Disinformation enabled Donald Trump’s second term and is a crisis for democracies everywhere

Abstract

Disinformation is the new normal with far reaching implications for society, including population health. Martin McKee and colleagues outline the challenges and propose a way forward Donald Trump did not win the 2020 election, but asserting that he did became a prerequisite for Republicans standing for nomination to Congress or the Senate to win their primaries. An entire party became a vehicle for disinformation.1 Trump did win the 2024 presidential election, and key to that victory was building on the success of that lie. If you control enough of the information ecosystem, truth no longer matters. Another telling example: Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, are not eating cats and dogs. US vice president elect, JD Vance, the source of that claim, admitted as much even as he justified it. “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I'm going to do,” he said.2 Disinformation in politics is nothing new. History is replete with claims that were fabricated to advance political aims. Although threats were made against the local authorities in Springfield, no lives were lost. But in other cases, they were. US president Lyndon B Johnson used a fictitious attack on US ships to justify US involvement in Vietnam. British involvement in the Iraq invasion in 2003 was justified by a “dodgy dossier.” …