During Tuesday night’s presidential debate, former President Donald Trump repeated a wide range of false claims, internet rumors and absurd conspiracy theories, many of which would have been incomprehensible without extensive knowledge of the obscure corners of far-right social media.

It included a series of unsubstantiated claims about abortion, campaign rallies, the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, and bribes to government officials — not to mention a sensational rumor about immigrants in Ohio stealing and eating pets. And he denied any change in his view on the 2020 election, falsely claiming there was “so much evidence” that he won it.

While some of the claims may sound familiar to people who hang out on fringe forums, it’s unclear how the outrageous rumors resonated with everyone else. The debate drew more than 57.5 million viewers, according to ABC, the host.

Towards the end of the debate, just before the second break, Trump released a barrage of vague allegations about corruption in the Biden administration.

“You know, Biden is not going after people because China allegedly paid millions of dollars,” he said. “He’s afraid of it — he and his son together are getting all this money from Ukraine. They’re getting all this money from all these different countries. And then you wonder why he’s so loyal to this and that, Ukraine, China? Why did he get $3.5 million from the wife of the mayor of Moscow? Why did she pay him $3.5 million? This is a corrupt government, and they’re selling out our country.”

None of this appears to be based on fact. There is a debunked claim that Hunter Biden received $3.5 million from the wife of the former mayor of Moscow. This claim was mentioned in a Republican report four years ago, but was attributed only to a “confidential document.”

Trump’s campaign team did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday about the extent of the conspiracy theories during the debate.

Trump’s reliance on Internet rumors disappointed some of his allies, who had hoped he would focus his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris on issues discussed at the kitchen table, such as inflation.

Conservative radio host Erick Erickson vented his frustration during the debate, posting on X that Trump’s “stupid” advisers “got Trump to repeat your lie about the pets.”

And after the debate, some of Trump’s allies came up with a new conspiracy theory about Harris: They claimed, without evidence, that the earrings she wore must have contained mini speakers.

Harris, on the other hand, was apparently trying to use the debate to appeal to people outside her base: She mentioned that she was a gun owner and boasted about how the Biden administration had increased domestic oil production.

The debate gave a sense of how much Trump has been co-opted by non-mainstream internet personalities in his quest to reclaim the White House. Among the people on his plane on Tuesday was Laura Loomer, a far-right social media influencer and self-described “proud Islamophobe” who has made it her full-time job to spread pro-Trump conspiracy theories.

In recent weeks, Trump has conducted a series of interviews with right-wing influencers such as Logan Paul and Adin Ross, whose audiences are predominantly young and male.

And Trump’s personal internet brand is now focused on his own social media platform, Truth Social, where his promises to lock up his political opponents have received a more positive response than on more popular apps like Instagram or YouTube.

Tuesday’s debate reflected a clash between these two media ecosystems: the relatively small and insular far-right online world and the more traditional, nationwide audience.

“For the past few years, the Democrats have mostly been the party that is too online and stuck in a left-wing bubble,” says Josh Kraushaar, a political analyst at Fox News Radio and editor in chief of the political website Jewish Insider. wrote on X.

“At that debate, it was Trump who shared a (fake) social media meme about migrants eating cats that showed his team in their own bubble,” he wrote.

It wasn’t the first time Trump made a tactical error by revealing his ties to the insular world of the online right. In a debate with Joe Biden in 2020, Trump refused to condemn white supremacist groups and told an extremist group to “stand back and stand by.” And in 2022, he promoted several posts on Truth Social about the fringe conspiracy theory of QAnon.

During Tuesday’s debate, one of Trump’s bizarre claims was about abortion. In response to a question from ABC News anchor Linsey Davis asking about his changing views on the issue, he accused Democrats of supporting “post-birth executions” – which is not legal in any state, Davis noted in a fact check during the debate.

Trump specifically said that a former West Virginia governor, whom he did not name, was in favor of executing newborns. But he was most likely confusing that state with neighboring Virginia and its Democratic former governor, Ralph Northam. In 2019, Northam discussed nonviable pregnancies in an interview that anti-abortion activists later distorted, according to fact-checks by The Associated Press and Reuters.

Trump made only passing references to some Internet rumors, such as when Harris brought up the subject of his campaign rallies and said people had begun “leaving his events early out of exhaustion and boredom.” (Several news outlets, including The Wall Street Journal and The New Republic, have reported early departures from Trump’s events.)

Trump responded, without providing evidence, that Harris was “paying” her to attend her rallies – a claim that the nonpartisan PolitiFact Institute classified as false after it spread in right-wing media circles last month.

At other points, Trump advanced conspiracy theories that were most likely too vague to be fact-checked. In the middle of the debate, Trump talked about election security and claimed that an unspecified “they” was trying to get illegal immigrants to vote.

“They don’t even know English. They practically don’t even know what country they are in. And these people are trying to get them to vote and that’s why they let them enter our country,” he said in a response, without giving details about who was allegedly involved in the plot.

Trump has claimed in the past that “millions and millions” of votes were cast illegally, some by non-citizen immigrants; researchers and news organizations have regularly debunked those claims.