An account with nearly 350,000 followers producing disinformation aligned with President Donald Trump is the author of many smear campaigns against Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and is being replicated by Mexican opposition politicians and fake news sites.
Created in November 2022, it claims to offer news from the United States Government (it’s called “US Homeland Security News”) without clarifying that it is neither part of nor represents the authorities of that country. The account has been growing rapidly, even though it is on a platform that doesn’t generate any information of its own.
Among other topics, it massively disseminates disinformation about Mexico, pushing lies intended to promote the idea that President Sheinbaum was murderously placed in power by organized crime and that criminals control her.
Despite the evident lack of seriousness and substantiation in its posts, they are replicated by figures such as opposition politician Amado Avendaño as well as by simulations of Spanish-language media outlets.
USEABLE MATERIAL
X’s account @defense_civil25 spreads falsehoods about Mexico of any kind. For example, on February 3, when popular aircraft tracking sites showed a US military aircraft flying over international airspace bordering Mexico, it twice claimed that it was “operating over sovereign Mexican territory” (the news agency Quadratin fell for the deception when it replicated the tweet).
President Sheinbaum’s alleged submission to “the cartels,” however, is one of its most repeated themes.
On February 20, it garnered 5 million impressions, 102,000 likes, and 30,000 shares with a post that was edited to make the insinuation more acute: In the first version, it stated that Sheinbaum “is moving quickly to change the Mexican constitution to protect the Cartels from US attacks!” In the second, it added: “Is she working for the Cartels?”
Avendaño, who in 2023-24 campaigned for former presidential candidate Xóchitl Gálvez claiming not to be a politician but a citizen, and who is now trying to form a new political party, reproduced a screenshot of the tweet translated into Spanish and without any explanation or nuance. Its users accepted the accusation as evidence.
An X account called “MonitoresMultimedia” also republished the hoax, treating @defense_civil25 as somehow representative of “US media.” Others acted similarly.
BOTS ON THE ATTACK
What’s most striking is that this post was commented on 24 thousand times, mostly by accounts with similar characteristics (few followers, with generic or no descriptions at all), which conveyed the same message with almost identical wording: A huge and highly variable number of presidential candidates (from 33 to 50) had been assassinated “by the cartel” so that Ms. Sheinbaum could compete without opponents and win the presidency.
Some directly accused her of being the assassin.
In the 2024 elections, as in previous years, a significant number of candidates died violently, but none of them were running for president. Only in 1994, 30 years earlier, presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio was shot dead. Then, Sheinbaum was a high school student.
REACTIVATION OF FAKE NEWS
In recent days, these bot attacks have resumed their activity with exactly the same message, using two other posts by @defense_civil25 against Sheinbaum as a launching pad:
The first, from March 19, reproduces a comment by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele in which he claims that a “criminal organization” has “allies in power” in Mexico and includes a photo of Sheinbaum.
The second, from Monday, March 24, shows four photos of her and accuses her of “having the power” to stop the cartels “but she refuses to do so.”
One of the accounts that exploited this post published a fake photo of the president and her predecessor carrying automatic weapons, wearing bloody shirts, and laughing out loud.
Related: China in Mexico’s Tren Maya? Republican lawmakers use lies to pressure President Sheinbaum
Mexican Press Agency is part of ALMA, which is dedicated to news and information about Mexico and Mexicans in the United States and is a fiscally sponsored project of Social Focus, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Redwood City, California.
