Earlier today, Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell’s office put out a photo and a statement saying that he’s sick, not dead or comatose. The conspiracy theories started immediately. I’ll begin with a straight-news post on Bluesky from Phil Lewis, an editor at HuffPost:
Social media users started questioning when the newspaper he’s holding had been published. I’ve seen suggestions that it’s from April. Well, no. In fact, it’s the front page today’s Washington Post sports section. (And minor props to McConnell for grabbing the sports pages.)
Even more ridiculous: You can see in the top photo that McConnell has the requisite four fingers and a thumb on his left hand. Almost immediately, though, an image started circulating showing McConnell with five fingers, thus “proving” that the photo is an AI fake. If you hadn’t seen the original, you might even believe it. mfa08 is an anonymous Bluesky account with 1,000 followers.
Think before you post.
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