Trump is pushing falsehoods. Some Republicans are worried about the fallout.

Donald Trump is relying more than ever on easily debunked and often bizarre conspiracy theories and rumors — often to the frustration of even his fellow Republicans.

In the final weeks of the campaign, the former president has been toggling between outlandish claims about Haitians and other migrants, false descriptions of the federal response to recent hurricanes and incorrect statistics about the economy and crime.

It’s become a regular feature of his rallies that he will likely reprise Friday in Aurora, Colorado, where he’s expected to rail against Venezuelans in the city — who have been the subject of social media-fueled rumors about an alleged wave of criminal activity that local police and officials say are overblown.

“It's a campaign tactic that’s as old as time,” said Aurora City Council Member Crystal Murillo, a Democrat who will be taking part in a counterprogramming community celebration Friday afternoon at a local apartment complex not long after Trump’s rally. “We saw this, especially from the Trump campaign, the first time he ran, when he ran again, and it's like you just take a different immigrant group to target, or a different group that's marginalized. And I think it erodes trust and creates a sense of fear.”

Even Republican Mike Coffman, the Aurora mayor, cast doubt on Trump’s characterization of immigration’s impact on the city.

“The reality is that the concerns about Venezuelan gang activity have been grossly exaggerated,” Coffman said in a statement to POLITICO. “The incidents were limited to several apartment complexes in this city of more than 400,000 residents.”

It’s become a defining throughline of this general election. In the past, Trump has undermined the security of elections, pressed falsehoods about his own election loss in 2020 and spread misinformation about Covid-19 cures.

But in the final stretch of the election, his assertions, debunked increasingly by even his own would-be allies, have had repercussions. False reports about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, fueled by Trump and running mate JD Vance, have led to bomb threats in the city. And, in recent days, federal emergency officials have been distracted from their efforts by the need to denounce online falsehoods spread by the former president. All of it has created an asymmetrical, choose-your-own-adventure information war of an election cycle that’s leading to its own kind of storm surge.

“We’re operating in a moment where people get their news from very different sources,” said Democratic Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow. “And you realize that there are two realities that people live in, and it's hard to break through that.”

McMorrow recalled going door to door in her district last week when she encountered an older woman who broached the idea that public school teachers are transitioning kids.

“I had to pause and realize this woman hadn’t had kids in schools in decades and I just bluntly told her that’s not happening, and she was taken aback almost immediately and just said, ‘It’s not?’”

Now, in a country where the public square has eroded — and the national fabric of shared facts is fully shredded — the frenetic and familiar cycle of Trump’s baseless claims has become a defining feature of his reelection bid. It’s a tension Kamala Harris’ campaign plans to address at a press conference in Aurora, where they will "hold Trump accountable for spreading misinformation” about the community, according to the campaign.

Even among Republicans, frustration with Trump’s disinformation has grown.

Doug Heye, a former spokesperson for the Republican National Committee who hails from Helene-ravaged North Carolina, has taken to X in recent days to smack down some of the more unfounded rumors there.

“Any minute that I see — whether it's a state senator, United States senator, or a member of Congress or FEMA — taking time out of rescue and recovery efforts that we need to explain, ‘Here's what's true and what's not’ is massively frustrating and we know that the impacts are on those people who are on the ground,” he said.

North Carolina Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards published a remarkable note to his constituents, many of whom lived in hurricane-damaged parts of the state, dispelling some of his own party's claims. “Nobody can control the weather,” Edwards said in the note to his constituents. Trump has said that the federal government and Democrats have gone “out of their way to not help people in Republican areas” — a point that Edwards refuted in his own press release.

President Joe Biden himself has railed against the phenomenon, decrying this week “a reckless, irresponsible, relentless promotion of disinformation and outright lies that are disturbing people.”

“It’s undermining confidence in the incredible rescue and recovery work that has already been taken and will continue to be taken,” Biden said. “It’s harmful to those who need help most.”

And Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has done more than 50 interviews — much of the time debunking conspiracies, something he had to do with even Elon Musk.

Asked whether Trump would repeat his false claims in Aurora, a Trump spokesperson sent a statement from an RNC spokesperson mentioning the “violent gang invasion of Aurora” as “just one example of how every state is a border state under failed Border Czar Kamala Harris.”

For Murillo, the scaremongering distracts from real needs the community harbors in response to its changing face amid immigration.

“People are having a hard time finding housing after they were already victimized, and one of the buildings was condemned because of the uninhabitable condition,” she said. “It’s the same people who keep getting re-victimized that's being exacerbated by a lot of this rhetoric.”

She marveled about how one of her fellow council members went on Dr. Phil’s show — which reaches its own bubble of viewers — to help spread what she called disinformation nationally.

Said Heye, “People live in their own silos, and they don’t leave them. We often hear people told, ‘You live in a bubble.’ Everybody lives in a bubble. It’s just their own bubble.”

All of this is filtering down to candidates’ own press strategies. The presidential candidates could not agree to a final debate, and Trump declined to even sit for an interview with CBS’ "60 Minutes," an interview Harris did. The result is candidates appealing to their own ideological bubbles and seeking niche audiences, from Harris’ appearance on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast to Trump courting bro-YouTubers.

Even long-held shared views across the partisan divide — something as simple as America being a great country — seem up for debate.

In an interview with the comedian Andrew Schulz, Trump said he would like his legacy to be making this country great again.

“America is not a great country right now,” he said.

“It’s always a great country,” Schulz interrupted.

Trump shot back, “See, that’s where I disagree.”