Trump betrays his conspiracy-addled base
From Epstein to chemtrails, they're learning it was all a scam.
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Anyone wondering how long the patience of Donald Trump’s conspiratorial base would last now has the answer: about six months. That’s how long it took for the MAGA extremists and QAnon crackpots to get fed up with the administration, and to an extent even Trump himself, for not providing them satisfaction.
How could we blame them? This was finally their chance to get the proof that they’ve been right all along, that there really are dark conspiracies and sinister cabals manipulating events and lurking behind everything the ignorant masses take for granted. And what has this presidency, stocked with true believers, actually delivered?
The conflict around the late financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein is getting the most attention, and we’ll discuss that in a moment. But it isn’t the only place where treachery is afoot. At the Environmental Protection Agency, another entry on the conspiracy theorists’ greatest hits list — chemtrails — is the subject of another administration perfidy. It shows how Trump and his aides created a problem they cannot solve.
Look, up in the sky! It’s … just a plane.
Those who watched the video EPA administrator Lee Zeldin put out last week on the subject of chemtrails initially thought the Trump administration was going to blow the lid off the conspiracy in the skies.
The agency, Zeldin said, was putting up a web page with everything the government knows about this urgent issue. He framed it with a classic conspiracy trope: “People who asked questions in good faith were dismissed, even vilified, by the media and their own government,” he claimed. But no more! “Instead of simply dismissing these questions and concerns as ‘baseless conspiracies,’ we’re meeting them head-on.”
One conspiracy theorist cheered. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was asked recently about chemtrails, and answered that he thinks the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency is responsible, and he will “find out who’s doing that and hold them accountable.” Kennedy responded on X to Zeldin’s video: “Im so proud of my friend Lee Zeldin and President Donald Trump for their commitment to finally shatter the Deep State Omerta regarding the diabolical mass poisoning of our people, our communities, our waterways and farms, and our purple mountains, majesty.”
Kennedy clearly hadn’t taken a look at what the EPA actually posted. Rather than reinforce the conspiracy theory, the agency explained that when they fly through patches of cold air, “Jet aircraft form contrails under these atmospheric conditions for the same reason that you can see the exhaust from your vehicle or your own breath on a cold day.” It went on to say that chemtrails is “a term some people use to inaccurately claim that contrails resulting from routine air traffic are actually an intentional release of dangerous chemicals or biological agents at high altitudes for a variety of nefarious purposes, including population control, mind control, or attempts to geoengineer Earth or modify the weather.”
Reading it, you can imagine a contrail of steam emanating from the ears of the Trump faithful who have long believed that when they look up in the sky they are seeing evidence of atmospheric mind-control. The comments on Zeldin’s tweet are full of angry reactions: “We don’t trust any of you.” “We’re just being lied to.” “Wow. Sounds like you have bought into the lie that there are no chemtrails.”
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It seems that Zeldin thought he could say the right words about “transparency” and the media being mean to conservatives, but not actually deliver them the proof they were seeking that the conspiracy is real. But short of fabricating some evidence, there was no way to give them what they wanted.
Therein lies the dilemma for the whole Trump administration: A movement built on conspiracy theorizing isn’t fit for governing. When you’re out of power, you can claim anything, posit any suspicious connection, and fill your mood board with red threads. Once you actually have the entire US government in your hands, surely you ought to be able to supply the proof that the conspiracy is real. But what if it isn’t?
The Epstein meltdown
That brings us to the controversy over the “Epstein client list.” The list supposedly contains details on all the powerful people who were party to Epstein’s sex trafficking, including those who joined him at his properties and abused the underage girls Epstein had brought there.
The list may not exist, even if Attorney General Pam Bondi said in February that it was “on my desk right now” (today she says she was just talking about the file on the investigation, not a client list). But for years, MAGA figures who are now part of the administration, including FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino, Vice President JD Vance, and even Donald Trump Jr., told their audiences that the Deep State was suppressing the Epstein information because too many powerful people (especially Democrats) were implicated. Once Donald Trump took office again, all would be revealed.
We should acknowledge that if there is a list, there’s a good chance Donald Trump is on it. “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump said in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” Is that why Bondi won’t release the list? Quite the enticing possibility.
If there ever was a case made for conspiracy theorists, it was Epstein’s. He really was a fabulously wealthy pedophile with connections to all kinds of powerful people. His death in jail in 2019 couldn’t help but raise suspicions, even if it was a suicide. And now, the Trump administration is acting like they have something to hide, whether or not they do.
The Department of Justice wrote a memo saying there is no client list and no evidence Epstein was blackmailing anyone, and that he committed suicide. They released a surveillance video taken outside Epstein’s cell on the day of his death, then it turned out to be missing a minute that seems to have been deleted. Bondi and Bongino are feuding over the way the case is being handled.
Trump himself is practically begging people to stop talking about Epstein — which is exactly what he’d say if he was part of the conspiracy! He even took to Truth Social to claim that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton created the Epstein files, which makes no sense at all (if that were true, wouldn’t they have made them public?) but does layer a whole new conspiracy theory atop the existing one.
So consider the cognitive dissonance now being experienced by those who thought that revealing the truth about Epstein could bring down the Deep State and its partners. They have to decide whether everything they’ve believed for so long was a lie, or that Donald Trump and his aides are the ones lying to them, and maybe in on it. Either conclusion is so painful it’s almost too much for them to bear.
This is the bed Trump made
A conspiracy theory literally made Trump president: It was his relentless advocacy of the “birther” lie about Barack Obama that turned him from a reality show clown into a political figure. He didn’t deliver the goods then, either: He claimed he had sent investigators to Hawaii “and they cannot believe what they’re finding,” but for some reason the revelations from these phantom investigators were never released.
But that didn’t slow him down. As a 2016 candidate and then president, there was no conspiracy theory too ridiculous for Trump to spread, even if he was usually careful not to come out and say definitively that he believed them. Was Ted Cruz’s dad in cahoots with Lee Harvey Oswald to kill JFK? It sure seems like it. Was Antonin Scalia murdered? “They say they found a pillow on his face, which is a pretty unusual place to find a pillow,” so gosh, who knows? Do vaccines cause autism? Probably. QAnon? “I heard that these are people that love our country.” Did you read a report that made Trump look bad? Fake news, don’t believe it. That’s not to mention voter fraud conspiracies and the “Great Replacement” theory.
An attraction to conspiracy theories goes way back in conservative circles. In the 1950s, the John Birch Society believed President Eisenhower was a communist agent, and in the 1990s, the right was convinced that Bill and Hillary Clinton ran a drug ring out of a small Arkansas airport and murdered dozens of their political opponents. Trump’s innovation was to take the fringe and put it right in the center of Republican politics.
Before long, conspiracy thinking became Republican politics. How many elected Republicans will admit that Joe Biden won the 2020 election? Precious few. When liberals stage a protest, what do Republicans all say? It isn’t real, because George Soros paid them to be there. The media are lying to you, woke teachers and professors are brainwashing your kids, economic data are fabricated if they reflect poorly on Trump or well on Democrats — who, speaking of which, have a secret plan to destroy America.
In 2021, a PRRI survey found that 23 percent of Republicans agreed that “the government, media, and financial worlds in the US are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation.” The lies swirl about us like a poisonous cloud — perhaps one seeded by an airplane? Do your own research.
But here’s the problem Trump now faces. Conspiracy theories are for those who are alienated from power, who seek to grasp on to some measure of control by convincing themselves that they have access to knowledge the rest of us don’t. That knowledge can only be found in the most obscure corners. They won’t believe a government report, unless it’s one that has been censored and suppressed. They know how things really work; they see the hidden gears and levers behind the facade.
Conspiracy thinking is not just a set of discrete beliefs about particular events and figures — it’s a way of looking at the world, one virtually immune to debunking. So what happens when you can’t think any other way, but your side is in power? And what happens when that administration doesn’t raise the curtain to reveal the truth behind the lies, as it said it would?
We’re beginning to find out, as right-wing media melt down with cries of betrayal, countered by desperate attempts to justify the administration’s actions and explain why Trump is still going to show everyone the truth. The trouble is, there’s no resolving this conflict. As Trump himself said in a 2018 speech, “Just remember: What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening.” He taught his followers to think this way, and even he can’t convince them otherwise.
That’s it for today
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This entire fiasco - Epstein, climate denial, massive waste & abuses in government, too many useless civil servants, etc. makes it hard to deny assertions by Paul and others that MAGA has become a cult.
No matter how obvious Administration lies are - MAGAs believe them. Even standing knee-deep in Texas flood water they assert that climate change is a hoax. Even when flood victims cannot get through to FEMA, MAGAs assert that Trump's is the best government ever, and it is protecting them from the evils of "the globalists" behind every QAnon conspiracy. At least to a small extent, they are right. Trump is an archetype globalist.
The stupidity of the magrats is breathtaking in its scope.