In the wake of the surprising indictments of 13 Russians involved in the coordinated trolling of the 2016 election, online arguments raged as to what impact it had on Donald Trump’s win.
But the already-fertile ground that the misinformation landed on was left mostly unexplored.
We know how Russia trolled us. But we still don’t really know why. And given the fairly low amount of effort they put into it, we don’t know why it worked.
Conspiracy theories are like cheap ramen noodles. Easy to make, lacking substance, and quickly forgotten.
Earlier today, an Amtrak train carrying Republican members of Congress to a retreat at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia hit a dump truck that was on the tracks for an unknown reason.
The truck driver was killed, a passenger severely injured, and several GOPers suffered minor injuries as a result of the accident.
Normally, this kind of thing would be the domain of local news. However, the Republican party has been hijacked by a gang of conspiracy theorists who see the Obama/Clinton Deep State at work every time they stub their toe or the grocery store runs out of their favorite cereal.
10/26/17 Edit: On Thursday, the day the final Kennedy Assassination files were meant to be released, President Trump ordered 2,800 JFK records be made public. The rest are subject to a six month review. So we get to do this again in April.
Over the weekend, President Trump continued his practice of taking something that has nothing to do with him and making it entirely about him. In this case, it was the last of the classified files on the Kennedy assassination being released later this week after decades of being held secret.
While Trump is insinuating that he’s making some kind of out-of-the blue decision to blow the doors off the cover-up of the JFK assassination, in reality, it’s been in the works since 1992.
Naturally, people had questions. What’s in the JFK files? Why is the government releasing them now? Why were they kept secret for decades?
And then there’s maybe the most important question: will they prove that Kennedy was assassinated as the result of a conspiracy?
Anyone looking for the smoking gun that proves we’ve been lied to for 50+ years is likely to be severely disappointed by the new files. Because it’s almost certain they won’t change any of the fundamental facts about President Kennedy’s assassination.
Would anyone notice if Melania Trump was replaced with a double?
While President Donald Trump is something of an open book, Melania Trump is more enigmatic than any recent First Lady. She says little in public, makes few appearances, has no personal cause that we know of, has hired scant staff, and we know little about the relationship she has with Donald – and what we know isn’t good. We also have very little knowledge of how she wants to use her lofty status to make the U.S. a better place.
So when a conspiracy theory recently sprung up about Melania being “replaced” with a body double to stand next to Donald while he bloviates, it had at least a patina of plausibility to it.
You probably clicked on this thinking you’d find a lengthy, heavily-researched debunking of all of the conspiracy theories and rumors that immediately sprung up after last night’s horrific terrorist attack in Las Vegas.
I bet you were also thinking that once you’ve read it, you’ll be armed with the information you need to face down the legions of trolls, shit-stirrers, cranks, and grief ghouls out there gumming up social media during a time of crisis and mourning.
Unfortunately, you won’t be, because I’m not doing that.
Mike Rothschild 
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