The Russian Conspiracy on Behalf of Conspiracy Theorist Donald Trump - By Jonathan Chait
How Trump sprays suspicion in all directions, so that his own shady relations are just one more conspiracy theory.
By Jonathan Chait
Donald Trump is Americas most successful conspiracy theorist. He won the market share within the conservative-media entertainment complex that ultimately enabled his victory by energetically promoting a conspiracy theory about Barack Obamas birthplace. He kept it up and up and up: Global warming is a Chinese hoax to gain market advantage; the real unemployment rate is many times higher than the official one; Antonin Scalia may have been murdered; Ted Cruzs dad helped kill JFK, and on and on. And yet the oddity of his election, or one of the oddities, is that it was enabled in part by a conspiracy, a real one. Russia sponsored a hacking operation that likely had the effect, and almost certainly had the intent, of making him president. One of the most astonishing conspiracies in American history helped make a conspiracy theorist president.
The CIA had briefed lawmakers on its conclusion that Russias hacking of Democratic servers was intended to help Trump win the election. That Russia wanted Trump to win has been obvious for months. Its propaganda networks, both domestic and foreign, have spent months openly plumping for him. Intelligence experts both inside and outside of government have confirmed Russian involvement in the cyberattacks against Trumps opponents.
Trump has lashed out at the reports with the mix of obvious lies and absurd illogic that is the uniform standard for his public discourse:
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