President Donald Trump has promoted one of the most outlandish and unhinged conspiracy theories I have ever heard to his 10 million followers on Truth Social: former president Joe Biden was “executed in 2020” and replaced by robotic clones.
Stop and think about that for a moment. Just that.
Forget everything else you know about Donald Trump: the narcissism, the racism, the misogyny, the nativism, the jingoism, the pettiness, the failed businesses, the fraud, the grift, the criminal convictions, and the assorted and sundry phobias – xenophobia and islamophobia chief among them. Put all that aside. I know it’s a lot, but work with me on this.
Donald Trump is a blank slate, a clean skin with no history and no baggage. And the first and only thing you learn about him is that he believes his immediate predecessor in the oval office was an animatronic robot. For four years, this country was led by a walking and talking machine. The American people were fooled, world leaders didn’t notice, but Trump knew.
Stop and think about that for a moment. Just that.
If your dad, or your aunt, or your coworker who works on the shipping dock you run into in the cafeteria getting a coffee were to say to you just that – that Joe Biden was executed in 2020 and replaced by robotic clones – I want to believe that anyone who takes the time to read my blog would say to their dad, their aunt, or their coworker who works on the shipping dock they run into in the cafeteria getting a coffee: “you’re not okay, you are nuts.”
I mean, if someone said to me Joe Biden was executed in 2020 and replaced by robotic clones I wouldn’t even trust them to walk my dog, and I certainly wouldn’t be comfortable with them running the whole country – including economic and foreign policy, the military, and all the organizations and departments that serve our daily lives, things like justice and health.
This entire country, including those who voted for him, needs to say: “President Trump, you’re not okay, you are nuts.”
In November of 1967, at the height of the Vietnam war, a document purporting to be the leaked report of a top-secret “special study group” who had been commissioned by the Kennedy administration to game out what would happen to the US if permanent global peace broke out warned the end of war, and the end of the fear of war, would wreck America’s economy, even the whole of American society; this was known as “Report from Iron Mountain,” and it suggested that to replace the effects war had on American society and culture, extreme measures would have to be undertaken, including the use of eugenics, of fake alien invasion scares, of pollution, and the introduction of life threatening blood-borne viruses into the general population.
“Report from Iron Mountain” was satire aimed at exposing the insanity of US intervention in Vietnam, and the whole of the cold war. It was the brainchild of writers Victor Navasky and Leonard Lewin, who wrote it with the help of the former US ambassador to India, JK Galbraith. By presenting their fake report as a real leak, they aimed to make use of a frequent flaw in human cognition: the mistaken belief that nothing is accidental, or coincidence, or random. If something in “Report from Iron Mountain” mirrored what is really happening in the world, people would conclude that cannot be chance; rather, they would conclude that “Report from Iron Mountain” exposes the secret machinations that caused what occurred.
This is precisely how conspiracy theories take hold, though I have grossly oversimplified it. Reasonable attempts to point this out are “easily” explained away by conspiracists; one 2014 online analysis of “Report from Iron Mountain” by a “believer” countered the accepted as proven fact that the leak had been a hoax with its own “fact” that Lewin later wrote a novel (which he did) in an attempt to retrospectively claim “Report from Iron Mountain” was fiction too. They always have an answer!
In the late 80s, “Report from Iron Mountain” was “discovered” by the far Right, convinced they had found the smoking gun confirming their darkest suspicions about the government’s secret plots to start wars and control the public. It was republished by a company called the Noontide Press, part of a network of fringe groups that were among America’s primary promoters of Holocaust denial. The Left’s anxieties in the 60s about a military-industrial complex were repurposed into the “deep state” talking point giving rise to the militia movement of the 90s with its paranoid visions of oppression at the hands of the government and black helicopters surveilling our every move; and from there we get things like Pizzagate and QAnon.
But it’s all conspiracy thinking. And it has reached a fever pitch. Eight US states are currently seeking to outlaw chemtrails – even though they aren’t real. Believers in chemtrails will tell you that the vapor trails behind airplanes in the skies every day are “the government” using commercial aircraft to spray toxins on people below to enslave them to big pharma, exert mind control, sterilize people, or even control the weather. Uh huh. Remember when a member of congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene, said in an X post before Hurricane Milton last October, “Yes they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.” ???
No, Ms. Greene, what is ridiculous is that you are a member of congress. Despite the ridiculous belief in the chemtrails conspiracy theory and the complete absence of any evidence for it, a 2016 study showed that it is held to be “completely true” by 10% of Americans and “somewhat true” by a further 20%-30% of Americans. 10% are on board with this, and let’s say 25% think there’s something there – so that’s roughly 35% of our fellow citizens or a third of all Americans believing nonsense! I shouldn’t have to, but I will: those white lines trailing jets flying through the air are called contrails not chemtrails and consist of condensed water which freezes at altitude.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) states that the plumes of aircraft exhaust vapor are a natural result of flight and pose no risk to weather patterns. But the conspiracy theories abound, including that last year’s Hurricane Helene stalled over parts of western North Carolina as a result of government weather interference that was designed to force North Carolinians off their land which could then be exploited for rare earth mineral mining. FEMA was forced to set up a webpage to dispel this and other false information. But we all know FEMA, as part of the deep state, is in on it. [wink]
I live with an old lady that believes trees have astrological star signs (like “that oak is a Pisces, that elm is a Sagittarius”) and that her dog understands her when she speaks to him, even though I pointed out she’s talking to him in English and he probably doesn’t understand because he speaks French (the dog is a French Poodle). She’s nuts. But she’s not in congress. And she’s not the President of the United States. So even though I find her incredibly annoying, she’s harmless. And I only have to deal with her when she crawls out from under her rock on Tuesdays for BINGO. No biggie.
But let me just remind you: President Trump believes Joe Biden was executed in 2020 and replaced by robotic clones. Yup, to see his post: click here. This was a repost of another Truth Social user’s post. Or I guess they call it a “ReTruth.”
Trump’s ReTruth was “liked” by 16,000 people, and ReTruthed by another 44,000. I’m sure if he, his staff, or his followers are confronted with just how batshit crazy that post is, the line will be he was sharing a joke. Like bleach cures COVID. But last month he posted:
Look closely at the left side of the picture, just above the hem of his overcoat. That’s Pepe the Frog standing on the sidewalk — a cartoon symbol embraced by the alt-Right. The meme was created by another Truth Social user and appears to be something shared by President Trump with his followers. When the White House was asked to comment on Trump sharing and thereby amplifying and validating by virtue of his office fringe groups and conspiracy theories, this was their response:
President Trump has done more than any other president in modern history to stop antisemitic violence and hold corrupt institutions, like Harvard, accountable for allowing anti-American radicalism to escalate.
Okay, but what about promoting fringe groups and conspiracy theories? The list of things disqualifying Donald Trump to be president is a long one, growing every day. But I think it is his willing and warm embrace of conspiracy theories, nutjobs, and kooks that is the most disqualifying – and scary – of all.