US election 2020: Trump threatens to fire Fauci as Harris warns over nation’s ‘moral direction’ – live

How much impact can a few thousand faked emails telling voters in Florida and Alaska to “vote for Trump or else” have on voters compared with Trump directly ordering the Proud Boys, a neo-fascist street gang, to “stand back and stand by” before a television audience of 73m people? And what kind of false tale of voter fraud could Iran possibly seed that could undermine Americans’ faith in the electoral process more than the disinformation about voter fraud and mail-in ballots coming straight from the White House and Trump’s campaign?

“‘Don’t trust the electoral system, don’t trust the CDC, don’t trust your neighbor because they’re probably antifa, don’t trust the left,’” Claire Wardle, the executive director of First Draft, a group that researches and combats disinformation, said of Trump’s re-election message. “It’s not about persuading people one way or the other, it’s about making them scared and causing confusion and chaos,” she added.

“The media’s been obsessed with Russians under the bed, but to have the president of the United States telling people in the US that they can’t trust the results of the election – Putin could only dream of that kind of thing.”