MAGA social media influencers are spreading a lie from a “parody” account on X claiming that gay Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is HIV-positive.

While nothing substantiates this claim, right-wingers have begun recirculating it to make sexually explicit, homophobic attacks. In response, his husband, Chasten Buttigieg, urged his own social media followers to keep working to elect the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris.

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The lie originated from an October 1 post by the X account Breaking 911. The post simply read, “BREAKING: Pete Buttigieg reveals that he is HIV-positive.” The post didn’t link to or mention any sources. The account’s bio says, “The king of the gays. Parody artist. If you fell for my bait, you owe me eight dollars.”

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The post has since been reshared from the account at least 795 times and viewed over 1 million times as of Thursday evening. The account has since posted other false headlines, including ones that former President Donald Trump’s wife filed for divorce, the Pope resigned, and that Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz was accused of sexual assault. None of these claims are true.

The account’s Buttigieg post was also shared by Stew Peters, a right-wing influencer who has over a million and a half followers across various platforms. The Anti-Defamation League describes Peters as “an antisemitic conspiracy theorist” who “regularly promotes anti-LGBTQ+ and white supremacist beliefs on his show and social media” and “has engaged in Holocaust denial.” He is currently being sued for claiming that a gay father raped his own children.

Peters’ post repeating the lie about Buttigieg has been shared over 3,900 times.

“Today I saw a MAGA pundit credulously share a post about Sec. Pete having HIV. 500k views,” gay political strategist Tim Miller noted in an X post about viral right-wing misinformation on social media. “My husbands HS friend shared an [artificial intelligence-generated] pic of Trump wading thru the water doing hurricane relief and asked why media wasn’t covering. Pretty concerning view into MAGA info space pre-election.”

Chasten Buttigieg reposted Miller’s message on X and commented, “This is not how you win hearts and minds. Stay the course, folks. Keep telling your stories, having the hard conversations, and knocking doors. They’ve got lies, we’ve got momentum.”

While there’s nothing defamatory or shameful about living with HIV, 85% of Americans believe stigma persists around the disease. Anti-HIV stigma treats HIV-positive people as dangerous and sexually promiscuous. This stigma is perpetuated by HIV criminalization laws, a lack of HIV-positive characters on TV, and a lack of health education that leaves people unsure about how the disease is transmitted, GLAAD reported.

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