Summary
- Far-right Twitter (now known as X) accounts are spreading fake news about Kurt Russell endorsing forced deportations to support Trump.
- Kurt Russell has been used for misinformation campaigns since the Trump era began, possibly due to his tough-guy image.
- Previous misinformation includes fake quotes attributed to Russell supporting Trump and attacking Democrats, and Photoshopped images.
On May 2, multiple far-right Twitter (now known as X) accounts have been sharing and reposting essentially the same fake message, usually phrased as, “BREAKING: Hollywood legend Kurt Russell just said that illegal immigrants should be forcibly deported from America.” They then add an image of Russell and usually promote Donald Trump or ask if other social media users agree with the fraudulent statement. Russell has not yet given a response, though it’s undoubtedly clear that the statement is false (this is hardly the first time Russell has been used for Republican Twitter). The latest messages generally look like this:
While they’ve fooled many unsuspecting social media users, some people have rightly realized that there is no evidence or attribution of Russell ever saying anything remotely like this.
Watch Our Interview with Kurt Russell and Son Below:
The Long History of Maliciously Using Kurt Russell to Propagate Misinformation
For whatever reason, Russell has been the target of myriad misinformation campaigns over the years, mostly beginning with the Trump presidency. Perhaps it’s his cinematic image as a gun-toting tough guy (and his self-professed belief in the Second Amendment). Regardless, Russell has been used multiple times as a prop to support far-right ideology.
In April 2016, an image of Russell and his wife, Goldie Hawn, wearing Donald Trump attire made the rounds on social media. Conservatives are statistically likely to be older and less educated, so it makes sense that they didn’t immediately realize how terrible of a Photoshop job the fake image was. See it below.
Then, in November 2018, Trump supporters spread a social media blitz falsely claiming that Russell said this:
President Donald J. Trump is relentless. I’ve never seen a man so dedicated & determined. I’d like to think I would be as courageous as he is, but I just don’t know. The world is after him & he stands there in the face of pure evil, rock solid & ready to fight for us. God bless this brave man.
It’s always a bad sign, however, if a quote doesn’t have a link, source, or citation of some kind. Ultimately, that quote stemmed from the now deactivated Twitter account, @WyattEarpLA, a nod to Russell’s character in the film Tombstone. The account was also named after Russell’s character in Escape from New York, Snake Plissken.
Kurt Russell’s 10 Highest-Grossing Movies Ranked, Adjusted for Inflation
One of Hollywood’s greats, Kurt Russell has starred in a host of financial smashes.
And then, in February 2019, a Facebook account named “America’s Last Line of Defense” posted a meme and message falsely attributed to Kurt Russell stating, “If the Dems regain power, they have promised to abolish the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, & 6th amendments.”
The depressingly hilarious thing is that “America’s Last Line of Defense” was a satirical page that made fun of politics, akin to The Onion. As The Washington Post writes:
“’Nothing on this page is real,’ read one of the 14 disclaimers on Blair’s site, and yet in the America of 2018 his stories had become real, reinforcing people’s biases, spreading onto Macedonian and Russian fake news sites, amassing an audience of as many 6 million visitors each month who thought his posts were factual […] The more extreme we become, the more people believe it.”
