We’re Drowning in a Deluge of Nonsense, So Let’s Buy a Rope

Mike Rothschild

Hurricane Milton has died off after heading out into the Atlantic Ocean and dissipating. The damage appears to be bad, but not quite as bad as a category 5 hurricane might have inflicted, because people had time to prepare. Those in the path of the monster had time to flee, while those outside it had time to stock up on the supplies they’d need to ride it out.

The damage in North Carolina and Georgia from Hurricane Helene is far worse than Milton, at least so far, due to the storm maintaining it power while moving inland after striking Florida. But at least some people there had some time to do what they could to evacuate or get ready.

In the midst of these two awful storms there was another deluge. Not one that destroyed property or flooded homes, but one that imperiled people and hampered the response and recovery nonetheless. It imbued many survivors with a sense of hopelessness, and inflamed their paranoia and suspicion. And despite the certainty that it would take shape in at least some form, virtually nobody was ready for it.

We weren’t ready for the storm conspiracy theories, outright lying, grift, emotional manipulation through AI, antisemitic bullshit, and misleading viral nonsense that followed just behind the two hurricanes. We weren’t ready for people invent new realities out of thin air, realities where FEMA was blockading aid and confiscating property, where terrified little girls were left adrift with their puppies, where government weather machines were steering the storm into its most destructive path, and where the executive branch was too busy vacationing and appearing on sex advice podcasts to do anything to help the desperate Americans screaming for a lifeline.

That’s the reality that hit America and the world like a ton of storm-tossed bricks over the last few weeks. Never mind that none of this happened, and all of it was inflammatory bullshit spread by right wing politicians and social media influencers to help get Donald Trump over the finish line. For so many desperate Americans it felt true. It was true to them. So it was true.

After spending a decade writing about conspiracy theories at a time when conspiracism has become a primary driver of politics and commerce, it wasn’t surprising to me why this happened.

Some of it is definitely because of the election, given that Helene hit two swing states that Trump desperately needs to win. So if it takes exploiting the damage done by a storm to make Kamala Harris look out of touch and unsympathetic, then that’s what it takes, casualties be damned. It’s also about climate change denial, something that the far right has practiced for decades and that’s increasingly hard to maintain as the climate quickly and drastically revolts against us.

But more than that, I wasn’t surprised it happened because it happens every time. And it happens for the same reasons that drive conspiracy theories about everything else: from mass shootings and disasters to COVID and 9/11, all the way back to the Great Fire of Rome. Something outsized and destructive happens, and we grope in the darkness for information. Rapidly moving events defy easy explanation, and we’re desperate to know why it’s happening, what’s really going on, and who did it to us. Social media and the internet didn’t create any of this, it only sped it up and lowered the cost of entry. So the new problem is the same problem as the old problem, just faster and dumber.

That said, if the new problem is the old problem, why was nobody ready for the old problem? We know it’s going to happen because it always happens. So why were we unprepared for it happening? Why were the government agencies, news outlets, social media giants, state and local officials, and weather experts all so completely blindsided?

FEMA wasn’t ready to counter the fake our out of context AI slop images and stories showing it not only wasn’t doing its job, but actively making recovery worse.. Politicians at every level weren’t ready to counter the claims that they were heartless and cruel in leaving victims to die. Social media wasn’t ready to counter the insanity coming from its owners and and most prolific users. Media outlets weren’t ready to talk clearly and accurately about the deluge of conspiracy theories and the danger they presented. First responders, being a little busy doing their jobs, understandably weren’t ready or able to deal with the onslaught of nonsense about what they were or weren’t doing.

Obviously, you can’t prepare for what you don’t know is coming, or what you can’t conceptualize. But by now, can’t we see this coming? Why can’t we look at a looming event and ask ourselves “how can this be misinterpreted and weaponized against us?” It happens over and over, with every disaster and mass shooting, every “once in a century” event and election.

So why aren’t we ready?

For one, disinformation will always travel faster than information. It takes no time to make something up and share it, but it takes time to prove that the made up thing is made up. And at that point, it’s already out there. Beyond that, some people and industries still exist in a world where things on the internet aren’t part of the real world and don’t matter, and if you ignore them and don’t give them oxygen, they’ll die off. We know by now that this isn’t true, and that conspiracy theories allowed to fester with nobody paying attention will just grow in darkness. But this is a big shift for many longstanding industries, particularly government, to make. And some people may not want to seem overly approving of what looks like censorship. Government can’t even begin to play a part in solving the problem until it’s done in a way that doesn’t seem like an Orwellian disinformation ministry that wants to control your thoughts. Somehow, we’ve managed to regulate TV and radio, but the internet continues to be the Deadwood of media – no law at all.

Obviously, we’re weeks away from an election that has already seen a frenzy of lies unlike any other election in world history. And it’s only going to get more insane, an opera of countless voices all screaming lies at the top of their lungs into giant microphones that drown everything else out. We have no idea what exactly is going to drive the bullshit purveyors and their legions of believers, because it hasn’t happened yet. But it will happen – and it will be outrageously bad.

What can we do to prepare? And what can we do to prepare for what happens after that, for what can’t be known or even reliably imagined?

The first thing is that we, as people, can take ourselves off the chessboard. Don’t share bullshit. Don’t share it even to call it bullshit. If you have to, at least take a screenshot and mark clearly that it’s bullshit. Nobody’s perfect, but we can all do more of this. Call out your friends and loved ones sharing bullshit, quietly and in a way that’s firm but not insulting. Be the firebreak.

But this is a much bigger problem, one that has infected every industry and profession. So a big problem takes a big solution. And big solutions cost big money.

Every industry should know that disinformation and lies are a threat to their existence, and open their wallets to fight back against it.

Government agencies should have people on staff who understand how this stuff works, how to push back against it in a way that doesn’t infringe of free speech, and why it’s so bad for public health. Law firms and courts should hire journalists or experts (many of whom are out of work due to the proliferation of AI slop stories) to point out instances of defamation and harassment in the aftermath of epochal events, and be prepared to move against them quickly. Every news outlet everywhere of any size should have someone whose job it is to immediately point out when something viral is false and what’s true instead, and spend the money to get it out there fast.

And private citizens should have the resources and education to understand how conspiracy theories function, why they are effective, and what to look for when someone is attempting to manipulate them with bullshit. Yes people want the truth, but they don’t want to be lied to or made to feel stupid. And nobody wants to feel like they’re a potential victim of going down a rabbit hole and never coming out – which virtually everyone, regardless of party affiliation, is.

All of this is time-consuming. It’s not all going to work, and some conspiracy theories will always get through. And of course, all of it costs a lot of money to do it well and professionally. The far right is excellent at spending money on and making money off disinformation – and we have to get as good at doing it for the truth. If we want to be prepared for the next storm of bullshit, we have to spend some money on supplies. We have to be ready for what’s going to happen, even if we don’t know exactly what form it will take or where it will come from. When a hurricane hits, do you buy bottled water or do you put out a bucket and hope for the best?

You buy bottled water. You make the investment. We are drowning in a deluge of conspiracism, paranoia, and absolutely untethered realities. Let’s buy some rope and pull ourselves out.

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Soros Killed the Radio Star

Mike Rothschild

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Hungarian billionaire and philanthropist George Soros has been blamed by so many cranks for so many different supposed horrors that his name is on par with Kleenex, Xerox, and Band-Aid: a product that has become shorthand for every version of that product. It’s become so trivially easy to blame Soros for whatever is happening in the world – from student protestors buying coffee to the supposed links between the “Albanian narco-state” and Tim Walz – that it’s essentially lost all its meaning as a right wing canard.

But every so often, the far-right crankery machine can get behind a new Soros conspiracy theory, and it’s happening right now. In this case, it’s the slightly true but mostly false story that Soros is “buying 200 radio stations” in a “fast-tracked” process that “nobody has ever seen before” as a way to “take over the radio market.” And Congressional Republicans are desperate to stop before it swings the election to the Radical Marxist Comrade Kamala Harris. Despite the story having been around since April, it’s really taken off in the last few weeks due to the FCC allowing the purchase (which is real) to go ahead.

As with almost all conspiracy theories, there are kernels of truth wrapped inside layers of lying. And of course, since it’s Soros, those layers are also chock-full of antisemitic lunacy and grandiose accusations. Take a guess as to what the first reply to Elon Musk’s tweet about the FCC “breaking the law” for Soros is:

Without getting into a long digression about the FCC’s complex rules for foreign ownership of US radio stations, some of this is true.

Soros Fund Management, which controls the bulk of the investments made by Soros’ Open Society Foundations, is buying a majority share of the debt held by radio conglomerate Audacy. Despite having 240 stations in more than 40 markets in the US, Audacy couldn’t keep pace with the changes in radio and podcast consumption, and its stock tanked. It declared bankruptcy in January, and re-emerged recently as a private company, with its debt held by various buyers, and its radio licenses in the process of being transferred to the new company

With the FCC approving a deal that’s been in the works since February, Soros Fund Management now owns about 40% of that debt, making his Fund the company’s biggest shareholder, and nothing more than that. He doesn’t personally own the radio stations under the Audacy umbrella – Audacy does. And since he doesn’t personally own the company, Soros will have no say in what the stations owned by Audacy put on the air. Their stations are a mix of news, talk, sports, and music that likely won’t change under a privately-held ownership – even one headed by Geoege Soros.

It’s not even outlandish for Soros to be making investments in radio and podcasting, since he’s already done so, buying stakes or making investments in multiple other major podcasting companies.

Such bankruptcy restructuring deals are the bread and butter of American business – as Donald Trump, the “King of Debt“, could tell you. Moreover, these deals aren’t at all unusual in the bankruptcy-ravaged world of terrestrial radio. Audacy competitors IHeartMedia and Cumulus both went through the same license transfer process and foreign ownership review that Audacy just finished after their bankruptcies in 2019 and 2018, respectively. With their debts bought up, both companies have been restructuring to cut costs and improve efficiency.

(Full disclosure, I’ve appeared as a guest on radio shows or podcasts on all three networks.)

The FCC has insisted that all three radio restructuring processes were the same, that their approvals were routine, and that, contrary to reporting from conservative outlets like the New York Post, there was no “fast track” or “shortcut” with Audacy and Soros. In fact, the FCC review process took longer because of demands for additional oversight from Congressional Republicans who were concerned about George Soros taking over the radio and pumping vulnerable American ears full of leftist filth.

So why are we doing this? Because it’s Soros.

Or to put it another way, do any of the right wing cranks screaming about “George Soros buying 200 radio stations” know or care who bought the bulk of IHeartMedia’s debt? Were there demands for accountability from Congress and right wing influencers? No, because the main holders of IHeartMedia’s debt are the asset management firms PIMCO and Franklin Advisors, not Soros Fund Management. Do you know who they are? Does Glenn Beck do hour-long specials about how PIMCO is the puppet master behind all wars? No, because they aren’t GEORGE SOROS, the “Money-Changing Globalist.”

These are routine transactions in an industry struggling to stay relevant and profitable. Except nothing is routine when dealing with Soros, who is said to be “tightening his grip” on US radio by “controlling 200 stations” in a “scary” move that is nothing less than “an attack of free speech.”

It should also be noted that the bulk of the accusations about the FCC creating a “Soros Shortcut” come from the New York Post, which has consistently attacked Soros with rumors and conspiracy theories for decades, including earlier this year, when they created a fiction about Soros and the OSF funding the student protests against the war in Gaza by buying everyone tents. It’s all nonsense to sell papers and get clicks.

Ultimately, the “George Soros is buying the airwaves” conspiracy theory is the same as all of the other conspiracy theories about him. It uses ancient puppet master tropes to attack one leftist Jewish philanthropist while paying no attention to the inherently evil corporate practices that allow rampant bankruptcies, the easy buying and selling of massive amounts of debt, and the layoffs that come with such massive movement of money.

Criticizing those things would actually require courage and honesty from the far right, not unhinged conspiracism and tired allegations. So don’t expect it to happen anytime soon.

The Mysteries of Health Insurance, Orange Seeds, Michael Jordan, and Ancient Pyramids

Mike Rothschild

I used to spend a lot of time hanging out on the Reddit sub r/conspiracy, both to look for new material to write about and to get a finger on the pulse of what was happening on the fringe. Sadly, like most online spaces where cranks hang out, r/conspiracy has devolved into non-stop ranting about the COVID vaccine, Jews, Elon Musk, and how Hillary Clinton killed Jeffrey Epstein. None of this is new or interesting, and the more people hammer the same talking points, the less compelling they are.

But every so often you find some gold. I especially like any thread on r/conspiracy or Twitter where people talk about the conspiracy theories they personally think could be true. I’m not talking about 9/11 being an inside job or reptoids, I mean very minor conspiracism that could or could not be true, and either way, it doesn’t mean much because it is, as this great Twitter thread puts it, “low-stakes.”

Every once in a while I find a thread like that on Reddit, and most of them devolve into the same “Jews did the COVID” nonsense. But I found one from a few days ago called “What are some niche(ish) conspiracies you ACTUALLY believe in?” and found it amusing enough to read. And since I think we all need a bit of a break from the election, I decided to answer some of the most popular responses. I skipped anything too mainstream or inherently hateful, and actually had some…fun…with it. The way conspiracy theories used to be, you know?

These are sorted by most upvoted.

Health insurance in the US is intentionally a pain to deal with, they refuse to cover most basic procedures/tests, and deductibles are outrageous with the goal of you not seeking care until your health problems worsen which in turn makes them more money. So many people hold off on scheduling tests or procedures only for it to be life threatening down the line which is how they make their biggest profits.

I completely understand why health insurance and the healthcare industry spawn conspiracy theories, particularly given the role of medical debt in driving people toward fringe beliefs and extremism. I’d say this isn’t quite right, but health insurance in the US is incredibly difficult to deal with, expensive, confusing, and hard to get a handle on for people who aren’t steeped in it. Certainly there’s no rhyme or reason to how hospitals and medial groups charge for services, and many people have had to delay tests or procedures because of costs, lack of referrals, or scheduling problems. I don’t think it’s intentional, but the byproduct of a system that’s way too complicated and doesn’t deliver what many people actually need. The only way to make this go away for sure would be a national healthcare system, and, well, that’s not going to happen.

I firmly believe that Michael Jordan didn’t retire and play baseball for 2 years because he was bored. He did it to serve a gambling suspension from the NBA that both parties wanted to keep under wraps. I also think gambling had to do with his father’s murder either directly or indirectly.

I grew up in Chicago and was in high school when Jordan unexpectedly retired. The conspiracy theories that the retirement was actually a gambling suspension seemed to start right away – fueled in part by comments Jordan made at his retirement press conference about him potentially coming back if then-NBA Commissioner David Stern “lets me back in” and Jordan’s public gambling controversies.

But Jordan and Stern, who died in early 2020, both consistently denied any conspiracy or secret plan to push Jordan out. There wasn’t any need for one – if Jordan’s gambling had gotten to the point where he was betting on games, he would have publicly been suspended or possibly even barred for life from the game. Jordan’s father had recently been murdered, and coming off winning three NBA titles in a row, Jordan talked openly of his competitive fire not being there. Instead, he fulfilled a longtime dream of his late father and pursued baseball, spending a year in AA with the Chicago White Sox organization. But while Jordan flashed some skill, he was clearly a better basketball player, and came back to the NBA by the end of the next year. The conspiracy theory exists to explain something that seems inexplicable, but really had a lot of reasons behind it.


We aren’t the first advanced civilization on this planet.

It’s certainly possible, but there’s no evidence of it. Any advanced civilization would have left technology or ruins behind that would have been durable enough to be found, unless it happened millions or tens of millions of years ago and all the things they left behind turned to dust. And while ancient aliens theories love ascribing wonders like the Pyramids or the Nazca Lines to extraterrestrial beings, we know they were produced by humans using simple and durable scientific and engineering concepts. It’s an alluring idea, and variations on it have been used by countless fantasy and sci-fi writers. But we have no reason to think it’s true.

Trivial but that was a fake belly on Beyoncé in my opinion

Beyoncé faking her pregnancy was a big rumor on celebrity gossip sites in 2011, but the singer herself called the rumor “stupid, ridiculous and false,” and there was never really any evidence it was true. Beyond that, her child turned out to be Blue Ivy Carter, who has become a well-known singer and influencer in her own right.

Google jamming. The idea that government grants are given to movie, tv, music producers to name things based on what they want hidden.

For example: 1984 might be something they don’t want people searching, or coming across accidentally. One of the seasons of the TV show, American Horror Story was called 1984.

The idea is that things in pop culture will eventually show up first in the search results instead of older works that some people might want to censor.

This is a variation on the conspiracy theory that Disney called the movie FROZEN that to jam search results for people looking for proof that Walt Disney in stored in cryogenic deep freeze. But really, this is just some bad post hoc logic. People give names to things that are short, easy to remember, and punchy. And when those names become well-known, they influence what other things are named. Why would “they” not want people searching for the book 1984? It’s a famous book, you can get it anywhere, and all I have to do to find it is Google “1984 book.” Also, if you just Google “jamming” you get a bunch of Bob Marley lyrics. Did you know that there’s a conspiracy theory that Bob Marley was killed with cancer by the CIA for…reasons? Maybe that’s what they’re jamming.

Dandruff shampoo is specifically formulated to make your dandruff worse if you discontinue using it.

Generally speaking, if you use a product or medicine to treat something, and you stop using it, the thing you were treating is going to come back. Ergo, if you have bad dandruff and stop using dandruff shampoo, your dandruff will come back, and your mind will probably tell you it’s worse than ever. Even other responses to this one said it wasn’t true, though you can damage your hair if you shampoo too often.

Where I live, I cannot for the life of me find orange seeds. I have to buy a young tree to be able to grow my own. All the orange varieties in the supermarket are either completely seedless or the seeds are small and vestigial. I, quite miraculously, found two viable seeds within a single blood orange I bought from the supermarket, literally the first orange I’ve seen with actual seeds inside for well over a decade. Only one germinated. I can grow lemons, mandarins, grapefruit, nearly every other kind of citrus from store-bought fruit. Why don’t any orange varieties have viable seeds like other citrus fruit?

Orange seeds are trivially easy to buy online, though it can take well over a decade for an orange tree to grow to the point where it will fruit. Seedless oranges are grown from tree grafting, and are more popular than oranges with seeds, because they’re easier to eat. The OP would be better off just buying and planting a small tree.

That slowly due to computer screen and phones we will lose our peripheral vision evolution wise

No, because this isn’t how evolution works. There’s no reason why people with poorer peripheral vision would have more children than people who have good peripheral vision, so there’s no evolutionary benefit to it. Screens are certainly doing nothing good to our bodies, our vision, and our attention span. But this sounds like something that was cut out of Idiocracy.

We used to use airships all the time before planes were invented and they used to be hooked up to buildings all over the place. Possibly this is what the bellless belfries on many buildings were actually meant to be used for, as a point to get on and off the airships. The only reason we stopped using them is because big oil companies wanted planes, so they sabotaged the Hindenburg and psyoped us into thinking they’re super dangerous. It’s ridiculous that we abandoned the humble dirigible just because 35 + 1 people out of 97 + 1 died in an accident.

There’s literally no evidence of this, or any reason why it would be true. Photography was around 70 years before the Hindenburg, and if we were all bouncing around on humble dirigibles and docking on skyscrapers willy nilly, someone would have taken a picture of it at some point. Airships are actually very dangerous if filled with hydrogen, like the Hindenburg, and helium is too rare and expensive to waste on airships when airplanes do the job faster and safer.

In fact, the world is running out of helium, because it’s the only element on earth that is completely nonrenewable. When it’s gone, it’s gone – and nobody has figured out how to synthesize it.

Sounds like the perfect conspiracy.

Trump and the “Everything Must Go!” Campaign

Mike Rothschild

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I have a theory about Donald Trump and the 2024 election.

In his roughly 700 years of presidential campaigning, Trump has always done things a little differently. He shunned the retail politics and door knocking of past establishment campaigns in favor of a media strategy that revolved around building himself up as a cult of personality figure. That means countless rallies where he offered up his rambling thoughts to adoring crowds, fawning interviews from bootlickers about how great he is, and opening multiple revenue streams to keep his flock sending in the cash to help fund either the campaign or his own legal issues.

It worked in 2016 because nobody had ever seen anything like it, the media had no idea how to cover it, and because he was running against a candidate in Hillary Clinton that the far right hate machine had spent three decades claiming was the spawn of Satan. It didn’t work in 2020, and the Trump inner circle was so shocked that they took their disbelief and used it to fuel a coup attempt.

There are still six weeks until the election, but from most of the evidence we’re seeing, it’s not going to work this time either. Kamala Harris is polling well nationally, and has small but consistent leads in the states she needs to have leads in. She’s crushing Trump in fundraising, Trump’s get out the vote strategy is negligible, numerous high-profile Republicans have either failed to endorse Trump or outright endorsed Harris, he’s getting dragged down by horrible down ballot candidates in states he needs to win, he’s doing far fewer rallies and far more podcast interviews to a walled-off constituency of young men, his lackies are laying the groundwork to contest close elections and convince Nebraska to pull a last second rule change that would net him one electoral vote, and his fundraising efforts are much more centered around filling up his own coffers rather than anything to do with the Republican Party.

These are not the actions and attitudes of a campaign that believes it’s going to win. And my theory is that everyone in the Trump campaign, including Trump himself, have given up on believing they’re going to win. Instead, they’re running the “everything must go” campaign, hoping to wheeze over the finish line by making grandiose promises Trump can’t possibly keep, making as much money for themselves as possible, and sewing the seeds of doubt over Harris winning fairly. A Harris win might not result in another January 6th, but it could definitely be the foundation of a lucrative next stage for the MAGA movement – one not built around Trump as a politician, but as the elder statesman of a Republican Party built in his image, and one that features any number of acolytes fighting it out for his approval to take the mantle in 2028 and pretend that the last two elections were stolen.

Trump himself has more or less given up on campaigning with any kind of rigor or consistency. Whereas in 2016 he was having rallies once a day, sometimes twice, he’s barely having them twice a week now. His campaign has said that they aren’t necessary at this point, and his supporters will point to him nearly having been assassinated at one in July. But the decline started before then, and it’s easy to see why he’s no longer having many – he’s considerably older and less energetic, they aren’t as well attended, aren’t covered with the attention they used to draw, and Trump supporters who do attend tend to leave early. Why wouldn’t they, given that he’s been running for president for a decade and has nothing left to say.

More and more, Trump’s campaign rhetoric depends on making either ridiculous accusations (“Haitian immigrants are eating pets,” etc) or more recently on him promising truly ludicrous things that are never going to happen. Recent Trump rallies and interviews have promised 50% cuts to peoples’ energy bills and car insurance, food prices dropping from massive taxes on imported food, child care costs dropping through tariffs, IVF being free, removal of taxes on tips and overtime, credit card interest rates capped at 10%, restoring the uncapped state and local income tax deduction that Trump himself capped with his 2017 tax cuts, and most recently, a manned mission to Mars by 2028.

While a few of these are decent ideas – the no tax on tips thing has been kicked around Republican circles for a while – most of them are impossible because Trump has no power to enact them. Moreover, these are the sorts of “free goodies” giveaways that Mitt Romney built his 2012 campaign around fighting against, and which Republicans in Congress would fight to their last breath. Trump loses nothing by promising them, because they’re impossible promises to keep.

But they’re a way to get people who don’t understand how anything works interested in Trump, because hey, who doesn’t want their credit card interest rates capped? The credit card industry doesn’t want it, and that’s because it would essentially destroy anyone’s ability to get credit unless they already have sparkling credit scores. But if it’s never going to happen, who cares?

While the bossman is out promising every Trump voter a free TV and a subscription to Sports Illustrated, the rest of his core ticket is out there hitting the bricks and winning hearts and minds, right? No. JD Vance is still embroiled in the Haitian pet eating hoax fiasco while continuing to humiliate himself in TV hits. Melania Trump is focused solely on shilling her memoir, and has made just a few appearances for Trump, at several of which she was personally paid for. And Usha Vance? Never heard of her.

But if Melania is getting paid for the campaign, then it’s peanuts compared to what Donald is taking in personally. And that’s where the other part of the “everything must go” campaign really comes into play. Trump has spent an extraordinary amount of time shilling products with his name and face on them, with the money going not to the campaign, the RNC, or anyone else who might use it to help get Republicans elected. Instead the money just goes to him, presumably to spend on legal fees, or whatever else he feels like buying.

Just in the past few weeks, Trump launched a crypto currency that his two adult sons will run, announced $100 Trump-branded silver coins that are only worth $30, and published a glossy photo book of his time in the White House that includes a disturbingly high number of pictures of Trump with Kim Jong Un. All of this goes on the same groaning merch table that features Trump Bibles, Trump sneakers, and all of the other Trump branded products that the man has sold over the years. Not to mention Melania’s memoir, which is currently in the top 100 of books on Amazon ahead of its publication date in October.

None of the money from any of this shit is going to the campaign. Trump’s revocable trust owns the coins and sneakers, the photo book is being published by Don Jr.’s company, and the crypto is the product of a fly by night company called World Liberty Financial, about which nobody seems to know anything. While Trump has, in the past, claimed his campaign is self-funded, that’s never really been true, and he didn’t even make the same pledge for 2024. And there’s no indication that any of the money from any of these ventures is going to his cash-strapped and increasingly doomed bid for another term.

Beyond the low-effort campaigning and obvious last-second cash grabbing, there’s just the fact that none of these people seem confident at all. Trump allies are already screwing around with vote counting and election administration laws, while Trump has relentlessly whined that undocumented immigrants are going to vote in massive numbers to get Harris over the top and that mail in voting is going to be rigged. In a recent interview with a fawning antivaccine sycophant, he seemed positively morose as he declared that if he lost again in 2024 he wouldn’t run for a 4th time. Where is the fight from Mr. Fight Fight Fight? Where is the confidence from the world’s most insanely overconfident man? Nowhere.

Sure, maybe all of this doesn’t mean anything and Trump will pull the same inside straight he pulled in 2016 and win. The polls are still close in every swing state, and it’s not as if anyone in Trump’s core of cultists is going to walk away from him. Hell, they love the grift and the scamming and the ridiculous promises. Trump could win the most low-effort and scam-laden campaign in history simply because the Electoral College is stupid and overvalues some voters and undervalues others.

But that’s starting to look slightly less likely. And Trump and his people aren’t stupid. They have access to internal polling and proprietary data, and if they really are losing ground in key swing states, they’ll know it. And rather than fight for it, they seem to have resigned themselves to this being their last grab at the wingnut welfare spout. So you can promise people Mars and free stuff if you don’t ever intend to keep it. And you can sell coins and crypto if you have fans who don’t care where the money goes.

Ultimately, an “everything must go” campaign ends with everything having gone. And when it does, when there are no more coins to hawk or crypto to shill, you can always just light a match and burn it all down.

What Will the 2024 Big Lie Look Like?

Mike Rothschild

No matter the outcome of the 2024 election, Donald Trump won’t accept it. If he wins, he’ll claim he won more states and votes than he actually did. We know he’ll do this because he already did it in 2016. And if he loses, he’ll claim he won more states and votes than he actually did. We know he’ll do this because he did it in 2020, and hasn’t shut up about it since, even claiming in the recent debate with Kamala Harris that his admission that he “lost the election by a whisker” was “sarcasm.”

So no matter what happens, Trump will set himself up as the victim of a vast conspiracy to cheat and defraud him. But what will the 2024 stolen election industry look like if Trump loses to the vice president? Who will be its major players? How will it take root in the fever dream imagination of the MAGA movement, and how long will it take? And who will be the unfortunate victim of their unhinged and violent conspiracy theories?

Obviously, we won’t know most of the answers to this until it already happens. But there are many reasons to believe that whatever form the Big Lie of 2024 takes, it will look somewhat different and have at least some different players than that of 2020. Of course, the optimal outcome would be that Harris wins so convincingly that other than a few Trump bitter-enders, most of the influencers and election officials who pushed the 2020 Big Lie will decide it’s not worth it and move on. Ideally, there would be no Big Lie.

But that’s probably not going to happen. So here are some ways the stolen election discourse of 2024 might be different from 2020:

Donald Trump won’t be in power

This is the most obvious change from 2020 to 2024. Taking power is harder than keeping power, and Trump doesn’t actually have any legal power right now. Yes, he commands a cult of personality that has millions of members who will be angry and spoiling for a fight should he lose the election. But the Stop the Steal movement was hatched and plotted at the White House. It had the force of the office of the president behind it. Trump had the right as president to speak to the rallygoers on January 6th. And if he wanted to, he could have invoked the Insurrection Act and ordered armed soldiers into the streets.

Other than Secret Service protection, Trump is a private citizen right now. He can’t call up the National Guard, he can’t declare martial law, he can’t use federal officials as weapons, and he can’t just jump on the phone with anyone he wants and expect them to do his bidding. Trump can complain all he wants, he can rally armed MAGA lunatics to DC, he might even be able to benefit from sympathetic officials at some level – but ultimately, he has the same official power that most of the rest of us do, which is nothing.

Nobody will be surprised

America had never had a transfer of power from one party to another disrupted the way it was in 2020. When Trump disputed the results and his supporters started the legwork of trying to find which states had cheated, it was genuinely shocking for people who hadn’t been paying attention to conspiracist movements and media, because it was so novel. And Democrats were slow to react, feeling like much of the complaining was sour grapes or designed to make money for influencers. They were, of course. But they were also a concerted effort to throw out the votes of the people – which hadn’t happened in modern American history.

This time, nobody will be surprised. We will all be able to see it coming, know exactly what Trump’s inner circle will be doing, and try to put roadblocks in front of them. The Harris campaign has already added a slew of top-tier election lawyers to prepare for the bogus audits, phony lawsuits, attempts to get fraudulent slates of “alternate electors” sent to Congress, challenges to voter rolls, and intimidation from Trump loyalists. Dozens of lawsuits have already been filed either challenging eligibility or fighting back at those challenges, and Democrats are doing well in them. Nobody will be surprised this time when the peaceful transfer of power is threatened.

States where stolen election claims were loudest were flips in 2020

Looking back at 2020, the loudest outcries of fraud came in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Wisconsin. While there were also efforts to overturn the election in states like Colorado and Nevada, those five were the focus of more lawsuits, audits, conspiracy theories, and threats than any others. Why? because they all flipped from Republican to Democratic. Nobody should be shocked if those states go for Harris the same way they went for Biden. The only state with a real chance of flipping to Democrats this time is North Carolina – a state that’s already trending away from Republicans and where the GOP is running a Holocaust denying lunatic in a gubernatorial race they’re losing by as many as ten points, according to current polls. Certainly there will be audits and lawsuits and bellyaching if Harris wins North Carolina, but it’s not going to be shocking.

Polls are tightening in a few other Republican-dominated states, including Florida, but it’s unlikely they’ll go for Harris. If they do, expect a slew of false claims and conspiracy theories.

Many prominent stolen election advocates were ruined by lawsuits or indictments

Despite all of the noise and chaos of the Big Lie, the Stop the Steal movement really didn’t accomplish anything. It made some influencers a lot of money, but far more of them were ruined by it – and Trump still left office.

Close to 1,400 January 6th rioters have been charged in connection with the insurrection, with hundreds more likely to be charged. Many have gone to prison, and some still are there. Dozens of others, including Donald Trump himself, have been indicted for election fraud, tampering with voting machines, hacking, fake elector schemes, and other Stop the Steal related crimes. People have lost their jobs and their careers over their devotion to this dead-end movement. And many of the figureheads and funders of the movement have been financially ruined. Rudy Giuliani, Alex Jones, and Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft have all declared bankruptcy. Mike Lindell is broke, while Fox News had to pay out three quarters of a billion dollars in damages to Dominion Voting System, and several other defamation lawsuits have settled as well. John Eastman and Lin Wood were disbarred for their roles in election fraud schemes, with many other attorneys who took on doomed election fraud cases sanctioned.

How many of them will take the risk this time? What news network will platform insane conspiracy theories about 2024 voting machine companies knowing years of litigation likely await them? What lawyer will file a bogus lawsuit in the service of Trump knowing they might lose their license because of it? Some will, of course. And there will likely be new Stop the Steal acolytes in 2024, looking for a chance at money and right wing fame by taking up Trump’s lost cause. But it seems reasonable that some of the figures who tried to undo Biden’s win in 2020 won’t want to take the professional and personal risk this time around – or if they want to, they won’t be able to.

Trump will be a two-time loser

Ultimately, the Stop the Steal movement was driven by the certainty that Donald Trump never loses, and when he does, it’s because someone else cheated. He’d spent a year preparing the ground to contest losing the election due to supposed fraud, cheating, dead voters, illegal immigrants voting, massive numbers of fake mail-in ballots, and a conspiracy by the Democratic Party. The QAnon movement had spent 2020 doing the same thing, and even using the same reasons. But if Trump loses again, he’ll have dropped (or been cheated out of) two elections in a row. At some point, you can only get fooled so many times. For a movement that extols winning, they will be a movement that can’t win anything.

Finally, Trump himself is diminished, a rambling and shambolic figure who can’t hold a crowd’s attention, can’t debate, can’t communicate clearly, and who is losing support even from fellow Republicans. His stories are boring and rote, his nicknames and attempts at humor are pathetic, and his entire affect is one of a man slowing down and losing the ability to command an audience. Stop the Steal was a concerted effort to put a losing president back into office using extralegal means and violence. The second time around, a lot of people just might not bother trying to prop up a guy who is so clearly on the downslope of life. Some will, of course. There are always those who prefer the park bench and the cyanide capsule to surrender and humiliation when the dictator falls. But it’s entirely possible, and maybe even likely, that much of the GOP will be glad to be rid of Trump – even if they can’t publicly admit it.

If that’s how it all plays out, we’ll all be better for it.