President Donald Trump on Saturday night reposted a baseless claim on Truth Social that former President Joe Biden was executed in 2020 and replaced with clones or robots.
The original post, made by an anonymous Truth Social user who often spreads outlandish claims, suggested that Biden was replaced with “clones, doubles” and “robotic engineered soulless mindless entities.”
Trump published a link to the post to his nearly 10 million followers without adding any context or explanation. The original poster’s account has a little more than 5,000 followers.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday explaining why Trump shared the post and whether he believes Biden was executed in 2020.
Trump has frequently taken to sharing misinformation and unproven conspiracy theories over the years. He repeats false claims that he won the 2020 presidential election, which led some of his supporters to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to overturn Biden’s victory. He also claimed — before he backtracked — that former President Barack Obama was not born in the United States and, during the 2024 campaign, alleged that Haitian immigrants were “eating the pets.” All of those claims were debunked or otherwise proved false.
Trump’s circle, too, has spread conspiracy theories, with some of the top brass in the administration having spread misinformation about vaccines or the so-called deep state. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has repeated a debunked claim that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine causes autism, and the FBI’s director and deputy director have spread claims that the Biden administration and the “deep state” weaponized the FBI against Trump.
Biden revealed last month that he had been diagnosed with a metastatic form of an aggressive type of prostate cancer as he and his top aides were already facing mounting scrutiny about his mental acuity and physical capabilities in office and how forthcoming they had been with the country.
The revelation of his cancer diagnosis initially prompted an outpouring of well-wishes from Democrats and Republicans, but that quickly shifted as Trump allies claimed Biden had hidden his cancer diagnosis. A spokesperson for Biden said at the time that he had never been diagnosed with prostate cancer before last month.
Biden, since his diagnosis was made public, said Friday he felt good and joked with reporters about the allegations of his supposed mental decline in office.
Trump has made host of heightened attacks against Biden in recent weeks.
Trump and House Republicans have scrutinized Biden’s use of an autopen to sign some pieces of legislation and executive orders, using it to call his mental state into question. Trump has gone as far as to claim that some pardons Biden signed were not valid because they had not been signed with a real pen. NBC News has reported that the White House has used autopens to create signatures for decades.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
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