Posting to Truth Social late Saturday night, Donald Trump boosted a claim that former President Joe Biden was a clone.
“There is no #JoeBiden – executed in 2020,” the reshared post reads. “#Biden clones, doubles & robotic engineered soulless mindless entities are what you see. #Democrats don’t know the difference.”
The claim that body doubles or clones have replaced some celebrities for nebulous and nefarious reasons holds some purchase among members of the far-right. And to give some credit to Trump, it’s entirely possible that he skimmed the text and thought it aligned with his frequent claims that Biden was puppeteered throughout his second term.
The president has been amplifying right-wing internet conspiracies for years. He gave subtle nods to QAnon, the online cult that believes Trump will usher in a great “storm” that will cleanse sex traffickers and child abusers from positions of power in the United States, while campaigning for a second term. His campaign elevated unfounded beliefs about gang and cartel activity in the country and raised the profile of an entirely fabricated claim that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating local pets. In the latter case, Trump’s insistence that recently resettled Haitian immigrants were “eating the cats” and “eating the dogs” led to bomb threats in the city of Springfield.
Still, delving into talks of cloning grown humans — something that is not scientifically possible in the present — is a big step into the murk of the GOP’s tin-foil fringe.
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