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The GOP is really good at three things: voter suppression, ignoring budget deficits, and creating conspiracy theories. Let’s take a look at some of their Greatest Conspiracy Hits and how easy they are to debunk—assuming you’re not in QAnon.
“Conspiracy is a ‘self-sealing’ narrative—it can never be disproven.” — Jennifer Mercieca, author, Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump.
Flickr/Gage Skidmore and Wikimedia
What they say: President Obama was born in Kenya and, therefore, was ineligible to be President.
What reality is: President Obama was born in Hawaii, and Donald J. Trump is an opportunistic racist.
Repercussions of the lie: It’s okay to be a racist. It’s actually a plus if you want to advance in today’s GOP.
“Trump has gone from being a Birther to a Deather. And if there was any justice, he’d be a Lifer”.
- Stephen Colbert— Hoodlum 🇺🇸 (@NotHoodlum) May 9, 2020
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What they say: Hillary Clinton and her former campaign chair, John Podesta, ran a child sex ring in the basement of a D.C. pizzeria called Comet Ping Pong.
What reality is: There was no child sex ring, and the place doesn’t even have a basement. The only accuracy in their entire conspiracy theory is that pizza is sold there.
Repercussions of the lie: The restaurant’s staff and its owner, James Alefantis, have faced a litany of death threats on social media thanks to the “conspiracy.” Oh, and in 2017, a gunman walked into the pizzeria with an assault rifle and fired at least one shot. He was sentenced to four years in prison.
"The Pizzagate conspiracy revolved around pedophilia because Trump was accused in court of raping a 13-year-old procured by Epstein, and his Secretary of Labor helped Epstein go free. It was all projection, and Flynn spread the narrative." — @gaslitnation https://t.co/QCGhPYZ6rW
— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) May 13, 2020
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What they say: Russia didn’t interfere in our elections. It was Ukraine doing the meddling!
What reality is: Russia Russia Russia…or as Nancy Pelosi would say, “All roads lead to Putin.”
Repercussions of the lie: Mitch McConnell has ignored three and a half years of election integrity bills that would help avoid a repeat performance in 2020. Our democracy might be on its last legs. And that’s no conspiracy!
The president’s lawyer today said that Ukraine, like Russia, interfered in the U.S. election. Said Dr. Hill: “This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.” pic.twitter.com/CeDhCqghs5
— Rep. Val Demings (@RepValDemings) January 26, 2020
Flickr / OnInnovation
What they say: A shadowy cabal of elites — including Bill Gates! — is using a global crisis as a cover to profiteer and entrench their power.
In late January, a “YouTube personality linked to QAnon” claimed Gates had prior knowledge of the coronavirus pandemic. Days later, Infowars published a piece that incorrectly stated the Gates Foundation “co-hosted a pandemic exercise in late 2019 that simulated a global coronavirus outbreak.” The Infowars piece attempted to connect the Gates Foundation’s ongoing investments in fighting global pandemics to prior knowledge of the coronavirus pandemic. Fox News host Laura Ingraham added to the lies: “Digitally tracking Americans’ every move has been a dream of the globalists for years. This health crisis is the perfect vehicle for them to push this.”
This propaganda mutated into the “film” Plandemic in which it falsely claims that wearing a mask will “activate” the virus, people can “re-infect themselves” by wearing masks, that beaches have healing powers against the virus and that a vaccine against COVID-19 will kill millions. The video already has more than 8 million views.
“Why would you close the beach? You’ve got sequences in the soil, in the sand. You’ve got healing microbes in the ocean in the saltwater. That’s insanity.” – Judy Mikovits in Pandemic arguing against lockdowns
What reality is: Bill Gates is worth over $100 billion and has been working for the last decade and a half to try to eradicate malaria. It doesn’t seem like the guy who invented Microsoft would be dumb enough to intentionally kill millions of people so he can profit off a vaccine. In fact, as the coronavirus pandemic has spread around the world, Gates has pledged $250 million to fight the disease.
“I’d say it’s ironic that you take someone who’s doing their best to get the world ready and putting, in my case, billions of dollars into these tools for infectious diseases, and really trying to solve broadly infectious diseases — including those that cause pandemics. But we’re in a crazy situation, so there’s going to be crazy rumors.” — Bill Gates
Repercussions of the lie: Deaths. Many, many, many unnecessary deaths — borne out of ignorance. We just don’t know how many yet.
Screenshot / C-SPAN
What they say: A reporter asked Trump whether he had “seen anything” that gave him “a high degree of confidence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the origin of this virus.” “Yes, I have. Yes, I have. And I think the World Health Organization should be ashamed of themselves because they’re like the public relations agency for China,” Trump responded.
Asked later that day to clarify what he had learned about the virus’s origins, he said: “I can’t tell you that. I’m not allowed to tell you that.”
What reality is: The office of the U.S. national intelligence director says that the virus was not man-made or genetically modified. Scientists believe the direct ancestor of the coronavirus, now known as SARS-CoV-2 has lived for so long in bats and other animals that it can no longer make them sick. At some point at the end of 2019, the virus’ genetic code mutated in a way that allowed it to jump from its animal “reservoir” to its first human host.
“We do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.” — Team of biologists, infectious disease researchers and biosecurity experts in a report published in the journal Nature Medicine
“Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species.” — Dr. Anthony Fauci
Repercussions of the lie: Needless fighting with China when the two countries should be working together, more racism against Chinese-Americans, the blame game distracts from fighting the pandemic in America, a significant federal grant to identify unknown viruses in bats that could infect humans ended by Trump.
Intelligence agencies from the ‘Five Eyes’ nations concluded that the coronavirus was not made in a Chinese lab.
But, Trump & Pompeo continue to lie, strategically, to make China look guilty— as a distraction from Trump’s abysmal handling of the pandemic.https://t.co/m58EWwq4iQ
— Dr. David A. Lustig (@drdave1999) May 6, 2020
Screenshot / YouTube
What they say: Officials in former President Barack Obama’s administration framed top Trump officials early in the current President’s tenure to derail his presidency by planting a phony theory that Trump was colluding with Russia to win the 2016 election. This theory was then picked up by the anti-Trump “deep state” and used to spy on and frame members of Trump’s inner circle, including Michael Flynn, the guy who was simultaneously working for two foreign governments and had twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
“You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody. All you have to do is read the newspapers, except yours.”
— President Trump responding to Washington Post reporter Philip Rucker asking about Obama’s crime.
What reality is: First of all, if — as Donald J. Trump and his sycophants argue — the President’s power is “absolute,” then that would automatically exempt Obama from any of these “crimes.” Secondly, if this WERE a crime (Spoiler alert: It’s not!), why did everyone wait three and a half years to bring it up. Might it have something to do with that little thing in November called The Election.
“The result is that President Trump gets to live in an alternate reality of his own choosing. One that allows him to level unfounded allegations against his foes without even attempting to interact with anything approaching a fact or a piece of evidence, while never facing any consequences. It’s his long-standing, postmodern m.o.—in business, in his personal life, and in politics: Create a preferred universe of convenient facts, then insist they are true, no matter what.” — Tim Miller, former RNC spokesman
Repercussions of the lie: Another ignorance epidemic for which there will never be a vaccine that will keep people and the media focused on lies instead of actual real-world issues…like a global pandemic.
As with birtherism, Trump thinks the media will breathlessly report his lies as news because he is the one saying them. And as with birtherism, he is sadly right. https://t.co/sr8ywCxPnf
— Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) May 12, 2020
