MAGA conspiracy theories are legion, and it's hard to find comparable things from progressives. But I found one over the weekend, and it's rare enough that I want to share it:
Every word of this is correct. Trump did have a phone call with Putin on July 31 (and in person a month earlier on the sidelines of a G20 meeting). Trump did ask for a list of top spies a few days later. A couple of years later the CIA did report problems with their informants. And Trump did retain classified documents related to "clandestine human sources" at Mar-a-Lago.
So what's wrong with the inference of treasonous behavior from Trump? Only one thing: the meaning of spies in the second sentence. According to several reports, Trump asked for a list of the top executives at ODNI, presumably as a prelude to firing the ones he felt weren't supportive enough of his policies. These are indeed "top spies" in one manner of speaking, but they aren't undercover field agents.
Trump never asked for the names of human sources, and the intelligence services would never have complied even if he had. If you don't know this, the sequence of events described above does indeed seem ominous. Without it, there's nothing there.
Now multiply this by a hundred and you have a rough idea of what things are like in Fox News land.
I'm curious to know where this was being spread around. I've certainly never run into it before, but I've carefully tailored my algorithms on social media to give me non-crazy stuff (well, some crazy cat videos, but those are non-partisan!).
Not sure what the point is that Kevin’s trying to make. Sure, there are lefty conspiracy theories, but approximately none of them are espoused by nationally elected leaders in the Democratic Party. So big whoop: in a country of 330m people, some people on both the right and left believe conspiracy theories. Only the right though elevates them to positions of power in the federal government, which becomes a problem if they reach critical mass in the federal government and start nuking or genociding or just run of the mill second classing millions of people, all based on lies.
And if the point is simply “this is how Fox News crafts its conspiracy theories,” who the fuck cares. I don’t really care if Fox News gets its conspiracy theories off the street or carefully concocts them through meticulous attention and manipulation of detail. I also don’t care if Fox News uses conspiracy theories to make money or actually believes in the conspiracy theories. All the above are bad for our democracy’s future. It’s like worrying in the 1940s if Hitler was inherently evil and exploited legal mechanisms to gain power or if the German voters were evil and selected someone to best represent that evilness. For everyone facing Hitler, all that mattered was wiping him out however he got there.
But thank you Kevin for this navel gazing. How was lunch with your “decent” Republican friends in Orange County today?
You don't provide a source. Just some dipshit on twitter or something? Spare me.
I came here to say the you really downplay conspiracies on the Left, but then I read the other comments… Kevin, I really appreciate your work. Don’t let the bastards get you down.
Kevin,
How do you know that Trump never asked for a list of human sources? And how do you know with such certainty that the intelligence community would never give him that information? This “conspiracy theory” doesn’t seem like a big stretch given that you yourself acknowledge that Trump stole classified information relating to confidential human sources.
Honestly, the debunking seems at least as questionable as the notion that Trump tried to deliver human sources to Russian intelligence.
Thin beer for a conspiracy theory. Needs secret chambers under a pizza parlor, armies massing on the border and abortionist soccer moms, and George Soros.
Trumps is a treasonous traitor. But Joe Biden is a doddering old fool. According to piers Morgan. Don’t be shy, Mr. Drum.
“I watched the viral clip of Barack Obama taking a frozen Joe Biden by the arm and leading him off stage at their star-studded $30 million LA fundraiser, and posted on X what I suspect everyone who watched it was thinking: “So embarrassing. The Democrats can’t let this go on, surely?”
as others have mentioned, this isn't much of a conspiracy theory considering i've never heard it. but it does highlight the importance of fox news and the rest of the conservative media as a propaganda tool for the right wing that gets their conspiracy theories deeply ingrained in their viewers worldview.
Thing about leftie “conspiracy theories” is that so many turn out to have been true, or at least more true than not.
Nixon conspired to scuttle Vietnam peace talks? (Yep)
FBI using illegal tactics against liberal organizations? (COINTELPRO)
Ronald Reagan conspired with Iran re: hostages? (Ok, never proven but dang,sure looks like it)
CIA allowed Nicaraguan Contras to sell drugs in U.S.? (Oh yeah, Gary Webb committed suicide by shooting himself in the head twice)
Hillary Clinton’s “vast right wing conspiracy”. (True)
“Russia, Russia, Russia” (true, true, true)
Those are off the top of my head. I’m sure there are more.
+1
I don't think you really did enough work to get from "Every word of this is correct" to "completely bogus".
Also in July 2019, Trump announced that Dan Coats would
be replaced as Director of National Intelligence, and Trump called up Volodymyr Zelenskyy to ask for dirt on Joe Biden. This doesn't all seem completely bogus to me, and I wouldn't call it "lefty" either.
Many readers here seem to not understand what a conspiracy theory is.
Our host is exactly correct.
And I'm reminded once again that liberals can't read for comprehension, either.
The Russians were able to use their SIGINT to see who the Executives were talking to and thus more quickly identify field agents.