In 2020, we had “Stop the Steal.” Now, it looks like we have “Stop the Satellite.”
Deranged leftists on social media, still reeling from their crushing loss to President-elect Donald Trump, have concocted their own “Big Lie” to explain why Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential prospects went down the toilet.
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However, Democrats have added quite a twist: They are claiming X owner Elon Musk somehow manipulated votes to influence the outcome of the election.
Left-wing conspiracy theorists have claimed the 2024 US presidential election was “stolen”, as posts falsely alleging Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite network was used to manipulate the result spread on social media.
Claims that 20m votes in the election have “disappeared” or that Starlink was used to interfere with vote-counting machines have been shared by thousands of people across X, Threads and TikTok.
A nine-minute video claiming states had used “Starlink in order to tally up or count ballots” had more than 100,000 likes, 55,000 shares and had been viewed almost 900,000 times on TikTok. The video falsely claimed: “This is why the numbers don’t make sense.”
Similar claims that Mr Musk, a Trump ally, may have used Starlink to tamper with the election have spread widely across Threads, the social network owned by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, as well as on X, which is owned by Mr Musk and was previously known as Twitter.
On Threads, one post with more than 42,000 views and 840 shares claimed Mr Musk “knew who won four hours earlier than we did”.
It alleged Starlink had been “exploding” communications satellites, with Mr Musk “destroying the evidence”. Another lengthy post with more than 370,000 views and 6,300 shares claimed that voting had been hacked “at the tabulation level”.
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As the report suggests, there are tons of users on social media trying to promote this conspiracy, hoping desperately that it will catch on. Indeed, they are even using the hashtag #TrumpCheated to disseminate this narrative – and it’s quite pathetic, judging by even a small sampling of posts.
The voting machine that everybody overlooked!
Starlink#TrumpCheated pic.twitter.com/YEH8XN0lWJ
— No Joke (@_ImNotKidding) November 10, 2024
Trump just admitted to #fraud caused by #starlink. Truth will win out. They hooked up blue cities to #starlink and changed the results. @NATO pic.twitter.com/nHPBbBCaex
— Chrissy Lazar ~~ renazantz (@renazantz) November 10, 2024
Elon Musk’s starlink satellite internet was connected to voting systems. #Investigate2024 #Recount2024 #TrumpCheated
Reporter in Tulare County, California
🛑”Registrar Michelle Baldwin says access to connectivity was improved this year thanks to Starlink Internet” pic.twitter.com/5eIWz9veZ0— Yogi 🌞 (@YogiSunlight) November 11, 2024
Related: The Left’s Anger Toward Elon for His Views Shows Their Disconnect From the People (VIP)
It is not surprising that Democrats would concoct such a theory to excuse Harris’ ignominious defeat. But what is surprising is that PolitiFact even bothered to debunk this Big Lie, giving it a “Pants on Fire” rating. The alleged fact-checker published a piece explaining why these arguments are about as strong as wet paper.
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Security experts and officials have completely debunked the allegations. For starters, voting machines are typically not connected to the internet, meaning that the Tesla Man What Is Bad™ could not have magically used Starlink to change or erase votes even if he wanted to.
Swing states like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin have protocols in place to ensure that voting machinery remains offline.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) acknowledged that there is no evidence of malicious activity impacting the integrity of the election. State and local officials concurred.
To put it simply, the notion that Musk helped Trump cheat is even more ridiculous than the Russiagate narrative Democrats promoted after the 2016 election. Unfortunately for Democrats, their influencers would rather make up baseless conspiracy theories than actually examine why their party lost.
