Tag: donald trump

Twilight of the Scolds

Mike Rothschild

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When Donald Trump won re-election in 2024, it looked like a permanent vibe shift in American culture. Banished to the hinterlands of conferences and policy papers were the Democrats and progressive values, replaced by a perpetually aggrieved digital brawler who promised a utopia of free speech and free stuff. Trump’s vision of America wasn’t just one of prosperity and safety, but it was a place where everyone was able to say what they wanted and do what they wanted.

After all, Trump could get away with the crassest of jokes, the cruelest of reactions, and the most callous disregard for feelings and empathy that anyone in public life had ever displayed. Since Trump’s entire shtick remains “if you vote for me, you’ll become like me,” so too did millions of people embrace perpetual transgression and not giving a fuck. And given much of the discourse around the “groups” and “microaggressions” of 2024, you could see why. Progressive culture entailed being scolded by woke moralists for using the wrong words, or canceled for telling a joke that nobody had ever been offended by until five minutes ago.

To MAGA, the left was a self-replicating minefield of offense and hurt feelings, of having to abandon long-held social mores and beliefs just in case they bothered someone. Of women deciding they were men, of diversity shoved in our faces, and of miserable language policing.

In contrast, MAGA culture allowed you to say whatever you wanted, and if someone had a problem with it, you settle it with a vigorous debate. Freedom of speech would be absolute, and consequences nonexistent. No cancel culture, no offensive. You can say the “R” word as much as you want. Conservatism was now cool, edgy, transgressive, and unafraid.

Obviously, that wasn’t real. And it’s not what happened. Instead of offering intellectual and social freedom, MAGA turned into a North Korean style cult of personality, with even the most mild criticism of the leader and his acolytes or the conduct of federal authorities met with devastating consequences. Ritual humiliation was paramount, deviation from the norm was harshly punished, and the only thing that mattered was adherence to the doctrine that Trump is always right. Instead of destroying cancel culture, MAGA became cancel culture. There was no “vigorous debate,” only online dogpiles leading to offline threats, ruined careers, destroyed lives, and a chilling effect on speech that could in no way be considered “free.”

That’s not cool. It’s not edgy or transgressive, it’s deeply authoritarian. And it’s not actually what most people want out of cultural discourse. Polling of the GOP and Trump prove that the erratic and cruel abuses of the administration are driving Americans away from Trump, away from the GOP, and away from the “vibe shift” that characterized the first year of Trump’s second term.

But part of what’s made MAGA so rancid to so many people is the endless moralistic fussing of Trump’s biggest fans who want to control what we eat, what we watch, and what we wear. And so we now have what’s shaping up to be the Waterloo of the culture war: the Super Bowl halftime show.

The NFL, in a nod to its growing international base, gave us Bad Bunny. The massively-popular Puerto Rican rapper would be delivering the Super Bowl’s first non-English halftime show, likely a medley of his many hits, reinforcing his global dominance, and the culture’s shift away from programming for boomers.

Immediately, and despite having ostensibly been boycotting the NFL for reasons nobody seems to remember, the far-right went into outrage overdrive. How dare the NFL foist this non-American on the most American of sporting events (despite Bad Bunny being Puerto Rican and therefore American, and also many foreign acts having played the Big Game). This politically correct virtue signaling can’t stand.

So we had an alternative halftime show, put together by the late Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, featuring what turned out to be several no-name country acts opening for a haggard and clearly lip-synching Kid Rock playing on tape in a warehouse in Atlanta for a few hundred fans. Yes, the people obsessed with their enemies needing safe spaces in fact needed a safe space.

And they felt compelled to tell us how much they needed it. Every single major conservative influencer went out of their way to declare how they’d be turning off the Woke DEI show and turning on Good Old American Entertainment, and several claimed the TPUSA show was so popular that the NFL was freaking out and losing millions of dollars every minute. Americans wanted classic and wholesome songs about drinking beer and the joys of cutting grass.

As turns out, Americans did not actually want that. While the numbers of streams it got are hard to pin down, the TPUSA show got a small fraction of the viewers that Bad Bunny’s ode to love and Latino culture received, probably around six million views on YouTube, as opposed to the 120 million or so TV’s and screens tuned to the NFL.

What those viewers got definitely was not edgy, transgressive, or cool. Instead, it was sweaty and desperate. It insisted on its own importance, while actually having none. And it might have been the worst thing you can possibly be in a culture war fight – it was boring. Everything about it was boring. The music, the vibe, the dull boasts from Twitter personalities that Kid Rock had “broken the internet” and “changed the game forever.” It was just lame. And counterprogramming a Spanish-language show with a song about mowing your lawn is an irony so dense that light can’t escape from it.

Bad Bunny offered a show that many viewers couldn’t understand, but also understood perfectly. A couple actually got married on stage – countering the idea that conservatives are the party dedicated to traditional values and marriage. It was fun and breezy, but also a deeply meaningful examination of the way Puerto Rico has been left behind and abused by the mainland. It was about unity and the combination of cultures that makes America the place people want to run away to. And while many conservatives whined relentlessly about Bunny’s “filthy” lyrics and the sexy gyrations of the various dancers, given that the show was actually about as titillating as the average 80’s hair metal video, it’s pretty clear that the only objection was that non-white people were being sexy.

Can’t have that now, can we?

Obviously, it’s impossible to talk about a seminal event in Latino culture without talking about the administration’s demented drive to destroy it through ICE raids and demonizing. And in that light, it becomes clear that the “alternative halftime show” was just a vector for raising money and getting clicks from the far right’s ongoing anti-immigrant moral panic. Again, Bad Bunny is not actually an immigrant, but they don’t see the distinction.

The halftime show didn’t reference ICE or the raids directly, and it didn’t have to. Instead, it did what the right has spent years failing to do: it insisted upon itself. It showed us a culture and a people who are not all that different from anyone else, full of people who want the same things we do: love, dancing, tacos, freedom. To be understood and respected and left alone and embraced. It was a party where everyone was welcome, as opposed to a joyless struggle session where speaking out runs the risk of getting you crushed like a bug. Who wants to go to that party?

Even now, days after the Super Bowl, they are still whining. They are whining because well over 100 million Americans and millions more across the world chose a Puerto Rican rapper’s show about how love is stronger than hate over their hacky attempt to claim dominion over popular entertainment. They’re whining because nobody wants them in our face anymore telling us what invisible transgression we’re supposed to be boycotting this time. And they are whining because they were seen through. They are losing the culture war. The vibe shift is dead. Conservatism under Trump is not cool or cutting edge, it is dictatorial and smug and hateful and stupid.

MAGA culture revealed itself once and for all as annoying and scolding. It is everything it claimed to be fighting against. And it will not leave us the hell alone.

With that as the alternative, it’s no wonder Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl show was a hit.

Trump’s Third Term Scare

Mike Rothschild1 Comment

The Eaton Fire was nine months ago, but our rebuilding has only just begun. To support my work countering disinformation and conspiracy theories, please consider a paid monthly subscription to my Patreon page. Thank you!

Every so often, the three-shirt-wearing human blister known as Steve Bannon emerges from his podcast studio to interact with human beings who occasionally wash their hair.

In one recent occurrence, Bannon sat down for an interview with the editors of The Economist, a magazine not generally known for platforming incoherent rants by lunatics, yet laboring under the incorrect assumption that “liberalism demands dialogue with those who oppose it.”

It does not. And yet, in the middle of an otherwise anodyne chat about whatever bullshit is on his mind, Bannon uncorked this meatball of crazy:

“Well he’s gonna get a third term. Trump is gonna be president in ‘28 and people ought to just get accommodated with that. At the appropriate time we’ll lay out what the plan is, but there’s a plan and President Trump will be the president in ‘28.”

Strictly speaking, unless Father Time decides to speed up the inevitable, Trump will be president in 2028, because his term doesn’t end until January 20, 2029.

But that’s not what Bannon meant. What Bannon meant was that Trump will circumvent the 22nd Amendment, run for an unconstitutional third term in office thanks to some nebulous “plan”, win that election, and be president until 2033, whereby his followers believe he’ll just do it again and again. So that’s great.

Trump, of course, has been talking about a third term on and off for years. He’s selling “Trump 2028” swag on his website, and was “not joking” when he claimed “a lot of people want him to” throw out the Constitution and make a grab for an eternal presidency.

He’s been doing that same “joking/not joking” dance since 2018, where he’s claimed that he might give a lifetime presidency a shot, and other times where he said he was going to run for four terms, deserved “extra years” because he was impeached, and even hinted at constitutional loopholes that would allow him to serve as a VP or Speaker for one day, then have everyone above him resign to be an unelected president. Hey, if Gerald Ford could do it…

On the flip side, he’s also said that he also has no intention of trying for a third term, and that he only sells 2028 merch and hints at another run to “drive the left crazy.” Which…works? Witness the absolute furor over Bannon’s remarks, which is the only reason why anyone outside the subscriber base of The Economist knew they’d spoken to Steve Bannon. The guy knows what makes the left insane and terrified, and damn if he isn’t going to provide it.

Now we’ve had days of the news cycle hijacked by this nonsense. The government is in shutdown mode, health insurance premiums are about to explode, and federal law enforcement is turning cities into war zones. But we’re talking about Steve Bannon and about Trump running for a third term, not anything that’s actually possible or legal.

Of course, when has Trump ever been stopped by something being impossible or illegal? Dude just does what he wants, when he wants, and how he wants – and knows his retinue of bootlickers and apologists will go along with it. He wants us afraid and believing he is unstoppable and inevitable, so why bother trying?

Tear down the East Wing? Incite a mob to sack the Capitol? Kill random fishermen and kidnap people off the streets for not being white? Deploy troops in the streets? Fuck you, try to stop me.

And so back we go to the prospect of a third term. It’s only illegal if laws mean something. It’s only impossible because nobody has tried it since the 22nd Amendment was passed. Trump might not always mean what he says, but he never says anything he doesn’t mean. Right?

It’s a losing game to try to deduce what Trump “really” is talking about at this point.  The whole “take him seriously/take him literally” thing has been a bust since 2016. But it’s been helpful to me to think of Trump running again as a type of invasion scare.

England in both the 19th and 20th centuries has been seized by stretches of terror that an invasion fleet was about to land on its shores. From Napoleon in the 1810s to Hitler in 1940, Britons were hunkering down, digging in, and preparing for the transports to appear on the horizon.

Both times, the threat was real, but it also wasn’t. Napoleon had no way to stop the Royal Navy from intercepting and destroying a potential invasion fleet, even though he had the men and transports to land in southern England, destroy the Channel ports, and possibly march on London.

Hitler didn’t even have that – he was hoping that repurposed river barges would be enough to land troops and tanks in England, and that the Royal Navy and Air Force would just politely allow it to happen.

In hindsight, the threats were massively overblown. But at the time, nobody knew that, or at least nobody could say it with 100% confidence. The fear was real, and it was enough to drive British policy, military deployment, economics, and psychology to the brink of mass panic. If either Napoleon or Hitler had even tried to invade England, it would have been a disaster and a total failure. But try telling that to someone in the path of a possible invasion. You don’t know until you know.

Like a cross-Channel invasion, an attempt by Trump to run for a third term would be a disaster for him. It’s probably not even physically possible. Trump is exhibiting clear signs of physical and cognitive decline, including taking two annual exams this year, admitting to having an MRI and swelling in his ankles, and exhibiting at least some signs of a stroke. It’s hard to get riled up by the possibility of Trump 2028 when Trump might not actually make it to 2028 in any kind of shape to govern.

Beyond that, the longer Trump and his enablers muse about various plans for 2028, the harder it makes things for actual 2028 candidates like Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. If Trump keeps hinting at a 2028 run, what is the rest of the GOP going to do? Sure, they’ll probably go along with it, but what if they don’t? There’s no reason for these people to shackle their political futures to an 82 year old man who thinks he’s the King of Israel and brags about acing a test where you identify an elephant. They have careers, too.

If Trump spends half of 2027 kicking around the idea of going for it, nobody else will be able to fundraise, hire staff, or lay the groundwork for an announcement. He would be kneecapping his own succession. Maybe that’s why he’d do it, because nobody else can do the job but him, even if he can’t do the job.

So what if he does go for it? What if he announces the day after the midterms that he’s running again? Fuck you, try to stop me.

Absolute chaos for the GOP, and the fundraising haul of the century for the Democrats would be among the first two things to happen. And there would probably a blizzard of lawsuits that keep Trump off the ballot in any state with a Democratic legislature or governor. Because the president doesn’t put himself on the ballot, states do. Elections are run by states. And many states are going to refuse to have anything to do with this nonsense. Because it’s unconstitutional and insane.

Imagine the GOP trying to hold a primary while Trump has announced a fourth run for office. How does that work? Trump declines more and more, while shoving anyone else out of the way, and destroying anyone who dares to try to mount a legitimate campaign. Meanwhile, various courts spend months kicking lawsuits around, and Trump is disqualified from appearing on ballots of states that he won in 2024, but that have Democratic governors – states the Republicans would need, like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Taking this ludicrous scenario to its conclusion, 2028 sees Trump running a fake and illegal primary campaign against real Republicans. The party is split in two with Trump “winning” states he can’t win, while a legitimate contender finds himself iced out of ballots on red states that would allow Trump to actually compete.

Could we have a Democrat win some states, Trump “win” others, and a different Republican win a few? How does any of this work? Why would anyone be okay with it, when Trump is declining so fast he might not even be coherent by then?

Sure, maybe the GOP just lets him do it, but even if it’s guaranteed to lead to a Newsom or Pritzker presidency? It seems unlikely. We have courts and laws, and while Trump can just do a lot of things by himself as president, running for a third term is not one of those things. It would take a massive buy-in by his entire party, and as his polling and health decline, the prospect of that buy-in declines just as quickly.

Ultimately, the third term can be effective as a scare tactic, but it’s not a real political strategy. Neither are even goofier scenarios, like Trump running as Vance’s VP and then Vance resigning on day 1, or exploiting slight differences in the wording of Constitutional amendments about presidential eligibility, or some magical amendment reversing the 22nd. Those things might be theoretically possible, but they aren’t practical or feasible.

The most likely scenario is that Trump ultimately tells himself and the country he could run for a third term and win if he wanted to, but he doesn’t want to. That lets him save face, play kingmaker for 2028, and still keep liberals scared and conservatives in line with the prospect of a sudden about face. He’s not a lame duck, he can convince himself, just a man who has Made America Great Again, and can go back to doing what he loves. Whatever that is.

Invasion scares fizzle out when the invader can’t run away from the reality of their situation anymore. Napoleon and Hitler both called off their invasions when it was clear they had no chance of success, and even trying to do so would be a complete disaster. Trump is almost certain to do the same, given the enormous opposition and low probability of actually accomplishing anything other than a humiliating defeat.

Trump 2028 might be a useful piece of trolling and a way to get attention and scare enemies, but that doesn’t mean the fear of it happening isn’t real.

It’s also not inevitable.

The Performative Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk

Mike Rothschild1 Comment

The Eaton Fire was eight months ago, but our rebuilding has only just begun. To support my work countering disinformation and conspiracy theories, please consider a paid monthly subscription to my Patreon page. Thank you!

In the days after Charlie Kirk’s murder in Utah, the conservative activist has been compared by fellow conservatives to Jesus Christ, St. Paul, Moses, Martin Luther King, Jr., and even steel-skeletoned X-Men character Wolverine. He has been lionized as a hero, a martyr, a warrior for God, a prophet, a revolutionary, and potentially a future president cut down in his prime.

He has been memorialized with a vigil at the Capitol, a funeral with federal security held at a football stadium with the president and virtually the entire cabinet in attendance, and talk of statues on multiple campuses. Tucker Carlson compared his death to the Crucifixion. Flags were ordered flown at half-mast. There were rumors Kirk would lie in state at the Capitol, an honor usually reserved for presidents and other figures of national importance. Those who took any kind of joy in his death, or even people who simply quoted verbatim the horrifying things he said about Black and transgender people were hounded with threats and often fired from their job.

Though the 24th anniversary of 9/11 took place just a day after Kirk’s death, its coverage was virtually consumed by that of Kirk. It was as if an entire nation had lost a national hero, with the expectation that the displays of mourning would be commensurate. The September 11th attacks were so forgotten in the rush to anoint Kirk with sainthood that Kirk’s body was flown back to his home state of Arizona on Air Force Two at taxpayer expense, escorted by JD Vance, who skipped New York’s 9/11 memorial ceremony in the process. When it came to public displays of lionizing Charlie Kirk, nothing was too much, and too much was not enough.

Charlie Kirk was a podcaster whose claim to fame was showing up at colleges and daring overmatched students to “prove me wrong” in debates. He was not a war hero, or a statesman, or the inventor of a cure for a deadly disease. He was not a figure on par with history’s prophets and martyrs. He said things about Black people, Islam, and women that were reprehensible. He believed in no separation between church and the state, explicitly wanting a Christian nationalist government that would put the Bible and the Constitution on an equal footing.

One can be upset that a public figure was shot dead while exercising his right to free speech. One can mourn for his children, who will grow up not remembering their dad. One can shake their heads at how easily the shooter obtained a rifle. But this? Congressional resolutions? Vicious attacks on those not mourning him hard enough? State-enforced tributes? The entire cabinet gathered together in a way they only do for the State of the Union? Comparisons to Lincoln and JFK and the Lord and Savior of billions of Christians? What are we doing here?

A cult of personality grew around Kirk so quickly and so completely that it almost dares one to see it as insincere and hyperbolic. Kirk’s martyrdom has taken on the aura of a public performance, done for the cameras and the clicks, and to stoke more of the fear that Kirk specialized in stoking. The language around his death is messianic and hyperbolic, but it also includes a word not usually found in public expression of grief: they.

Time and again, we’ve been told “they” killed Kirk. The left, the radicals, the Christian-hating lunatics. It’s the same “they” who we are told by the far right over and over are the enemy, the ones to fear. They are coming after your job, your money, your women, and your freedom. They control the media, they control the universities, they control banking. They must be stopped at any cost. After all, look what “they” did to Charlie Kirk. They can do it to you, too.

“They,” of course is one guy – alleged shooter Tyler Robinson. But while it took three days for Christ to rise from the dead (if you believe that sort of thing) and about two days to find Robinson, it took seconds for Kirk’s personality cultists to determine who killed him and why.

The moment Kirk died, his killer was deemed a transgender lunatic, hopped up on antifa and liberal hate, driven to kill a beloved conservative because of their words. Seconds after Kirk’s death was confirmed, countless right-wing influencers began baying for blood. It was war, with Kirk killed by the first shot. It was open season on America’s violent liberal lunatic enemies. After years of forcing pronouns and land acknowledgements and transgender everywhere on us, the gloves were off and the guns were locked and loaded. It was the last act of a holy struggle that would end either with the right victorious or the death of freedom.

Never mind that this was almost the same reaction many of these people had to Cracker Barrel changing its logo, to Black stormtroopers in the new Star Wars movies, and to the Green M&M not being “sexy” anymore. Some of that was obviously performance, but this was the real thing. A guy was dead. And it was easy to imagine a massive and organized spasm of violence against the groups linked to the shooter.

Except it got a lot harder once the shooter was found. Tyler Robinson had nothing to do with antifa, which is not a real group in any sense of the word. He wasn’t a left-wing activist in any meaningful sense of the word. He wasn’t transgender. He was a mostly politically-apathetic gamer who might have started to lean more left, and who was in some kind of romantic relationship with his transgender roommate. The slogans etched on his bullets were mostly internet brainrot from the gaming world. He’s never voted, was raised in a MAGA family, and went to one semester of college before dropping out and going to trade school.

He was not who Kirk’s cult of personality needed him to be. He was not an antifa trans activist who killed Kirk to advance the far left’s war on traditional culture. Like Oswald, like James Earl Ray, like would-be Trump killer Thomas Crooks, he was just a guy with a rifle who will be forever remembered only as someone who shot someone else. His motive increasingly appears to be murky, just like his politics and online life. Like many other assassins and wannabes, he did it for reasons that don’t make sense, don’t fit into neat boxes, and might even contradict each other. Robinson may have “hated” Kirk, but the hate was born out of complex and inscrutable reasons that haven’t been fully revealed.

But Kirk couldn’t just be killed by a sort-of left-wing loser with a gun who did it for no real reason. He had to be martyred by a hard left psycho in a culture-war driven killing that must be avenged. He had to die for us, and we have to carry on his work. Like JFK. Like MLK. All killed by supposed conspiracies led by nefarious actors or because they got too close to the truth. “They” killed him – a trope uncomfortably close to the deicide accusation levelled at Jews, which Tucker Carlson leaned especially hard on during his bizarre eulogy at Kirk’s funeral event.

This is the essence of conspiracy theories – that something unexpected had to have happened for a reason we aren’t being told. When we don’t get a reason, or the reason is dumb, we make one up. We give meaning to what seemed random. And we tell ourselves that whoever did it will come after us next. Right wing influencers excel at taking this fear and turning it into cash. And they’re doing it again.

Kirk’s death appeared to be completely meaningless. A life seemingly imbued with holy purpose ended for no purpose. But that couldn’t be allowed, not when there was an opportunity to use it to crush Kirk’s enemies, build brand extensions, make liberals cry, and get on TV. Some of the grief is clearly real, but much of it is almost hilariously over-the-top, like an Italian movie where the widow hurls herself into her husband’s grave. Kirk’s widow wasted no time sending out fundraising emails, taking over as the public face of Kirk’s Turning Point USA organization, and posting somber videos of her tenderly touching her husband’s corpse, while declaring war on those who killed him.

Whoever they were.

The Kirk cult of personality likely has limits. People have short memories and will move on to the next tragedy (trust me on this one.) And for as much hyperbolic praise has been heaped on Kirk, it can never surpass the hyperbolic praise heaped on Donald Trump. That is THE cult of personality, all others are subordinate. Trump himself moved on rather quickly, from giving a somber (and some speculated AI-created) tribute in the White House on Wednesday, to dancing at a Yankees game on Friday. Even Trump’s headlining eulogy at Kirk’s funeral had little to do with Kirk and everything to do with Trump’s usual basket of twisty grievances and bizarre lies. It felt like a campaign speech, not a farewell to a friend.

And nobody on the right will say anything about it because Trump is the leader, and the leader can’t be questioned. So while the grief might be real, the mourning is a performance – carried out for both a mass audience and for the Audience of One. And when he gets bored and moves on, there’s a pretty good chance the mourners will too.

It’s tempting to look at Kirk’s funeral as a harbinger of what’s to come with Trump’s movement once Trump is gone. Maybe Kirk could have been the person to take control of it, but it’s far more likely that nobody is that person. Dictators don’t generally name successors, and those that are named often pay a heavy price. Building an instant cult of personality is one thing, sustaining it is another. Trump will always be the center of MAGA world. Kirk can never be, and no amount of ridiculous genuflection and hyperbolic martyrdom can change that.

Trump is their God, everyone else just floats in and out of his good graces.

This is How Stupid They Think You Are

Mike Rothschild

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Donald Trump began his rise to political prominence with his enthusiastic embrace of a conspiracy everyone could see was absurd and fake. So it’s fitting that exactly ten years after the 2016 Republican primary field began to disintegrate around Trump, we’re doing it again. Only this time it’s so much dumber.

Before he was the Daddy God King of the Republican Party, Trump was a blustery TV businessman who was Just Asking Questions about where Barack Obama was actually born. Trump took birtherism, which had mostly been the domain of desiccated far right fossils or crank perennial candidates and made it mainstream and hip. In doing so, he normalized the conspiracism that the “square” conservative movement had mostly attempted to push away, starting us all down a deep dark hole of lunacy and contrarianism that would lead to Pizzagate, QAnon, COVID denialism, January 6th, and Trump winning two presidential elections.

Birtherism depended on a vast conspiracy to fake Obama’s citizenship, train him in the ways of Marxist Muslim terrorism, install him in government, and pull all of the strings and levers exactly how they needed to be pulled in order to elevate him to the presidency. It would have required hundreds or even thousands of people to be in on the plot, none of them to reveal any of it and all of them to execute it perfectly, and forged documents done so perfectly that nobody could ever determine if they were real or fake – except for a few truth-seekers who immediately determined they were fake, and nobody cared.

Also, it would have required time travel. Birth announcements in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and Honolulu Advertiser, both based on information provided by the Hawaii Department of Public Health, proclaimed the arrival of a son to Mr. and Mrs. Barack H. Obama on August 4, 1961. Various conspiracy theories would try to work around this by claiming that the elder Barack Obama was not the president’s father, and that he had changed his name from “Barry Soetoro” or some such. But the announcements themselves were impossible to fake. They were found in decades-old archives. Unless someone had the forethought to plant them in local papers as part of a half-century conspiracy to elevate a non-citizen usurper to the presidency, that should have been the end of the matter.

And yet, it wasn’t. And logic never dictates how conspiracy theories end, only their usurpation by other conspiracy theories.

A decade later, Trump is now asking America to believe that the crude cartoon and bizarre poem he wrote for sex trafficking pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s 50 year birthday book is just as fake and planted as Obama’s birth certificate. Trump and his mouthpieces want us to think the drawing wasn’t his and that he’s never drawn a cartoon, despite his long and well-documented history of drawing cartoons. He wants us to think the signature on the cartoon isn’t his, despite looking exactly like his signature looked from 20 years ago, and matching up perfectly to other verified signatures from the time. And he wants us to think that despite being handed over to Congress by Epstein’s estate, and despite being in a disgusting book full of obnoxious praise and sexual innuendo written by people who have confirmed they contributed to it, that he had nothing to do with it and it’s not from him.

Essentially, just like the Obama birth announcements of 1961, Trump wants us to believe that someone planted that cartoon and signature 22 years ago just so it could be unearthed by Democrats and the media to smear him. It’s all a conspiracy – hopelessly convoluted, entirely pointless, and defying all available facts and logic. It requires nothing other than belief, and will be believed only by those who wish it to be true.

This is how stupid Trump and his minions in the White House, GOP, and right wing media arm all think you are. They need you to believe that the thing for which overwhelming evidence exists and which has no conceivable way to fake does not exist and is fake. Trump’s denial does nothing but bring up more questions, none of which have good answers. If Trump didn’t do it, who did? Was it faked two decades ago or now? Why would Epstein’s estate hang on to a fake? Or conversely, why would someone put a fake into a birthday book which was exceedingly and disgustingly real?

There will never be any answers to these questions because they aren’t real questions that anyone would ask. The only evidence the card is fake is that Donald Trump keeps saying it’s fake. For most, that will never be enough. For a few, it will be the only thing that matters. So you keep saying it’s fake, keep changing the subject to literally anything else, and repeat it often enough to ride out the controversy.

One of the questions I get asked a lot is whether conspiracy gurus actually believe the things they say, or whether it’s all part of their grift. It’s always hard to answer, and I usually say that conspiratorial beliefs are often an extension of things the person already believes, just taken to irrational extremes. Those extremes are often driven by commerce, since conspiracism is a lucrative industry. But sometimes they’re driven by self-preservation.

Trump, presumably, knows that he drew and signed that card for Jeffrey Epstein. And while the people around him are dimwitted, incurious, sycophantic, and fairly evil; they’re not complete idiots. They almost certainly know that the simplest explanation for the cartoon isn’t a decades-long conspiracy, but that Trump drew a doodle of a naked young woman with no arms and wrote a poem about the “wonderful secret” he and Jeffrey Epstein share.

And that’s why they’re saying it’s fake. Because if they admitted it’s real for any reason then they have to answer the next logical questions. Even Trump’s usual pivot of “yeah I did it, so what” can do nothing other than harm him and the GOP, and open up glaring weak spots to be pounced on.

What is the “wonderful secret” Trump and Epstein shared? What were the “things they have in common?” What does “enigmas never age” mean? What happened “the last time” Trump saw Epstein?

Those are questions Trump and his bunker-mates would rather eat glass than face up to. Their answers might reveal truly horrifying things about the relationship the two men had, what they did together, and what they knew about each other. They might cast the President of the United States in such a foul and sick light that it might not be recoverable for the GOP.

Sure, Trump has survived everything anyone has ever thrown at him, but the rest of the Republican Party don’t have that invisible shield. What Republican member of Congress wants to face their constituents and have to answer questions about potential horrible acts their leader did to children alongside a billionaire pedophile two decades ago?

There is nothing to be gained for anyone around Trump in telling the truth about Epstein.

So they just lie. Over and over and over. And they think you’re dumb enough to either believe it, or be so frustrated with their lies that you drop the matter and move on.

Conspiracist belief flourishes when the lie becomes more palatable than the truth. And there is no truth less palatable to Donald Trump and his acolytes than Trump being close friends and sharing “wonderful secrets” with Jeffrey Epstein. And so the lie will flourish. Because the truth can never be acknowledged by the people who need to hold Trump up as a paragon of virtue and success. They need the lie.

Even if we all know it’s true.

When You Don’t Care About Being Wrong

Mike Rothschild

I’m an independent journalist with an uncertain road ahead. To support my work telling the story of the Eaton Fire and its aftermath, please consider a paid monthly subscription to my Patreon page. Thank you!

As part of my post-fire mental health, I’ve been trying to stay off social media on the weekends. I’m also trying to avoid getting too wrapped up in debunking instant conspiracy theories about tragic events, preferring to wait a day or two before really diving into what fringe communities are claiming. The positive side of this is that I’m generally less frantic and glued to my phone. The vulnerability is that if a bunch of things happen over the weekend, or a major event spawns a deluge of disinformation, by the time I jump back into the fray, I’m already behind.

So after the horrifying shootings of multiple Minnesota lawmakers on Saturday spawned countless conspiracy theories minutes later, I was way behind.

By the time I had popped onto social media Saturday afternoon, the worst people on the internet had long ago flooded their readers with conspiracy theories and false claims that the alleged killer was a radical leftist Marxist, that the shootings had been revenge by the state’s Democratic party for the two lawmakers voting against a bill to fund healthcare for undocumented immigrants, that the shooter was friends with MN governor Tim Walz, and that he’d been planning to attend the No Kings protests scheduled for that day.

All of these theories either lacked evidence or took real things out of context. They weren’t true, and when they were first posted, nobody could have actually known if they were true, because for at least the few hours immediately after the shooting, the suspect hadn’t been publicly named and little was known about him. How could anyone know that the shooter was a “radical Marxist” or “friends with the governor” if we didn’t actually know who he was?

None of this kept these theories from immediately going viral, driving traffic and merchandise sales to their creators, and confusing the issue for people who are not dialed into internet culture. Of course, you didn’t need to be an expert on conspiracy theories to know this would happen, because it’s happened already – countless times.

The facts and details about the MN shooting didn’t matter, because the people who create these theories have developed a template for every single mass shooter, would-be assassin, tragic accident, mass casualty event, or any other unexpected and traumatic event. The perpetrator is always a far-left deep state assassin with links to antifa, Black Lives Matter, George Soros, liberal political figures, or transgender activism. The details and nouns vary a bit, but the gist is the same – a deranged hyper-liberal who acted out their violent ideation on innocent people, either because pig pharma made them insane, or because they’re working for the deep state.

The early “reporting” on these incidents is always the same, following the same outline and making the same accusations. And it’s always wrong. Trump’s would-be assassin in July? He was a “deep state hitman” and dedicated Democrat – until it turned out he had no known motive and had debated shooting at both Trump and Joe Biden. The horrifying mass shooting in Uvalde, TX in 2023? The shooter was immediately “identified” as both transgender and an illegal immigrant – except he was neither. The 2022 Highland Park, IL shooter? The far right media immediately claimed he was linked to antifa and transgender. He was neither. The 2017 Las Vegas massacre? Alex Jones immediately ran with conspiracy theories that the shooter was both a member of antifa, and linked to ISIS – except he had nothing to do with either, and local police and federal officials disclaimed both accusations. I could find dozens more examples.

Claims about mass shooters “actually” being transgender and part of an “epidemic” of trans massacres are so common that Jones, in a Twitter post after the 2024 Madison shooting, claimed “there is a 98% chance the shooting is trans or gang related.” In reality, the number of mass shootings carried out by trans individuals is 0.11% – or about one out of a thousand.

Even disasters beyond shootings are fodder for the “deranged leftist” template. Recent helicopter crashes, train derailments, and even the fires in Los Angeles that burned down my home and thousands of others have all been blamed on some form of mutated leftism, usually DEI hiring practices. And it’s entirely without evidence, and done only to inflame people who are already inflamed about DEI hiring practices. The facts don’t matter, and they’ll never be applied.

As it turned out, the MN shooter was a hardcore Trumper, a right-wing evangelical, and a domestic terrorist with a list of dozens of Democratic lawmakers he wanted to murder. The “No Kings” fliers in his car were likely there because he was going to attempt to murder people at one of the events in Minnesota. But even now, the influencers cling to the idea that he was actually a radical leftist with close ties to Tim Walz – despite no evidence that they’d ever met, and their only link being that the shooter had served on a non-partisan business commission rubber-stamped by the governor.

But conspiracy theory gurus dropped him into their template of radical left-wing transgender antifa abortionist the moment the news of the MN shootings broke. They seeded the ground first, and the narrative was set. And it’s not a narrative that started with Alex Jones or Trump’s election – merely one that’s changed shape to comport with the times.

In the Before Trump days, mass shootings and violent incidents were blamed on the looming specter of gun confiscation and mass arrests of patriots. In the wake of Sandy Hook and other massacres, the far right media immediately saw whatever was going on as some form of a staged false flag or targeted hit, always carried out by either multiple shooters or a drugged-up government patsy, with the purpose being an excuse for harsh gun control measures, the taking away of 2nd Amendment rights, and the incarceration – or elimination – of those who resisted.

Ultimately, the far right media machine switched out the “staged false flag” template for the “deranged antifa trans” template for a couple of reasons. One was that after Sandy Hook came and went without the dreaded Great Gun Grab, it became clear that if the massacre of 20 6-year-olds didn’t motivate Congress to do anything about gun control, nothing ever would. The second was that Trump was elected, and the conspiracy theories about tyrannical government overreach suddenly became wishful thinking. Conspiracy influencers who turned their paranoia about the federal government into full time jobs suddenly became Trump’s biggest fans and apologists. No government he controlled would ever carry out staged false flags to take away our gun rights, because Trump was only going to use the hammer of government to get rid of bad people, not patriots.

And yet mass shootings kept happening. So rather than engage in any kind of introspection about why mass shootings keep happening and what can be done to curtail them, they just switched out the conspiracy theory. False flags were out, deranged leftists were in. It didn’t make anymore sense in its new form than its old form – and even Jones continued making contradictory claims that the shooter was both anti-Trump and a hired stooge of the government. But overall, it became a way to excuse why the thing Trump should have stopped – the federal government killing people in preparation for martial law – kept happening.

The sad truth is that none of the influencers making these theories up care about whether they’re true or not. The only thing that matters to them is building out and monetizing their endless narrative that “the left” – whoever that is – wants to kill them, take their freedom, and transgender them. Create the fear, spread it without consideration, sell them the cure. Do it again, and again, and again. And when you’re proven wrong, the only thing you do is push the lie harder. As it became clear that the MN shooter wasn’t any of the things that early conspiracy theorists claimed he was, they just kept saying he was those things.

When you don’t care about being wrong, you don’t care about continuing to be wrong. Being right takes time, and these people don’t have it. Not when there are ad buys and clicks and podcast subscriptions at stake.

There will be more violent incidents in America, not just because of Trump and the general ratcheting up of tension between Americans, but because America is a violent country where guns are easy to access and mental health is always the first thing to run out of funding. The people who rely on making money off disinformation about these incidents will stick to their pre-written narratives until the time comes for them to swap the template out again, once Trump is out of office and presumably the “deep state” takes the White House again. Then we’ll likely be back to false flag gun grabs, rather than transgender Marxists.

It won’t matter. When you don’t care about being right, it never does.