Elon Musk’s X app boosted wild conspiracy theories this week that President Joe Biden had an undisclosed medical emergency and might be dying, despite a lack of evidence to support the claims. And it continued doing so even after Biden walked before news cameras Tuesday and appeared healthy.
Biden addressed the nation in a broadcast from the Oval Office on Wednesday evening. He also was heard speaking by phone at an event Monday before reporters saw him in person Tuesday.
But earlier in the week, X created two special “trending” pages dedicated to what it said were “Biden’s Vegas Health Scare” and “Biden’s Vegas Emergency: Mystery Unfolds.” Biden was in Las Vegas on July 17 when he tested positive for Covid-19, but the trending pages are filled with speculation unrelated to Covid-19, including false assertions by users that he had been murdered or would be murdered soon by unseen forces.
Baseless speculation that Biden had died started gathering popularity in conservative media shortly after he announced Sunday on X and other social media platforms that he was withdrawing from the presidential race and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris.
Dana Perino, a Fox News co-host, said on the air Sunday, “Proof of life, please,” and right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones got more than 7 million views on a 7-minute video he posted Monday titled “Is Joe Biden Dead?”
PeakMetrics, a research company, said the number of posts on X discussing Biden’s dying or experiencing a serious medical emergency spiked from about 29,000 Sunday to about 120,000 Monday and 176,000 Tuesday. Similar spikes occurred after Biden’s poor debate performance in June and after a widely criticized TV interview June 5, according to PeakMetrics.
Searches by NBC News for similar content on other social media apps, including Instagram and TikTok, returned mostly debunkings of the rumors.
X went beyond just hosting the conspiracy theories. An NBC News employee received notifications within X recommending posts to her with similarly dark messages. One recommended post by Laura Loomer, a far-right activist who was once banned from X, said without other evidence that based on a “medical source,” Biden was “in the terminal stage of his illness.” Her post got more than 13 million views. A second recommended post came from Ryan Fournier, chair of Students for Trump, who said Monday he was “hearing” that Biden “is in hospice care and unlikely to survive the night.” He did not cite his sources. His post got more than 7 million views. It is unknown whether other X users received the same recommendations.
Musk, X’s owner, endorsed former President Donald Trump for president on July 13.
Representatives for X did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday and Wednesday. Neither did the White House on Wednesday.
X has created some form of curated trending pages since 2015, when it was known as Twitter, to help users navigate the flood of posts that can accompany popular narratives. In the past, Twitter employed people to ensure that trending pages had context from reliable news sources, but that changed when Musk bought it in 2022 and laid off the workers who were responsible for curating trending content. Now, the trending page includes summaries from X’s artificial intelligence software, Grok, and it includes the warning: “Grok can make mistakes, verify its outputs.” It is not clear whether or how often human X employees are involved.
The company separately faces accusations that it improperly prevented users from following one of Harris’ official presidential campaign accounts. Some users complained Sunday that they got an error message when they tried to follow the “Kamala HQ” account, Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., said in a letter sent Monday to House Republicans seeking an investigation. The company has not responded to those accusations.
Alice Marwick, an associate professor of communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said she saw X’s promotion of the posts with conspiracy theories as evidence that it had changed to fit Musk’s views.
“X is hardly a neutral platform,” she said. “Elon Musk clearly has a deep, vested interest in a Trump victory in the 2024 election, and he’s using what’s at his disposal to do so, which is the social media platform that he controls.”
Fournier, Jones and Loomer did not respond to requests for comment. Fox News also did not respond.
Jones in particular has faced consequences for past conspiracy theories. He is liquidating assets to pay a $1.5 billion defamation judgment to the families of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, which he called a hoax.
Biden largely kept out of public view for six days while he was recovering from Covid-19. After the diagnosis, he cut short a campaign stop in Las Vegas to fly to his house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Without appearing in public, he made the historic announcement Sunday on social media that he was withdrawing from the presidential race and endorsing Harris to succeed him.
Biden’s physician, Kevin O’Connor, said Tuesday that Biden’s Covid-19 symptoms had resolved and that over the course of the infection, he never had a fever or showed abnormal vital signs. Biden returned to the White House on Tuesday, arriving by motorcade and walking into the residence.
But on X, conspiracy theorists twisted his bout with Covid-19 into dark theories.
Radio host Charlie Kirk, the founder of the conservative group Turning Point USA, helped fuel the speculation with a post on X on Monday morning saying he had received “a weird lead on a story that people should look into.” He said that a source close to Las Vegas police was suspicious because, while Biden was in town, police at one point received instructions to help transport him to a local hospital but that then the plans changed and Biden went to the airport, instead, to fly out. Kirk cited the “rumor mill in the police department” to speculate that Biden’s health was worse than reported.
But the change of plans last week did not seem suspicious to the Las Vegas hospital where Biden was almost taken, University Medical Center of Southern Nevada.
Scott Kerbs, the medical center’s public relations director, said in an email that last Wednesday afternoon, staff members were told to prepare “for a potential medical visit from the president.” The center is Nevada’s only Level I trauma center, meaning it is generally tasked with caring for the president during official visits, he said.
“Our team was not shocked by this situation. We saw it as a precautionary measure,” he said. “Our team always works closely with the White House and U.S. Secret Service prior to and during these visits to ensure we remain prepared to care for the president. We always stand ready until Air Force One departs Las Vegas.”
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department confirmed in a statement to NBC News that it initially shut down roads leading to the hospital and then got word from the Secret Service that Biden was going directly to the airport.
Kirk did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Billionaire financier Bill Ackman, who has endorsed Trump, also spread doubt about Biden’s health, writing on X that “the president may be severely ill.” Ackman also shared a Substack post saying Biden “suffered an undisclosed medical emergency”; the Substack post alleged that Biden’s departure from Las Vegas was too chaotic to have been caused by a Covid-19 positive test, but it offered no other evidence of illness. Ackman’s hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital Management, declined to comment.
After Biden called in by telephone to an event with Harris on Monday, some accounts on X spread the idea that his voice had been faked by artificial intelligence. One video post with the claim, which had more than 7 million views, used AI software from the company ElevenLabs, but even after ElevenLabs denounced the video as a “fake” that was “fabricated to cause confusion,” the original post remained online and continued to gain views.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
