In one sense, Donald Trump's false claim that Vice President Kamala Harris is faking her rally crowd sizes is a continuation of his lifetime of lying about numbers, especially any related to his ego. The first and last lies of his time in the White House were about inflating his popularity. On his first day in office, Trump sent his press secretary, Sean Spicer, out to gaslight the public about the inauguration, saying, "This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration," even though photos showed it was a fraction of the size of the crowd that turned out for President Barack Obama in 2009. And, infamously, Trump ended his presidency with the Big Lie that he was the "real" winner of the 2020 election, and not President Joe Biden. Even Friday night, Trump was insisting 90% of the country backs him.
His latest fantasy, that the images and videos of Harris rallies are faked by computer generation, is so out there that some wondered if he actually said it. But he did. "There was nobody at the plane, and she 'A.I.’d' it, and showed a massive 'crowd' of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!" Trump wrote on Saturday. This fantasy is even weirder than the past lies about the inauguration or the 2020 election. He seems unaware that the public is starting to realize AI technology falls far short of the promises made by Silicon Valley hucksters. If you want an unsettling photo of a 6-legged cat, AI can do the job, but it cannot generate fake footage and photos on even a fraction of the scale Trump is pretending.
Trump's AI nonsense is also reminiscent of the favorite coping mechanism Republican talking heads use to dismiss cultural products they don't like, such as Taylor Swift or the "Barbie" movie: that a sinister "elite" is faking the popularity of these phenomena. In this MAGA fairy tale, there is no authentic excitement over "Barbie" or Swift's "Eras" tour. Instead, a mysterious "they" manipulates people, especially young women, into acting out enthusiasm they don't actually feel.
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When "Barbie" came out, MAGA "thought" leader Ben Shapiro insisted that the box office receipts for "Barbie" might be high in the first week due to marketing, but "it’s going to just absolutely fall off a cliff after that," once people supposedly realized they don't actually want to see it. Instead, the movie grossed nearly $1.5 billion in theaters, making it one of the highest-grossing films of all time. MAGA pundits also couldn't accept that pop star Taylor Swift sells out stadiums and dominates the Billboard Hot 100 because people genuinely like her. The self-soothing lies got to laughable levels, including insisting that her music is bad, that she's "homely" and that her boyfriend — literal NFL tight end named Travis Kelce — is a "soy boy." Republicans circulated conspiracy theories claiming that Kelce and Swift's romance is fake, apparently out of a conviction that a cute blonde would never date a popular football player.
Shapiro even drew a direct line between the Swift conspiracy theories and the burgeoning paranoia about Harris. "“I’ve never seen this much manufactured enthusiasm for anyone, outside of maybe Taylor Swift," he whined on Fox News after Harris started packing rallies. For MAGA, it's just emotionally easier to pretend millions are faking their joy, rather than accept the possibility that people feel differently than they do.
The more conspiratorial this thinking gets, the more it confirms the characterization the Harris campaign offers of the MAGA movement: That they're just plain weird.
For decades, conservative white men have clung to the belief that only people who look like them can truly be great at art, music, sports, movies, etc. That the dominance of white men in the spaces must be due to natural superiority and not because other people were being denied opportunities to shine. When they sneer about "woke" pop culture, the underlying argument is that liberals are only pretending to enjoy performances by women or people of color. But even they struggle to imagine that the outsized success of everyone from Swift to Beyoncé to Simone Biles is built strictly on a handful of "politically correct" try-hards feigning fandom. So instead they toss out more elaborate conspiracy theories, positing that millions around the world are being brainwashed by "elites." The only people deluded here are conservatives.
The more conspiratorial this thinking gets, the more it confirms the characterization the Harris campaign offers of MAGA movement: That they're just plain weird. It's a movement so crippled by paranoia that they can't accept basic realities, like "people like Taylor Swift" and "the crowds at Harris rallies are real." Instead, Republicans turn to conspiracy theories to refuse the truth. That's why Trump rants about "fake" pictures and videos. But it's also true of the more intellectualized version of MAGA derangement on offer by his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio.
Vance got a lot of attention for his comment about "miserable cat ladies" because people found it misogynist, obsessive, and controlling. But the context makes it weirder: he was arguing that "cat ladies" are an uber-class that secretly runs the country. He repeatedly stated that the members of the Cat Lady Cabal "effectively run in this country" and "[w]e’ve allowed ourselves to be dominated by childless sociopaths." It's not just false to say the childless are "sociopaths," as Vance has repeatedly asserted. It's also a weird lie to ascribe such all-mighty powers to the childless. Even if you limit to the Democrats, most political leaders — including President Biden, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and current Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — are all parents. Harris has stepchildren and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, is a father.
But Vance, like most right-wingers ranting about the "deep state," is implying there's a true elite behind the curtain that is secretly running things. It's just his special flourish to imagine the secret leaders are cat-loving, child-hating sociopaths. It's much easier to attack fictional monsters than real people, since the made-up characters don't fight back. But it's also a result of Vance immersing himself in the fantastical political "philosophy" of pseudo-intellectuals like Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin. These folks offer a gussied-up version of the "deep state" conspiracy theory. Yarvin prefers the term "the Cathedral," but it's the same idea. He claims modern American culture is controlled by an ad hoc conspiracy of academia, Hollywood, politicians, etc. In his telling, these institutions are secretly masterminding our culture to thwart the "natural" desires of people. Left to our own devices, the story goes, people wouldn't like Taylor Swift and they'd be eager to have a dozen children.
Whatever form it comes in — from AI crowds to manufactured Swift fandom to claims birth control "screws up female brains" — the conclusion is always the same: people don't know what they want. They may think they want the "Barbie" movie and birth control pills, but that's only because they've been tricked by the deep state cat ladies. So MAGA is justified in using force, from banning books in the library to taking away your birth control, as recommended by the authors of Project 2025. Sure, the theory goes, it may look like MAGA is taking away your freedom by telling you what to read, what to listen to, and how to run your sex life. But in reality, they're restoring you to your "natural" desires. You may think you want to vote for Harris, but you were just fooled by AI-generated images. So really, the best thing for democracy is to take it away, right?
This is getting so weird, it alienates most people who hear about it. It's one thing for Trump to build the Big Lie on a thousand small lies about fake voters and stuffed ballot boxes. That didn't happen here, but it's physically possible and happens in other countries, especially ones run by dictators Trump is fond of, like Russia. But claiming Harris rallies are fake or that a cabal of childless cat ladies secretly runs the country is getting deep into the stupid territory. Blaming AI is so silly, it feels the only move left is for Trump to blame witches.
Recently, Republican writer Jim Geraghty complained at the Washington Post that "Trump cannot prioritize anything, not even his own long-term interests, above his sense of grievance." Geraghty should rethink his life choices that he would want Trump to be better at campaigning, but he's not wrong on the substance. Trump isn't yelling about computer wizards creating illusions of Harris rallies because he thinks it's a message that will reach undecided voters. He's just so unable to accept his unpopularity that he's resorting to strange conspiracy theories to cope.
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