https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/05/opinion/trump-twitter-biden-misinformation.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytopinion
In the morning hours of Oct. 30, as most of the country slept, President Trump was binge tweeting again.
At 2:32 a.m., he told his 87.3 million Twitter followers: “Way ahead in Texas! Watch the Great Red Wave!”
Minutes later, he tweeted the hashtag #BidenCrimeFamiily, with a typo in the word “family.” That was it. No context, no link.
#BidenCrimeFamily is part of a yearlong, effective disinformation campaign against Joe Biden. In the final days of the presidential race, the hashtag was used on Twitter and Facebook, as well as the darker parts of the web, including 4chan and Parler. It was repeated in the right-wing media ecosystem, like Steve Bannon’s podcast and The Gateway Pundit.
In the last month, on Facebook alone, it reached at least 277,000 people, according to CrowdTangle — and that’s only on non-private pages. Without the hashtag, the slogan has had more than a million public interactions this month on Facebook.
On Wednesday afternoon, with the presidential race unresolved, a protester in Nevada interrupted an election official’s news conference by yelling, “The Biden crime family is stealing the election!”
QAnon believers and anonymous trolls certainly took notice. Qanoners, enamored of numerology, read Mr. Trump’s tweet like a tarot card, interpreting its meaning in threads on 8kun.
Even though Parler or Gab did not censor the original hashtag, people posted the “ii” version of the hashtag there, too. Like all great memes, those who are in the know get it, while others assume it’s a dumb mistake.
Over the last few weeks, posters have used adaptations of the slogan. There was #BidenCrimeFamilly, #BidenCrimeFamilyExposed, #BidenCrimeSyndicate.
QAnon believers and anonymous trolls certainly took notice. Qanoners, enamored of numerology, read Mr. Trump’s tweet like a tarot card, interpreting its meaning in threads on 8kun.
Even though Parler or Gab did not censor the original hashtag, people posted the “ii” version of the hashtag there, too. Like all great memes, those who are in the know get it, while others assume it’s a dumb mistake.
Over the last few weeks, posters have used adaptations of the slogan. There was #BidenCrimeFamilly, #BidenCrimeFamilyExposed, #BidenCrimeSyndicate.
QAnon believers and anonymous trolls certainly took notice. Qanoners, enamored of numerology, read Mr. Trump’s tweet like a tarot card, interpreting its meaning in threads on 8kun.
Even though Parler or Gab did not censor the original hashtag, people posted the “ii” version of the hashtag there, too. Like all great memes, those who are in the know get it, while others assume it’s a dumb mistake.
Over the last few weeks, posters have used adaptations of the slogan. There was #BidenCrimeFamilly, #BidenCrimeFamilyExposed, #BidenCrimeSyndicate.