The US Department of Agriculture has spent the past week notifying people that the country is (allegedly) overrun by individuals who are fraudulently claiming SNAP benefits, while (allegedly) driving luxury vehicles.
“In just ONE state, 14,000 individuals receiving SNAP benefits were driving LUXURY VEHICLES!” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins posted on X last week. The official USDA account made similar claims, which were then amplified by figures like Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Rand Paul.
Those numbers are questionable at best. For one thing, the report they come from doesn’t name the state where thousands of people are allegedly buying Ferraris while using government money to buy food. For another, that report doesn’t include any explanation of its methodology.
Republicans claim a lot of things without proof, and the illiterate masses eat it up.
There is a blatant AI post going around of a MAGA dad standing in front of a bathroom and refusing to let a caricature of a trans person in, so he can “protect his daughter”. It is very obviously AI, people in the background have melting faces, and a baby stroller is levitating off the ground with extra wheels.
Nevertheless, conservatives are rallying behind this “brave father” who doesn’t exist, praising him for keeping out the “trans person”, who also doesn’t exist.
When it is pointed out to them that the photo is AI generated and that none of it actually happened, I’ve seen several make the argument that since they believed it is real, that’s enough proof that it did happen.
So, we’re at a point now where making up a story and clearly lying is somehow evidence in and of itself.