2020 US Election: White Smoke
Nov 28, 2020
And so it ends, not with a bang, but with a Twitter rant.
And yet another bizarre press conference.
It seems this week was the slow dawning realisation for Trump and parts of his base that the time has come to move on.
White smoke finally appeared.
The transition has formally begun and, for the first time, Trump said he will step aside if the electoral college votes for Biden on December 14 (as it will). He refuses to concede, however, and continues to promote election conspiracies.
As mentioned last week, there is a huge spotlight on US elections, so my bigger fear is around how these tactics embolden authoritarian leaders elsewhere. Without the pressure of the world’s media attention, will anti-democratic forces in smaller countries take a leaf from Trump’s playbook and cause more damage? It’s certainly possible.
This week my colleague at Kinzen, Karolin Schwarz, analysed how already there are examples of the same mail-in ballot misinformation sweeping through Germany. Meanwhile Putin says he will not congratulate Biden as the results aren’t clear, and that the US can’t criticise electoral issues in other countries when it has so many problems of its own. Remember what we said last week: there is no evidence of a voter fraud operation. The election was free and fair.
More generally, NiemanReports has a piece on how journalists in Belarus, Jordan, Thailand, and Nicaragua are handling cries of “fake news”, often used to intimidate and threaten.
The base reacts
MAGA and QAnon supporters are torn this week. Some continue to believe this is all part of a grand plan on Trump’s part:
But for others, this is a moment of despair and outrage. TheDonald.win and Parler both show signs of distress at the election loss, but many of the top posts on the former still hold out hope for the Supreme Court and revelations of election fraud.
On Fox, Tucker Carlson moved toward accepting reality but he continues to promote scepticism about the result. He put this quote from his show on Parler: “On many levels, the system was rigged against one candidate, and in favor of another, and it was rigged in ways that were not hidden from view. We all saw it. The media openly colluded with the Democratic nominees.”
Georgia
Much of the focus of MAGA and QAnon this week was on Georgia.
It’s obviously strange that these stories had to be written but Lead Stories reported there is no evidence that dead people, children, or animals voted for Biden in Georgia. Reuters fact checked two of the latest theories based on viral videos: one here and another here show that ballots are not being shredded to destroy voter fraud evidence.
Then there was a campaign to #WriteInTrumpforGA, which suggests voters cast their ballots for Trump in January’s runoff elections for the Senate. The implication is that through this strategy Trump can still win the state of Georgia and prevail as the winner of the presidential race, but this is plainly not true. Some leftist accounts have encouraged Republicans to vote for Trump in the Senate, as it will benefit Democrats.
Sidney Powell
She was the MAGA/QAnon star of the week once again.
At the beginning of the week she had to react to the Trump campaign distancing itself from her, and her response was shared widely amongst MAGA supporters. In it she claimed to agree that she is not part of Trump’s legal team but that she is still working to prove election fraud. She also asked for donations.
A baseless theory, shared here and promoted fairly widely, claimed that Kraken “is a Department of Defense-run cyber warfare program that tracks and hacks various other systems to acquire evidence of nefarious actions by the deep state!President Trump and the loyal patriots in the Military and Space Command now have all the evidence of voter fraud and election related treason.” This led to the inventor and CEO of MyPillow saying Trump won over 400 electoral college votes.
Later in the week, Powell finally announced that “The Kraken is released” in Georgia and Michigan with her legal filings. (She also described herself as “Kraken Releaser.”) Much of this was based on already debunked claims.
In the QAnon community, there was some discussion over Powell’s authority as a military lawyer which will supposedly allow her to prosecute for treason. For them, it’s all part of the plan and Biden’s time is running out.
COVID Vaccine
Positive news on possible COVID vaccines in the last couple of weeks inevitably led to anti-vaccine activists trying to spread misinformation.
There was strong reaction from the anti-vaccine community to Qantas Airlines, whose (Irish) CEO said that proof of a COVID-19 vaccine will be mandatory for anyone flying with them. The #BoycottQantas hashtag was orchestrated as a result. News.com.au has a useful report on it.
A common narrative is that vaccines contain aborted fetal cells in their ingredients. That generic claim has now been made specific to the AstraZeneca vaccine, but as Full Fact found, it is not true.
AP debunked claims that Pfizer and Moderna skipped animal trials. Lead Stories debunked claims that the Pfizer vaccine contains lethal ingredients and nanoparticles that have never been used before in vaccines.
However legitimate concerns were raised by industry experts about the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. The manufacturers were forced to admit a mistake in the reported dosage received by some study participants. Useful coverage is here and here. It now seems likely that there will be extra vaccine trials to clear up uncertainty about its efficacy.