What Next TBD: The Conspiracy Theory Election

Slate Technology

Slate

Society & Culture, Technology, History

4.6 • 636 Ratings

🗓️ 21 July 2024

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the hours after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, conspiracy theories started circulating all over social media, often amplified by powerful voices on both sides of the aisle. It shows a complete breakdown of trust in institutions during a critical election. Guest: Drew Harwell, technology reporter at the Washington Post. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Really? Come on, let's go.
0:05.0	Hear that? That's the sound of my customers leaving.
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0:33.5	Last Saturday night, Washington Post reporter Drew Harwell was out to dinner when he started
0:38.7	getting messages that something had happened at a Trump rally. Drew covers tech, and he opened up
0:44.2	X on his phone to try to figure out what was going on. I saw the first photos that had kind of
0:51.3	the bloody ear, but it wasn't really clear exactly what had happened,
0:55.5	how severe it was, and kind of trying to figure it out from just this, you know,
1:00.6	fire hose of tweets and ex posts and clips.
1:05.3	It was just kind of like maddening.
1:07.1	So after a couple of minutes, I just went to a news site.
1:10.0	Actually got all the information I needed.
1:11.5	But I was just sort of, you know, everybody was kind of like had their hair on fire from this one instance.
1:16.0	And it was really hard kind of to figure out what was true and what was just people making it up.
1:21.3	Theories started circulating maybe even from the moment this happened.
1:27.1	But I wonder, as someone who covers this, when you went online, what stood out to you?
1:33.1	The conspiracy theories were stewing on both sides.
	...

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