Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) pushed a conspiracy theory that a Democratic “deep state” run by Barack Obama is seeking to prevent President Biden from being the Democratic presidential nominee this fall, The Hill reports.
Said Patrick: “I’ve said for over a year many times that Joe Biden would not be on the ticket and Michelle Obama would be the likely nominee. It’s clear the Democrat deep state run by Barack Obama knew they had to take him down to give them a chance in November.”
The Economist: “Conspiracists have often worried about artists being manipulated for political ends. After Anna Akhmatova, a Russian poet, gave a recital in Moscow, Stalin is said to have raged: ‘Who organized the standing ovation?’ In the 1950s America’s paranoid ‘Red Scare’ blighted careers and lives, including Charlie Chaplin’s.”
“As during the cold war, American politics is now especially conducive to suspicion of entertainers. One of them became president, a reality-TV star whose rallies combine the vitriol of a witch-burning with the reassuring formula of a game show. Donald Trump blurred to vanishing the line between politics and showbiz; he also dragged conspiracy theories to the centre of debate. And he exacerbated a prior political trend—America’s extreme polarisation—which encourages conspiratorial thinking.”
“Donald Trump, in an interview that aired on Fox News on Sunday, suggested falsely that Latin American governments were picking the citizens they didn’t want and shipping them to the U.S. border, resurrecting a claim that was central to his 2016 campaign,” the New York Times reports.
“He also accused the Chinese Communist Party — without providing any evidence — of orchestrating illegal immigration into the United States, and said he believed China would try to interfere in the presidential election, adding that he liked President Xi Jinping ‘a lot.’”
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“Taylor Swift is allowed to have a boyfriend. Taylor Swift is a good artist. I’ve taken my daughter to Taylor Swift concerts before. You know, to have a conspiracy theory of all of this is bizarre. Nobody knows who she’s going to endorse. But I can’t believe that that’s overtaken our national politics.”
— Nikki Haley, quote by Politico.
“What your kind of people call ‘conspiracy theories,’ I simply call an amalgam of collective incentives hiding in plain sight.”
— Vivek Ramaswamy, quoted by the New York Times.
“For football fans eager to see a new team in the Super Bowl, the conference championship games on Sunday that sent the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers back to the main event of American sports culture were sorely disappointing,” the New York Times reports.
“But one thing is new: Taylor Swift. And she is driving the movement behind Donald Trump bonkers.”
“The fulminations surrounding the world’s biggest pop icon — and girlfriend of Travis Kelce, the Chiefs’ star tight end — reached the stratosphere after Kansas City made it to the Super Bowl for the fourth time in five years, and the first time since Ms. Swift joined the team’s entourage.”
“The conspiracy theories coming out of the Make America Great Again contingent were already legion: that Ms. Swift is a secret agent of the Pentagon; that she is bolstering her fan base in preparation for her endorsement of President Biden’s re-election; or that she and Mr. Kelce are a contrived couple, assembled to boost the N.F.L. or Covid vaccines or Democrats or whatever.”
Brian Beutler: Maybe Republicans should wonder why all the attractive, likable people hate them?
“Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist Alex Jones could exit Chapter 11 bankruptcy by late March or early April, his lawyer said on Wednesday after a judge decided families whom he owes $1.5 billion for lying about the 2012 school shooting can vote on competing plans to resolve their claims,” Reuters reports.
Mother Jones: “It claims that Jack Smith, the special counsel who is prosecuting Trump for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election and for his alleged swiping of classified documents, was part of a multimillion dollar extortion scheme when he was the chief prosecutor investigating and prosecuting war crimes in Kosovo.”
“In the past two weeks, this unsubstantiated narrative has started popping up on fringe right-wing sites and social media posts. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser and QAnonish MAGA champion, has promoted this tale. These allegations appear to be in the early phase of the right-wing transmission belt that propels false stories and conspiracy theories from less prominent platforms to more established conservative media and toward the mainstream—often facilitated by Republican members of Congress.”
“In his first campaign for president, Donald Trump tapped into bipartisan anger over high drug prices to bash pharmaceutical companies. In his latest run, Trump’s echoing the extreme elements of his party to suggest the industry’s products may be hurting Americans, particularly children,” Axios reports.
“The GOP frontrunner’s airing of unfounded, innuendo-filled claims about the pharmaceutical industry could undermine public health. And it reflects how deeply mistrust of health institutions and anti-science rhetoric have become embedded within a sizable faction of the Republican party following the pandemic.”
Elon Musk said his social media platform X will reinstate the account of the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones after a poll of the site’s users backed his return, The Guardian reports.
“Speaker of the House Mike Johnson wrote the foreword and publicly promoted a 2022 book that spread baseless and discredited conspiracy theories and used derogatory homophobic insults,” CNN reports.
“Written by Scott McKay, a local Louisiana politics blogger, the book, The Revivalist Manifesto, gives credence to unfounded conspiracy theories often embraced by the far-right – including the ‘Pizzagate’ hoax, which falsely claimed top Democratic officials were involved in a pedophile ring, among other conspiracies.”
“Elon Musk voiced support Tuesday for Pizzagate, the long-debunked conspiracy theory that led a man to fire a rifle inside a Washington, D.C., restaurant in 2016,” the Washington Post reports.
“The far-right theory, a predecessor to QAnon, alleged that the Clintons and Democratic Party leaders ran a secret satanic child sex ring in a D.C. pizzeria known as Comet Ping Pong.”
Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo floated a conspiracy theory that former President Barack Obama is calling the shots in the White House.
“Fox Business Network anchor Maria Bartiromo was once again just asking questions when she wondered aloud Monday whether the Chinese government intentionally released Covid-19 to get Donald Trump out of the White House,” the Daily Beast reports.
“Bartiromo’s outlandish theory, which suggests China unleashed a deadly coronavirus within its own borders in an effort to install Joe Biden as U.S. president, was somewhat endorsed by the GOP lawmaker who heads the House investigation into the origins of the virus.”
“Election fraud conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell is selling Wi-Fi monitoring devices that he says make elections more secure,” the Cincinnati Enquirer reports.
“But Northern Kentucky elections officials warned Friday that using the devices at polls is illegal – and likely a felony.”
Podcaster Joe Rogan once again pushed the baseless conspiracy theory that the Januray 6 Capitol insurrection was a false flag operation orchestrated by the federal government, the Daily Beast reports.
Said Rogan: “The January 6 thing is bad, but also, the intelligence agencies were involved in provoking people into the Capitol Building. That’s a fact.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said it is “certainly possible” government agencies were involved in the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.
Said Johnson: “I think it’s certainly possible, yeah. The American public deserves the truth, and we haven’t gotten it.”
He added: “There’s so many unanswered questions, so many witnesses that just died, so many leads that weren’t followed up on, so much evidence that obviously should have been collected that people have been prevented from collecting.”
Robert Kennedy Jr., the long-shot Democratic presidential candidate, has backed a conspiracy theory that the CIA was involved in the killing of his uncle, former President John F. Kennedy, arguing the evidence is “overwhelming,” The Hill reports.
Said Kennedy: “I think it’s beyond a reasonable doubt at this point.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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