The monitoring of this specific topic by EDMO will continue in October and November, so it will be possible to track its evolution before and immediately after the elections.

As for the main narratives detected up to now, there is a clear majority of demonstrably false content that conveys a negative representation of the Democratic Party candidate, Kamala Harris. False or misleading images, videos and news accuse her of being a drunk, a prostitute, a man, of having secret agreements with Pfizer, of having run over a little girl with a car, of wanting to reduce the world population to fight climate change, of being a friend of sex offenders, and so on. After Tim Waltz’s nomination for the vice president seat, a similar (even if less intensive) campaign was detected about him too.

This “character assassination” technique is well-known in disinformation. It has been consistently used, for example, by Russian disinformation to attack the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, the Russian political opponent Yulia Navalnaya or the new High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the Estonian Kaja Kallas.

This technique is often used also by domestic actors – with examples from Germany, Italy, France, Spain and the EU – to attack political rivals. In US politics, it was widely used to exaggerate the senility of the outgoing president, and former candidate, Joe Biden. A similar attempt, although less widespread, has been detected about Trump, portrayed as too old and confused to be fit to lead. It is worth reminding that EDMO defines a “disinformation narrative” as the clear message that emerges from a consistent set of contents that can be demonstrated as false using the fact-checking methodology. Therefore it is possible that a “disinformation narrative” overlaps with a legitimate opinion, such as the one that now considers Donald Trump, as Joe Biden before him, too old to serve as president.

The disinformation narrative about his senility is not the only one targeting the Republican candidate. For example, conspiracy theories about his assassination attempt by a shooter in Pennsylvania in July circulated widely, e.g. claiming that the attack was a false flag operation. However, if it is true that disinformation circulates apparently targeting both Republican and Democratic audiences and candidates, it would be misleading to claim an equivalency. To quote a recent article from CNN, «no modern politician has built a presidency on such outrageous untruths as Trump».

His attempt to create a parallel reality where truth can be regularly perverted – now supported by Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X – is evident looking at the fact-checking of his verifiable statements and academic analyses of his communication and its impact. It is also worrying that a few far-right influencers that support Trump, according to an investigation of the US Department of Justice, have been allegedly used by Russia to foster its interference in the US political debate. The opposite – Russia amplifying pro-Democrat disinformation – has so far never been detected.

False news about the US presidential election, spread in European languages, became especially popular in the EU after the Trump-Harris debate. Two of the false news that traveled most across the EU in September, according to the data shared by fact-checking organizations, were about Kamala Harris wearing “special earrings” to get answer suggestions during the presidential debate, and the infamous claim about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating cats, dogs and other pets of the residents. This baseless accusation was shared by the Republican candidate during the debate, and led to threats and violence against the Haitian population of Springfield.

More details and graphic content about this topic can be found in the monthly brief n.40, that will be published by October 15.