AZ Republicans spread debunked 'body double' conspiracies
Two Arizona Republican state lawmakers have shared a debunked conspiracy theory that alleges, in part, that President Joe Biden is using body doubles.
Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, shared a now deleted post on X, formerly Twitter, falsely claiming that Jill Biden was in Paris and Washington, D.C., at the same time. The first lady left the White House and flew to France shortly after Biden spoke to the nation about dropping out of the race, PolitiFact reported, and the pictures were taken many hours apart.
Rogers shared the post adding “Body double?” in her post, referring to a similarly debunked claim that the Biden family uses “body doubles” for a number of conspiratorial reasons.
Rep. Joseph Chaplik, R-Scottsdale, shared a similar post, reposting an item by former CBS journalist Sharyl Attkisson, who has claimed falsely in the past that vaccines cause autism, a belief that has been thoroughly debunked.
The post claimed that the use of a body double would be “flawless” and hard to detect adding the speculative assumption of “unless they want us to, for some reason.” Atkisson herself was reposting another user who claimed that Biden was taller in footage posted online. That user was accused of pretending to be a black woman who would never vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Rogers also shared a similar post claiming that Biden had grown taller. Earlier in the week, she shared posts making spurious claims, including that Biden had died and it was being covered up.
Neither Chaplik or Rogers responded to multiple requests for comment about the posts and if they were aware that they had been debunked or were created by people with a history of sharing misinformation.
The body double conspiracy is not new. Last year, the QAnon community began spreading conspiracy theories that Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, a Democrat who suffered a stroke in 2022, had been replaced with a body double.
In its simplest form, the complex and damaging QAnon conspiracy theory that alleges that a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles are running a global sex-trafficking ring, control world governments and are trying to bring down former President Donald Trump — who is himself single-handedly dismantling the cabal.
There are many iterations of the theory, as adherents are encouraged to do their own “research.” As a result, there are a wide variety of QAnon beliefs. For example, some believe that Q, the supposed insider who discloses secret information to followers, is actually John F. Kennedy Jr. — who died in 1999 when the plane he was flying crashed into the Atlantic Ocean — while others believe Q is actually Trump himself.
Conspiracy theorists have used the body double idea to push a number of false claims, including around vaccines or around the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Rogers herself is no stranger to conspiracy theories.
There is no evidence to suggest that either Biden was using a body double.
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