How Truth Social’s far-right bubble feeds on L.A. protests: Hate, racism and misinformation against Mexico

For several days, tempers have been flaring in Los Angeles against Trump’s immigration policy, almost like an uncontrolled flame. Amidst the protests and demonstrations by the Latino community over the criminalization of immigrants, a boiling cauldron has been simmering over this fire. It takes the form of Truth Social, the Republican president’s social network. It is a space that ultra-conservative followers, media outlets, and public figures have been using to spread hate speech, threats and misinformation against Mexico and its president, Claudia Sheinbaum.

Statements in Truth Social are unrestrained. Media outlets like Breitbart headline “Mexico provides legal aid to illegal immigrants arrested by ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] in Los Angeles.” The article puts a political spin on it, suggesting a violation of U.S. sovereignty, when in reality this is a service that every consular office must provide to its citizens abroad. “The first law to be honored among neighbors is one’s sovereignty. Which she [Sheinbaum] has defecated all over ours. Sheinbaum is as much an ally to American as is Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,” reads one of the more than 2,000 comments on the story.

Other similar outlets, such as The Federalist, have asserted that “Mexico is complicit in the Los Angeles riots, and there must be consequences.” Ultraconservative content creators and activists have taken a similar stance, such as the political commentator Charlie Kirk, with nearly 3 million followers on Truth, who has asserted that “Sheinbaum is a bigger threat to Americans than Vladimir Putin.”

The controversy grew following a statement the Mexican president made in late May in San Luis Potosí. In that video, which has gone viral on social media for all kinds of purposes—including AI-altered versions in which the president speaks in English—Sheinbaum mentioned Trump’s intention to tax remittances sent by Mexican immigrants to their families back home. In her speech, she announced that she would do everything possible, through diplomatic channels, to prevent this measure from being passed in the U.S. Congress.

“We have called on our fellow countrymen there to send letters, emails, and social media posts to the senators, telling them we disagree with this. And we will continue to report this, and if necessary, we will mobilize, because we don’t want taxes on our fellow countrymen’s remittances,” the president stated.

The president did not clarify what she meant when she said “we will mobilize” — whether she would call for street demonstrations, a rally in Mexico City’s Zócalo square, or political and diplomatic efforts to address the issue. However, Sheinbaum condemned the violence at the L.A. protests from the outset, despite the accusation Tuesday by U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem that the Mexican president was encouraging the unrest.

This decontextualization has led to the spread of other headlines such as “Is Claudia Sheinbaum financing the protests in Los Angeles?” or “Sheinbaum has called for an invasion of the United States” or “Mexico has declared war on the US.” This has also led to the spread of hashtags to categorize disinformation into groups with #AnexenaMéxico or #MakeMexicoGreatAgain, with the most extreme posts inciting military intervention in the country or “sending a drone” against the president. Many have also called for more tariff sanctions or intensified mass deportations of all protesters who, despite many of them being U.S. citizens, are being described as “invaders” and “traitors.”

Nor have the ill-advised statements by Mexican Senate leader Gerardo Fernández Noroña helped this fragile diplomatic moment between the two countries. A video of the senator is circulating on Truth Social in which he agrees to his country paying for the construction of a border wall between the two nations, as long as it demarcates and includes the territory that Mexico lost to the U.S. after the 1846-1848 war.

This delicate moment in bilateral relations has also served as a sledgehammer for opposition politicians and other public figures in Mexico seeking to capitalize on the situation. The businessman Ricardo Salinas Pliego wrote on his X account, in a mocking tone: “My mom says they should cancel the protests and violent mobilizations, because she [Sheinbaum] has already been scolded,” alluding to Noem’s accusations against the Mexican president. The comedian and communicator Chumel Torres stated, “We were too used to AMLO [former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador] spouting nonsense and no one dressing him down. It’s not like that anymore. Trump wanted ONE excuse, Sheinbaum gave it to him.”

Senator Lilly Téllez of the National Action Party (PAN) also didn’t hesitate to accuse Sheinbaum of triggering the events in Los Angeles. “And who’s going to pay the price for Claudia Sheinbaum’s loose talk? Well, the migrants are. Morena [the governing party] threw them to the lions. It made them believe that in the United States they could break laws without consequences, as if it were Mexico,” she said in a video posted on her X account.

Meanwhile, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Ronald Johnson, who took up his post on May 20, has tried to cool the diplomatic escalation through his X and Truth Social accounts. Just a few days ago, he was asking for recommendations for places to eat with his wife in Mexico City; his most recent posts have been a call to “restore order and the rule of law.”

“I once again join President Donald Trump and President Claudia Sheinbaum in condemning the violent protests taking place in the U.S. These actions are not helping; on the contrary, they create more problems for the innocent majority,” he wrote on both platforms. Even with the diplomat’s conciliatory tone, Truth Social overwhelmingly amplifies the president’s hardline message and remains a loudspeaker for propaganda, disinformation and xenophobic messages that are viewed and shared by millions of users.

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