正如我在前几期中提到的，我现在正与屡获殊荣的视频制作人加里森·海耶斯共同主持一档关于中期选举的快闪视频播客，名为《我们的土地》（Our Land）。（您可以在……收看）在每一集中，加里森和我都会询问嘉宾，是什么让他们对中期选举感到焦虑。截至今天，我的答案是：存在最后关头大笔资金和虚假信息介入的可能性，从而制造出一个“十月惊奇”，影响一个或多个决定哪个党最终控制国会的众议院和参议院竞选。而站在巨额竞选捐款与潜在有害虚假叙事交汇点上的，是一个混蛋，名叫埃隆·马斯克。
Our Land As I’ve noted in previous issues, I’m now co-hosting a pop-up video podcast on the midterms called with award-winning video producer Garrison Hayes. (You can In each episode, Garrison and I ask our guests what’s stressing them out about the midterms. My answer, as of today, is the possibility of a last-minute intervention of big money and disinformation, yielding an October surprise that influences one or more of the House and Senate races determining which party ends up controlling Congress. And standing at the intersection of obscenely huge campaign donations and potentially harmful false narratives is a jerk named Elon Musk.
上周，媒体广泛报道了马斯克向中期选举注资 3.66 亿美元以助特朗普和共和党一事。（他的总投入似乎很可能将超过 5 亿美元。）这笔资金的大部分用于助推共和党参议院候选人，尤其是在得克萨斯州深陷腐败丑闻的肯·帕克斯顿。评论员和政论家们正在探讨马斯克巨额资金的影响之际，我的同事安娜·默兰敏锐地指出，马斯克构成了另一种威胁，并称他为“最大的选举虚假信息风险”。
Last week, there was much coverage of the news that Musk has injected $366 million into the midterm elections to aid Trump and the Republicans. (It appears likely his total tab will exceed half a billion dollars.) Much of this money has gone to bolster GOP Senate candidates, particularly the corruption-scarred Ken Paxton in Texas. As pundits and political chatterers pondered the impact of Musk’s millions, my colleague Anna Merlan wisely observed that Musk posed another threat and tagged him the “biggest election disinformation risk.”
她之所以给马斯克贴上这个标签，是因为他在传播一个虚假说法中发挥了关键作用——这个说法由“让美国再次伟大”（MAGA）影响者炮制，声称得克萨斯州民主党参议院候选人詹姆斯·塔拉里科之所以缺席竞选活动，是因为他在俄亥俄州的一家精神病院住院治疗。这个故事纯属胡说八道。据塔拉里科竞选团队称，他染上了一场严重的流感，在消失公众视野九天左右后，就在这些 MAGA 蠢蛋断言他在俄亥俄州那家机构接受治疗的时候，他已重新公开露面（该机构随后否认塔拉里科曾在那里接受过治疗）。
She characterized Musk this way after he played a crucial role in spreading the false claim—cooked up by MAGA influencers—that James Talarico, the Democratic Senate candidate in Texas, had been absent from the campaign trail because he had checked himself into a mental health hospital in Ohio. The story was 100 percent bullshit. Talarico, according to his campaign, had contracted a nasty bout of the flu, and, after nine or so days out of sight, he was back in public view at the time these MAGA doofuses were asserting he had been in the Ohio facility (which eventually denied Talarico had ever been treated there).
然而，这个捏造的故事却迅速发酵，在互联网上疯传，这在很大程度上归因于它在马斯克旗下的 X 平台上被放大。正如默兰指出的，这里有一个生动的视觉图示，展示了这堆垃圾信息如何在 X 上飞速传播。马斯克是这起欺诈的关键放大者。他向其 2.415 亿粉丝发推文——受众规模约为福克斯新闻的 100 倍——称“塔拉里科竞选团队在隐瞒选民理应知情的重大信息”。
Yet the phony tale caught fire and zipped across the internet, largely due to its amplification on the Musk-owned Here’s a fascinating visual depiction of how this crap flew across Musk, as Merlan points out, was a key amplifier of this fraud. He tweeted to his 241.5 million followers—an audience about 100 times the size of Fox News—that the “Talarico campaign is hiding something big that voters ought to know about.”
在另一条推文中，他坚持认为，“塔拉里科竞选团队对发生的事情不诚实”。当故事被揭穿后，他没有承认自己错了。兜售这个虚假故事的 MAGA 影响者和其他右翼人士也没有承认。
In another post, he maintained, “The Talarico campaign is not being honest about what’s happening.”When the story fell apart, he did not acknowledge he had been wrong. Nor did the MAGA influencers and other right-wingers who had peddled this phony story.
这场针对塔拉里科的愚蠢攻击，不太可能削弱他成为32年来首位在德克萨斯州赢得全州范围选举的民主党人的机会。但它展示了一套标准剧本：针对候选人制造毫无根据且恶毒的谣言，并利用马斯克的平台——或许是马斯克本人——迅速散布。如果在更接近选举日时实施，候选人可能没有足够时间反击虚假指控。拥有大量资金的超级政治行动委员会——资金来自马斯克或其他人（包括在人工智能和加密货币领域向这场选举投入巨资的其他大科技寡头）——也能做同样的事：在竞选最后一周投放负面广告，助推虚假指控。如今，亿万富翁甚至可能利用企业空壳公司匿名资助攻击性广告。
This idiotic assault on Talarico is not likely to lessen his chances of becoming the first Democrat to win a statewide race in Texas in 32 years. But it illustrates a standard play: Start an unfounded and scurrilous rumor about a candidate and use Musk’s platform—perhaps Musk himself—to spread it quickly. If done closer to Election Day, there might not be sufficient time for a candidate to beat back the false accusation. And super-PACs with plenty of cash—from Musk or others (including other Big Tech plutocrats in the AI and crypto fields who are pouring gobs of money into this election)—can do the same: Drop negative ads boosting false allegations in the final week of the campaign. It’s even possible these days for billionaires to use corporate cutouts to finance attack ads anonymously.
考虑到利害攸关——马斯克本人拥有数十亿美元的政府合同，他希望保住或争取这些合同——如果这场竞选的最后几天没有虚假信息的诡计和竞选资金的欺诈手段，那才叫令人惊讶。（俄罗斯人也已开始干预这场选举以助共和党一臂之力。见下文。）这位出生于南非的马斯克在美国政治中占据了前所未有的地位。凭借今年的捐款，他已作出已知最大额个人政治献金；他掌控着一个政治新闻与虚假信息流动、触达数百万选民的社交媒体平台——他本人还制造了一些虚假信息。
With so much at stake—Musk himself has billions of dollars in government contracts he wants to protect or land—it would be surprising if the final days of this campaign were free of disinformation skullduggery and campaign-cash chicanery. (The Russians, too, have started meddling in this election to help the GOP. See the next item.) The South Africa–born Musk holds an unprecedented position in American politics. With his donations this year, he has made the largest known personal financial contribution to an election, he controls a social media platform through which political news and disinformation flow, reaching millions of voters— he himself generates some of that disinformation.
马斯克自然值得持续受到审视——尤其是因为他是个不诚实的家伙，多年来一直在宣扬最荒谬的指控和阴谋论。在2024年竞选期间，他反复发布虚假言论，声称大量非公民在投票，甚至宣称民主党将寻求庇护者空运至摇摆州，并为他们加速入籍以便投票。他关于那次选举的虚假或误导性指控在X平台上累计获得了12亿次浏览。当他转发一段由AI篡改的贺锦丽深度伪造视频（视频中贺锦丽似乎发表了冒犯性言论）时，获得了1.34亿次浏览。
Naturally, Musk warrants continuous scrutiny—especially since he’s a dishonest fellow who’s been promoting the most ludicrous allegations and conspiracy theories for years. During the 2024 campaign, he repeatedly posted the false claim that large numbers of noncitizens were voting, even going so far as to declare that Democrats were flying asylum seekers into swing states and fast-tracking them for citizenship so they could vote. His false or misleading allegations about that election racked up 1.2 billion views on X. He received 134 million views when he reposted an AI-manipulated deepfake video of Kamala Harris supposedly making offensive remarks.
马斯克的阴谋论倾向远远超出了选举虚假信息的范畴。他声称DEI（多元、公平与包容）是洛杉矶消防局应对山火失误的原因，并宣称南非正在发生“白人种族灭绝”。（这两项指控均不属实。）他放大了海地移民在俄亥俄州斯普林菲尔德吃宠物的虚假故事。他诉诸反犹太主义陈词滥调攻击乔治·索罗斯。他虚假指控数百万死者在领取社会保障金。
Musk’s conspiracism has extended far beyond election disinformation. He claimed that DEI was the cause of errors in the Los Angeles Fire Department’s response to wildfires and that “white genocide” was underway in South Africa. (Neither allegation was true.) He amplified the fake story that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets. He’s resorted to antisemitic tropes to attack George Soros. He falsely charged that millions of dead people were collecting Social Security. (This genius misread the data.)
（这位天才误读了数据。）他推广俄罗斯虚假信息，称美国国际开发署（USAID）支付好莱坞名人数百万美元访问乌克兰，并发帖声称美国国际开发署资助了包括新冠病毒在内的生物武器研究。他附和一个宣称“通奸门”（Pizzagate）“是真的”的梗图。今年早些时候，他放大了一条帖子，称在2020年大选期间，“宾夕法尼亚州发出了1,823,148张邮寄选票，但收回了约250万张邮寄选票。”这一指控——长期以来一直是特朗普选举否认者的主流说辞——已被反复驳斥。
He boosted Russian disinformation that claimed USAID was paying Hollywood celebrities millions of dollars to visit Ukraine, and he put up posts saying USAID funded bioweapons research that included Covid-19. He seconded a meme that proclaimed Pizzagate was “real.”Earlier this year, he amplified a post that said that during the 2020 election, “Pennsylvania sent out 1,823,148 mail-in ballots but received back around 2.5 MILLION mail-in ballots.”This charge—long a mainstay of Trump’s election deniers—has been repeatedly debunked.
这只是冰山一角。马斯克是个怪人。他最近背书了一条社交媒体帖子，称只有睾酮水平高的男性和自闭症患者才应被允许参与政府“决策”——抱歉，各位女士——他还分享了各种种族主义言论。
That’s a mere sampling. Musk is a nutter. He recently endorsed a social media post that said only men with high testosterone and people with autism should be allowed to engage in governmental “decision making”—sorry, all you gals—and he has shared assorted racist sentiments.
可当你是个万亿富翁时，你的种族主义、厌女主义、反犹主义、无知和阴谋论都不重要了。共和党人曾试图将极左翼影响者哈桑·皮克在初选期间与密歇根州民主党参议员候选人阿卜杜勒·埃尔赛德的竞选活动炒作成丑闻，但马斯克对众多共和党候选人的直接援助并未引起多大轩然大波。似乎只有某些关联才值得愤慨。
Yet when you’re a trillionaire, your racism, misogyny, antisemitism, ignorance, and conspiracism don’t matter. Republicans have tried to make a scandal of far-left influencer Hasan Piker’s campaigning with Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan Democratic Senate candidate, during the primary contest. Yet Musk’s direct aid to a wide range of GOP candidates has not sparked as much of a hullabaloo. Only certain associations seem to be worthy of outrage.
马斯克在中期选举中的影响力无与伦比。在这场选举的最后几天，可能发生很多事情。毫无疑问，特朗普正在考虑可能引发混乱或引发危机的行动。MAGA活动人士一直敦促他宣布戒严——尽管从技术上讲，这并不允许他扣押选票或阻止选举。除了这些极端选项，十月惊奇更可能涉及虚假信息和金钱。所以在未来几周，请密切关注马斯克。从长远来看，美国人将不得不想办法，防止像这样一个蠢货在美国政治中拥有如此大的影响力。
Musk’s influence in the midterms is unparalleled. There’s a lot that could happen in the waning days of this election. Trump, no doubt, is contemplating actions that could cause chaos or spark a crisis. MAGA activists have been urging him to declare martial law—though that would not technically permit him to seize ballots or block elections. Such extreme options aside, an October surprise is more likely to involve disinformation and money. So in the coming weeks, keep your eye on Musk. And in the long run, Americans are going to have to figure out how to keep a schmuck like this from having so much sway in US politics.