Donald Trump Jr baselessly accused Joe Biden of being a 'pedophile' in an Instagram meme
- Donald Trump Jr in an Instagram post on Saturday spread a baseless smear about Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential candidate.
- The accusation echoes conspiracy theories by the far-right QAnon movement, who claim that a cabal of Democrats run a child abuse ring.
- The Trump campaign has launched a wave of personal attacks on social media against Biden, questioning whether he is in cognitive decline.
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In a baseless attack on Saturday, Donald Trump Jr posted a meme on his Instagram account that accused Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden of being a "pedophile."
The image posted by Trump Jr, who is President Donald Trump's oldest son and a prominent campaign surrogate, showed Biden with the message: "See you later, alligator" and below it an image of an alligator with the words: "In a while, pedophile," as first reported by The New York Times.
In a later tweet Trump Jr claimed he had only been joking in posting the meme, and pointed to the fact that in a caption with the post he had included three laughing face emojis.
But in the tweet, Trump Jr also doubled down on the baseless insinuation in the original message, posting several pictures of Biden near children at White House events.
He went on to retweet several messages defending his allegation, including by conspiracy theorist and pro-Trump provocateur Mike Cernovich.
The 2020 presidential campaign is shaping up to be one of the most aggressively personal in recent history. The Trump campaign has unleashed a wave of attack ads on Facebook, claiming that Biden is in cognitive decline.
President Trump has seen his poll ratings sink in recent weeks, and Biden holds a narrow lead in several battleground states, amid accusations Trump's administration botched its response to the coronavirus crisis.
Business Insider found no evidence of credible child abuse accusations being made against Biden.
Biden has been accused of inappropriate behavior by several women, and has denied a recent sexual assault accusation by former aide Tara Reade. President Trump has also been accused of sexual misconduct by several women.
Trump Jr has a history of spreading conspiracy theories and smear attacks on opponents of the president deemed too extreme for Trump campaign officials, according to a study by progressive media monitoring group Media Matters for America. They include messages from the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory movement, who groundlessly claim that a cabal of child-abusing Democrats and Hollywood stars secretly manipulate world events.
In April, he suggested that Hillary Clinton may have had a role in poisoning Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who killed himself in a New York jail cell in August while awaiting trial on child trafficking charges. In June, he was denounced for tweeting. then deleting a racist attack against Kamala Harris, an African American California senator and at that time a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether it supported Trump Jr's claims about Biden.
Andrew Bates, a spokesman for Biden, told The New York Times: "No repulsive, manipulative tactic will change the subject from how almost 90,000 Americans have paid for Donald Trump's coronavirus negligence with their lives and how the booming economy he inherited from the Obama-Biden Administration is now suffering from depression-level job losses."
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