Former U.S. President Donald Trump leaves Trump Tower to meet with New York Attorney General Letitia James for a civil investigation on August 10, 2022 in New York City. (Photo bJames Devaney/GC Images)
Unraveling viral disinformation and explaining where it came from, the harm it's causing, and what we should do about it.
When Trump posted what most observers saw as a campaign ad for a 2024 presidential run on his Truth Social account on Monday—in between peddling baseless conspiracy theories about that FBI search of his house and riling up his base to the point that a federal judge’s home address was doxed online—QAnon followers saw something different.Soon after the video was posted, QAnon believers (who are keen to see signs in virtually everything Trump does and says) claimed that the video’s soundtrack contains a song called “WW1WGA,” one of the best-known phrases associated with the QAnon movement (it means, “Where we go one, we go all”). The song is by an artist called “Richard Feelgood.”The claim sent the Q universe into freakout mode. “I don’t know who needs to hear this, but the song playing behind Trump and Scavino’s storm video is literally called Wwg1wga,” a QAnon influencer with over 200,000 followers wrote on his Telegram channel. “If that’s not a Q proof, then I don’t know what is. Boom.”For days, the QAnon world has been celebrating what it sees as proof that they were right all along.There’s only problem with all of this: The track on the video is not a song titled “WWG1WGA” by Richard Feelgood, but rather, according to a statement sent to VICE News by Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich, a song called “Mirrors”, by TV and film composer Will Van De Crommert, who has composed music for Saturday Night Live and the 2016 Rio Olympics, among others.
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