Four people were stabbed during “Stop the Steal” protests in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, and protesters supporting President Donald Trump’s false allegations that the election was rigged — including hundreds of Proud Boys — clashed with counterprotesters and police.
On the other side of the country, in Washington state, a similar rally took place in Olympia, where an armed right-wing protester was arrested on suspicion of shooting a left-wing counterprotester.
Videos by VICE
Experts tracking the “Stop the Steal” movement’s growth online have been raising the alarm about how the spread of disinformation on social media could translate into real-world violence.
And yet, despite the weekend’s violence, on Sunday night, the official Trump campaign Twitter account, which has 2.4 million followers, posted the following message:
Rather than condemning Saturday’s violence and urging calm, President Trump spent Sunday continuing to spread disinformation to his followers. He also called the Republican governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, a “fool” and a “clown.”
Trump and his allies have been boosting the #StoptheSteal movement for the past month, ever since Joe Biden won the presidential election.
Days after the election took place, Facebook was forced to shut down a viral “Stop the Steal” group that had racked up 360,000 members in the space of 24 hours, because the group was spreading disinformation, advocating for gun violence, and organizing real-world protests.
But within hours, numerous copycat groups with tens of thousands of members had sprung up. By a few weeks later, there were hundreds of groups on the platform, some of which had over 100,000 members.
As Trump’s legal challenges have been laughed out of court across the country, his efforts to rally his base around unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud have been much more successful.
Thanks to the support of partisan media outlets like One America News Network and Newsmax, Trump has succeeded in raising over $200 million since Election Day.
While Trump’s solicitations say the money will go toward funding legal challenges to the election, it can also help offset his campaign debt, and be used by the president and his family to fund their travel and expenses. The majority of the money being raised (75%) goes to Save America, a political action committee set up by the Trump campaign, which sets few restrictions on how the money can be spent.
The other 25% of the money raised goes to the Republican National Committee.
