Eric Trump shares a fake QAnon-promoted ‘ballot’-burning video – Business Insider

• Eric Trump, President Donald Trump’s second-eldest son, shared a video on Twitter on Wednesday that purported to show an anonymous man burning 80 ballots cast for his father.
• The video, first posted by a supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory, is a fake.
• The version of the video Eric Trump shared received more than a million views before the account hosting it was suspended by Twitter.
• Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

Eric Trump, President Donald Trump’s second-eldest son, shared a video on Twitter on Wednesday that purported to show an anonymous man burning 80 ballots cast for his father.

The video, first posted by a QAnon conspiracy-theory account, is a fake.

The footage shows a man pouring a flammable liquid into a bag of what he claims are 80 paper ballots “all for President Trump” and setting them on fire. The pieces of paper show races in Virginia Beach, Virginia, but are clearly sample ballots and not real votes, city officials told news outlets on Tuesday.

The video was discredited by officials on Tuesday, but both the right-wing site The Gateway Pundit and Eric Trump posted it Wednesday. The version of the video Eric Trump shared received more than a million views before the account hosting it was suspended by Twitter.

A spokesman for the Trump family didn’t immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.

Eric Trump, taking his father’s lead, has aggressively spread disinformation about the election, baselessly claiming that Democrats are attempting to “steal” and “rig” the election. On Wednesday, he traveled to Pennsylvania with other members of the president’s inner circle and falsely claimed his father had won the state, even though it continued to count hundreds of thousands of ballots.

The Trump campaign has sued to halt vote counting in Pennsylvania — a must-win battleground state for the president — as election officials continue to tabulate legally cast mail-in ballots.

—Drew Harwell (@drewharwell) November 5, 2020

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