MAGA Senator Mike Lee Falls for Pretend Letter That Seems to Be Generated by AI

Senator Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah, posted an especially excited tweet on Tuesday about Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and a letter saying his resignation. The one downside? The letter was pretend, one thing that’s beforehand been an enormous downside for Lee.

“Powell’s out!” Lee declared within the since-deleted tweet captured by author Ben Jacobs in a screenshot.

The letter shared by Lee says that “new management” was wanted to hold on the necessary work of the Fed, so Powell will likely be stepping down. “After a lot reflection, I’ve determined to resign from my place as Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, efficient on the shut of enterprise right now, July 22, 2025,” the pretend letter reads.

The letter comprises typos and formatting errors, together with a random comma adopted by a capitalized letter as if the thought was to start out a brand new sentence. President Donald Trump will usually capitalize random phrases for no cause, however that’s not typical of educated individuals like Jerome Powell. The phrase “establishment’s” can be cut up onto two traces in a approach that no regular phrase processor would try. On high of every little thing, the letter features a large watermark that options garbled textual content, a probable signal that it was generated by AI.

Lee appears to have picked up the letter from one in every of numerous accounts on X that have been sharing the pretend information, although it’s not clear the place he acquired it precisely. When information breaks, individuals on X usually rush to put up letters with out giving any indication of the place they discovered them. And that was clearly the case right here. The massive distinction between Lee and the pretend information peddlers who attempt to go viral on X is that Lee is a sitting senator, which makes him one of many 100 strongest individuals within the nation.

However Lee wasn’t the one comparatively outstanding individual to fall for the pretend tweet. Benny Johnson, one other far-right influencer, additionally shared a screenshot of the letter. However what makes Tuesday’s mistake notably humorous is that Lee has a historical past of falling for pretend information on X, particularly since billionaire Elon Musk purchased the platform. Final 12 months, Lee fell for a letter that appeared in a tweet claiming that President Jimmy Carter had died. In actual fact, that hoax was July 23, 2024, nearly to the day that Lee fell for it once more.

The Jimmy Carter hoax was much more ridiculous than the Powell resignation hoax, with the Carter letter referring to former First Woman Nancy Reagan by the sexually crude time period, “throat goat.” It additionally referred to Rosalynn Carter as “the unique Brat.” President Carter actually did die many months afterward Dec. 29, 2024.

Why is Lee such a straightforward mark for pretend tweets? That half isn’t clear. The dude went to legislation college and is meant to be a wise man, no less than on paper.