“The Misinformation Web”: Maria Hinojosa on the Pro-Trump Propaganda Targeting Latinos in 2024

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, “War, Peace and the Presidency.” I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

We look now at how Spanish-language misinformation is targeting Latinx voters, a key demographic that could determine the outcome of this presidential election in key battleground states, including Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, where both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump made dueling campaign stops on Monday. Trump’s campaign continues to face widespread backlash over racist comments made by a far-right, so-called comedian who described Puerto Rico as an “island of garbage” at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally.

On Monday, Harris spent some of the last hours before Election Day in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a Latinx-majority city home to some 34,000 Puerto Ricans. Her visit came just days after Trump also spoke there. Pennsylvania has some 600,000 eligible Latinx voters, while one study found Arizona, another swing state, has 1.3 million registered Latinx voters, the fourth-largest Latinx voter bloc in the nation.

Latinx-led grassroots groups have largely backed Kamala Harris, are leading get-out-the-vote campaigns while also fighting the spread of mis- and disinformation. Spanish-speaking communities have been bombarded by false claims, conspiracies and fake news on social media platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and X, formerly Twitter, as well as WhatsApp channels. Voting rights groups also warn of the use of artificial intelligence, AI, to generate fake election content in Spanish.

Well, Futuro Media and Latino USA looked into “The Misinformation Web” targeting Spanish speakers in the U.S., much of it propagated by conservative content creators living outside the U.S. This is a clip of host Maria Hinojosa talking to a man from Venezuela who goes by Juan Torres. He supposedly lives in Iceland and runs two YouTube channels.

MARIA HINOJOSA: So I asked him what he thinks about Trump being a convicted felon. He says those charges, they’re all lies. When I tell him that it’s a fact that Donald Trump has been convicted of multiple felonies, Juan says it’s all a witch hunt. Ultimately, Donald Trump was found guilty by a jury of his peers.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by Maria Hinojosa, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, founder of Futuro Media, host of Latino USA, which has this new investigation podcast on “The Misinformation Web.”

Maria, welcome back to Democracy Now! So, lay out who Juan Torres is and also just your overall investigation.

MARIA HINOJOSA: Well, the investigation really, it ended up taking us, Amy and Juan, to where we didn’t expect to be, right? Because both of the content creators — we’ll be nice and call them content creators — live outside of the United States. They are not American citizens. They don’t plan on being able to vote or move to this country anytime soon. And yet, John Acquaviva and Juan Torres, both Venezuelan, both under 30, both in Spanish, have YouTube channels, even though one is based outside of London and the other one is based allegedly in Iceland. We did meet John Acquaviva in person in London, and so I’m pretty sure that he does live in that area.

But, basically, here’s the thing, Amy. We understood that the Latino electorate was going to be central in terms of deciding this election today. And if you had intelligence, you were watching what was happening in terms of mis- and disinformation being flooded into Latino communities. What do I mean? So, yeah, four years ago, there were probably memes already about Kamala as a communist, dressed in a Mao Zedong outfit and at a so-called Communist Party office with a flag behind her. The Democrats and the party and the campaign did not really take it as seriously, so therefore the misinformation just spread, spread, spread instead of being met with a wall of facts. And so, that’s why you have, you know, unexpectedly more Latinos and Latinas who are turning to Trump, because they have been fed two things: one, that Kamala is essentially a communist and a socialist, and, two, that Donald Trump is an excellent businessman and is going to do amazing things for the U.S. economy.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Maria, could you talk about the under-the-radar impact of a lot of this right-wing, Spanish-language, especially social media usage, throughout Latin America, that even some of the major social media companies are clearly not moderating their content at the same level in Spanish as they are in English?

MARIA HINOJOSA: Yeah. You, basically, on YouTube, have about — I think it’s about 28,000 moderators for, what, a billion views in a day, for example. It just doesn’t match with what we’re being faced with. The way I felt about it, Juan — and, you know, we’re of a similar generation, right? So, this is, for those of us who have grown up doing journalism on the frontlines, you know, just like I was reporting from my precinct in Harlem where I voted at 6:00 in the morning, that kind of frontline going to a community, meeting with people face to face. This kind of journalism is met with young men, a very bro-ey culture, that yell at their screens, but in an attractive way, in a dramatic way, and basically repeat lies that they — one of them, Juan Torres, says, he’s like, “Twitter, X, is my only source.” It’s like, “Oh my god. That’s scary.” It feels completely out of control. It feels like the blob. That’s the only image that I can say, right? This blob that is now — how do you put the genie back in the bottle? And again, the problem is, for Latinos and Latinas and for those of us who speak Spanish, there are less places to do the triple sourcing, triple fact-checking that you learn in basic media literacy, and therefore that’s why the lies continue to get propagated.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to another clip from your Latino USA investigation, “The Misinformation Web.” This features one of the men you’re talking about, John Acquaviva, a content creator who became more actively engaged in U.S. politics in the lead-up to this election. You met him in London at a hotel. This is him.

MARIA HINOJOSA: Ten minutes into our conversation, John, just like Juan Torres, tries to provoke a debate with me. So, let me ask you, though: Why would you put —

JOHN ACQUAVIVA: [inaudible] What’s the problem? Obviously, you’re the producer against drones, but that’s just a different subject, isn’t it?

MARIA HINOJOSA: What did you say?

JOHN ACQUAVIVA: Obviously, you do see a problem with it, because you’re against drones. So, that’s your opinion. I can have mine.

MARIA HINOJOSA: Wait a second. What are you talking about?

JOHN ACQUAVIVA: I’ve seen your opinions about gun control.

MARIA HINOJOSA: Opinions?

JOHN ACQUAVIVA: Yeah.

MARIA HINOJOSA: You’d have to specifically show me something that shows an opinion.

JOHN ACQUAVIVA: You’ve spoken endlessly about mass shootings.

MARIA HINOJOSA: Endlessly.

JOHN ACQUAVIVA: Yeah.

MARIA HINOJOSA: OK.

JOHN ACQUAVIVA: I actually have some quotes. You want to read them?

MARIA HINOJOSA: No.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s John Acquaviva. But I found something really interesting in your podcast between John and Juan, and both being Venezuelan. You ask them why the U.S. election matters to you so much, and they’re saying because it can ultimately affect the shaping of a new Venezuela.

MARIA HINOJOSA: Oh, yeah. And John Acquaviva wants to run for president of Venezuela. You know, of course, again, they both say that they are entirely focused on Venezuela, and yet they don’t live there, and they’re not these days talking about Venezuelan politics. They’re obsessed with U.S. politics. But essentially, it would be the trickle down. If Trump wins — and both of them are Trump supporters — if Trump wins, that means that there is a possibility, of course, even of military intervention in Venezuela. I mean, we don’t have that in terms of a policy position, but of course that could happen.

My problem with where they stand on Venezuela is that they don’t really go beyond the immediate of just let’s get Trump elected, because, of course, I said, “Well, Trump is planning on having a mass deportation policy. That means tens of thousands of your fellow Venezuelans are going to be deported from the United States into Venezuela. How is that possibly going to benefit your country?” They didn’t have an answer for that. But the thing is, is that if Hugo Chávez had never existed, these two guys, who are spreading mis- and disinformation and lies, would not exist. So, there’s a trickle of — that leads to misinformation, sadly, right now.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Maria, in one video, Torres claims that Kamala Harris supports Soviet-style policies, even though the Soviet Union no longer exists. This whole effort to paint Kamala Harris as a communist, how is that playing among Latin Americans here in the U.S.?

MARIA HINOJOSA: Well, you know, Juan, that for Cubans — right? — the anti-communism, that piece of their history is very real, right? And there is a lot of trauma that we cannot diminish, because they were — in essence, had to leave their country, never to be able to go back. That is a lot of the South Florida political reality, right? Enter Venezuelans, who are escaping from a horrible economy in Venezuela and, you know, a real [inaudible] down of the democratic process in Venezuela over the past several years. So, they come also with the trauma of, you know, alleged communism, socialism. The problem for those of us who have a critical analysis — right? — is that communism and socialism are very profound, deep concepts, and I don’t believe that they have existed in either one of those places. But there is a —

AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, they’re the target of fierce U.S. sanctions to this day.

MARIA HINOJOSA: Fierce U.S. sanctions. But you know what? The point is, is that if you are getting Social Security in the United States today and you’re benefiting from that, welcome to socialism in the United States of America. So, people don’t understand that, in fact, the policies that they critique are many of the ones that they’re going to be benefiting from. But the point of the story is that there is a vacuum of people who hear “communist,” “socialist,” scary. It’s going to change the United States. It’s going to become like Cuba. It’s going to become like Venezuela.

AMY GOODMAN: Three seconds.

MARIA HINOJOSA: And they’re going to vote for Donald Trump. That’s what we’ve seen.

AMY GOODMAN: Maria Hinojosa, we thank you so much for being with us. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.