MSNBC political contributor Jason Johnson condemned conspiracy theories being spread online by supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris alleging that the vote count was fraudulent because Elon Musk’s Starlink internet satellites rigged machines to tip the election to President-elect Donald Trump.
Johnson appeared on Joy Reid’s “The ReidOut” show on Monday to discuss conspiracy theories that were being shared on various social media platforms such as X, Bluesky and TikTok.
Johnson compared the phenomenon to the “election denialism” that was spread by President-elect Donald Trump and his supporters in 2020.
His comments were reported by Mediaite.
Johnson said that two weeks after the election, “conspiracies about the results are still running rampant, except this time, we’re seeing it on the other side of the aisle, with some on the left questioning the validity of the results.”
Johnson referred to the theory that Musk’s Starlink satellite internet providers hacked into vote tabulation machines and altered the count to favor Trump.
“Now, there is no evidence that any of that is true whatsoever,” Johnson said.
“Not to mention, voting machines are not connected to the internet during the election process.”
Johnson said that the false claims have been “spreading like wildfire on social media, garnering tens of millions of views on places like TikTok and X and Twitter, which proves that neither side of the political spectrum is immune to election misinformation.”
He said that he had been “personally inundated with worried friends and relatives” asking him about theories involving Musk rigging the election.
Trump’s victory and Musk’s active role in helping the president-elect defeat Harris has prompted an influx of social media users to join rival apps such as Bluesky and Threads. Musk owns X after acquiring the company formerly known as Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion.
Since Election Day, at least 1.25 million people have signed up to Bluesky, the decentralized platform founded by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.
Threads, the Meta-owned app which was created to rival X, has not said how many users have joined since earlier this month.
But Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that Threads boasts more than 275 million monthly users — up from 150 million in April.
