without college degrees.
Trump, for example, holds a huge lead among those who were registered but didn’t vote in 2020, according to a New York Times/Siena poll.
A key question, then, is whether they will show up this time.
5. She’s raised – and spent – more money
It’s no secret that American elections are expensive, and 2024 is on track to be the most expensive ever.
But when it comes to spending power – Harris is on top. She’s raised more since becoming the candidate in July than Trump has in the entire period since January 2023, according to a recent Financial Times analysis, which also noted that her campaign has spent almost twice as much on advertising.
This could play a role in a razor-tight race that will ultimately be decided by voters in swing states currently being bombarded by political ads.
20 hours agoShareSave
Americans are choosing their next president, in a contest being closely watched around the world.
The race is exceptionally close and either Vice-President Kamala Harris or former president Donald Trump could win.
Voters also selecting members of Congress, politicians who play a key part in passing laws that can have a profound effect on life in the US.
When is the US presidential election?
The 2024 election is on Tuesday, 5 November 2024.
Ahead of election day, tens of millions of voters have taken part in early voting events across the US.
The winner will serve a term of four years in the White House, starting in January 2025.
On the world stage, the US leader has considerable freedom to represent the country abroad.
Within the US, the president has the power to pass some laws on their own but he or she must mostly work with Congress to pass legislation.
Who are the candidates for president?
Former president Donald Trump is representing the Republican Party. He won the party’s support with a massive lead over his rivals.
Trump chose Ohio senator JD Vance to be his vice-presidential running mate.
Kamala Harris, the current vice-president, is the candidate for the Democratic Party. She joined the race after President Joe Biden dropped out and no other Democrats stood against her.
Her running mate for vice-president is Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.
There are also some independent candidates running for president. One of the most prominent was Robert F Kennedy Jr, but he suspended his campaign in August and backed Trump.
- How Donald Trump came back from the political abyss
- What Harris’s years as a prosecutor reveal about who she is now
What do Democrats and Republicans stand for?
The Democrats are the liberal political party, known for supporting civil rights, a social safety net and measures to address climate change.
In the 2024 election, issues highlighted by Harris include tackling the cost-of-living crisis and supporting abortion rights.
The Republicans are the conservative political party. They have stood for lower taxes, shrinking the size of the government and gun rights.
Issues Trump has campaigned on include tackling illegal immigration and ending inflation to “make America affordable again”.
How does the US presidential election work?
The winner is not the person who gets the most votes overall.
Instead, both candidates compete to win contests held across the 50 states.
Each state has a certain number of so-called electoral college votes, partly based on population. There are a total of 538 up for grabs and the winner is the candidate that gets 270 or more.
All but two states have a winner-takes-all rule, so whichever candidate has the highest number of votes is awarded all of its electoral college votes.
Most states lean heavily towards one party or the other, so the focus is on about seven states where either of them could win. These are known as the battleground or swing states.
It is possible for a candidate to win the most votes nationally – like Hillary Clinton did in 2016 – but still be defeated.
Who can vote in the US presidential election?
Most US citizens aged 18 or over are eligible to vote.
Each state has its own voter registration process and deadline.
Who else is being elected in November?
All of the attention will be on who wins the presidency, but voters will also be choosing new members of Congress – where laws are passed – when they fill in their ballots.
Congress consists of the House of Representatives, where all 435 seats are up for election, and the Senate, where 34 seats are being contested.
Republicans currently control the House, which initiates spending plans. Democrats are in charge of the Senate, which votes on key appointments in government.
These two chambers pass laws and can act as a check on White House plans if the controlling party in either chamber disagrees with the president.
When will we know who has won the election?
Usually the winner is declared on the night of the election, but in 2020 it took a few days to count all the votes.
The period after the election is known as the transition, if there is a change of president.
This gives the new administration time to appoint cabinet ministers and make plans for the new term.
The president is officially sworn into office in January in a ceremony known as the inauguration, held on the steps of the Capitol building in Washington DC.
5 hours agoShareSave
Sam Cabral
BBC News, Washington
American voters go to the polls on 5 November to choose their next president.
US election results have sometimes been declared within hours of the polls closing, but this year’s tight contest could mean a longer wait.
When is the 2024 presidential election result expected?
In some presidential races the victor has been named late on election night, or early the next morning. This time, the knife-edge race in many states could mean media outlets wait longer before projecting who has won.
Democrat Kamala Harris, the current vice-president, and Republican Donald Trump, the former president, have been running neck-and-neck for weeks.
Narrow victories could also mean recounts. In the key swing state of Pennsylvania, for example, a state-wide recount would be required if there’s a half-percentage-point difference between the votes cast for the winner and loser. In 2020, the margin was just over 1.1 percentage points.
0:53BBC’s Sumi Somaskanda explains when a new president will be announced
Legal challenges are also possible. More than 100 pre-election lawsuits have already been filed, including challenges to voter eligibility and voter roll management, by Republicans.
Other scenarios that could cause delays include any election-related disorder, particularly at polling locations.
On the other hand, vote-counting has sped up in some areas, including the crucial state of Michigan, and far fewer votes will be cast by mail than in the last election, which was during the Covid pandemic.
When have previous presidential election results been announced?
The 2020 election took place on Tuesday 3 November. However, US TV networks did not declare Joe Biden the winner until late morning on Saturday 7 November, after the result in Pennsylvania became clearer.
In other recent elections, voters have had a much shorter wait.
In 2016, when Trump won the presidency, he was declared the winner shortly before 03:00 EST (08:00 GMT) the day after the election.
In 2012, when Barack Obama secured a second term, his victory was projected before midnight on polling day itself.
However, the 2000 election between George W Bush and Al Gore was a notable exception.
The vote was held on 7 November, but the two campaigns went to war over a tight contest in Florida and the race was not decided until 12 December. The US Supreme Court voted to end the state’s recount process, which kept Bush in place as winner and handed him the White House.
What are the key states to watch in 2024?
Across the country, the first polls will close at 18:00 EST (23:00 GMT) on Tuesday evening and the last polls will close at 01:00 EST (06:00 GMT) early on Wednesday.
But this race is expected to come down to results from seven swing states. These are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Polls close at different times in different regions. State-specific rules could prolong counting in some states, while other states may report partial figures moments after the last in-person vote is cast. Also, some absentee and mail-in ballots, including votes by members of the military and Americans living overseas, are normally among the last to be counted.
Georgia – Polls close in the Peach State at19:00 EST (00:00 GMT). Early and mail-in ballots will be counted first, ahead of in-person votes. Georgia’s top election official estimates that about 75% of votes will be counted within the first two hours, with a full tally possible expected by later in the night.
North Carolina – Polls close thirty minutes after Georgia. North Carolina’s results are expected to be announced before the end of the night, however, complications may arise in areas that were hit by a hurricane in September.
Pennsylvania – Voting ends at 20:00 EST (01:00 GMT) in the Keystone State – the crown jewel of all the swing states in this election cycle. Like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania does not allow counting to begin until the morning of the election, leading to an expected delay in results. Experts agree that it may take at least 24 hours before enough votes are counted for a winner to emerge.
Michigan – Voting concludes at 21:00 EST (02:00 GMT) in the Wolverine State. Michigan allows officials to begin counting votes one week before election day, but they are not allowed to reveal the results until these polls shut. Michigan’s top election official has said that a result should not be expected until the “end of the day” on Wednesday.
Wisconsin – Results should come in shortly after polls close at 21:00 EST for smaller counties. However, it often takes longer for major populations centres to tabulate votes, leading experts to predict that the state won’t have a result until at least Wednesday.
Arizona – Initial results could come as early as22:00 EST (03:00 GMT), however, they won’t paint a complete picture. The state’s largest county says not to expect results until early Wednesday morning. On top of that, postal ballots dropped off on election day could take up to 13 days to count, according to officials in Maricopa County, the largest district in the state.
Nevada – Votes here could also take days to count, because the state allows mail-in ballots to qualify as long as they were sent on election day and arrive no later than 9 November.
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