Wired

While Elon Musk officially endorsed former president Donald Trump in the wake of Saturday’s assassination attempt, Grok, the “anti-woke” AI chatbot integrated into Musk’s X platform, is boosting claims that Trump is “a pedophile” and “a wannabe dictator.” The chatbot also refers to Trump as “Psycho.”

This is based on an analysis shared exclusively with WIRED by Global Witness, a nonprofit that investigates digital threats, which looked at Grok’s responses to queries about the US election. Global Witness found that, in addition to referring to Trump as “Psycho,” the bot also appeared to invent racist tropes about Kamala Harris, surface widely-debunked election conspiracy theories, and recommend that users post biased hashtags such as #WeBackBidenHarris2024 and #VoteReform for engagement.

US senator J.D. Vance, an Ohio Republican and former US president Donald Trump’s pick for vice president, has a public Venmo account that gives an unfiltered glimpse into his extensive network of connections with establishment GOP heavyweights, wealthy financiers, technology executives, the prestige press, and fellow graduates of Yale Law School—precisely the elites he rails against. A WIRED analysis of the account, the people listed as Vance’s friends, and, in turn, the people listed as their friends highlights sometimes bizarre and surprising connections. Experts, meanwhile, worry that the information revealed by the peer-to-peer payment app raises the potential for stalking, trolling, and impersonation.

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Right after former president Donald Trump was shot at his campaign rally in Pennsylvania, conspiracy theories exploded online. Today on WIRED Politics Lab, we discuss the subsequent calls for violence and civil war, and the way that militias are recruiting off of the incident. Plus, we report from the Republican National Convention on the reaction to Trump’s vice presidential nominee, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio.

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Good morning from Milwaukee, where it’s the final day of the 2024 Republican National Convention. In the week since you last heard from me, the circumstances of this election have changed dramatically. Before Saturday, we were waiting for a possible announcement from President Joe Biden over whether he’d remain on the Democratic ticket.

Republican figureheads from Silicon Valley are rallying behind former president Donald Trump’s selection of Ohio senator J.D. Vance as his running mate.

Top Silicon Valley leaders like Elon Musk came out in support of Vance as Trump’s vice presidential pick in the hours after the official announcement was made on Monday. Musk said that the Trump-Vance ticket “resounds with victory” and called it an “excellent decision” by Trump. David Sacks, a prominent GOP donor and venture capitalist, wrote on the social media site X, “This is who I want by Trump’s side: an American patriot.”

On Monday night at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina took to the stage and declared he believes in miracles.

“Thank God almighty,” Scott said. “Our God still saves, still delivers, still sets free. Because on Saturday, the devil came to Pennsylvania holding a rifle. But an American lion got back up on his feet and he roared.”

Scott, a man who once literally hammered the Ten Commandments to the wall of a government building, is one of dozens if not hundreds of lawmakers, religious leaders, and influencers who have framed former president Donald Trump surviving an assassination attempt as some sort of divine act.

TikTok helped promote Germany’s far-right extremist political party to young voters ahead of last month’s EU elections, even when they were searching the app for other political parties or politicians, according to a new report shared exclusively with WIRED.

The report was written by researchers from the nonprofit organization AI Forensics and Interface, a European think tank specializing in information technology. Researchers found that in a quarter of cases, young users in Germany searching on the app for specific political parties and their politicians in the weeks leading up to the vote on June 5 were instead given suggestions for other parties. In the majority of these cases, they were given suggestions linked to Alternative for Germany (AfD), Germany’s leading far-right party.

On Monday, former president and current Republican nominee for president Donald Trump officially named senator J.D. Vance of Ohio as his pick for vice president and running mate.

“After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio,” wrote Trump in a post on Truth Social announcing his pick.

Militia and anti-government groups across the United States are using the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump as an opportunity to organize, recruit, and train.

“An attack on President Trump was an attack on us, people like us—like-minded American patriots,” says Scott Seddon, the Pennsylvania-based founder of the American Patriots Three Percenters (APIII), in a video posted to TikTok on Sunday. APIII is a decentralized militia network with chapters across the US. “There comes a point in time where everybody in this group needs to start being accountable for what they’re doing to help grow the organization and building a network of like-minded people in their area. Because they’re coming for us.”

As conspiracies and threats of violence flooded online spaces in the hours after former president Donald Trump was shot during a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, one narrative emerged from the right: Women and DEI, or diversity, equity, and inclusion, are to blame.

The sexist claims are based on deceptively edited videos and images being shared online by right-wing pundits, influencers, and trolls that have critiqued a number of female Secret Service agents who were part of Trump’s close protection detail on Saturday.