Category: Conspiracy Theories

Trump and his crazy conspiracy theories

Faked Conspiracy Travels From Russian Propaganda to Donald Trump’s Mouth

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At an October 10 campaign rally, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump claimed Clinton family friend and adviser Sidney Blumenthal told Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, that “one important point has been universally acknowledged by nine previous reports about Benghazi: The attack was almost certainly preventable.” Trump alleged Blumenthal said that “if the GOP wants to raise that as a talking point against her, it is legitimate”:

However, Newsweek reporter Kurt Eichenwald found the alleged Blumenthal comments “really, really familiar.” Eichenwald found the comments “so familiar” because, in fact, “they were something I wrote.”

In an October 10 article, Eichenwald revealed that Sputnik, a news organization “established by the [Russian] government controlled news agency, Rossiya Segodnya,” discovered in a WikiLeaks dump of Podesta’s hacked emails “a purportedly incriminating email from Blumenthal” calling the Benghazi attacks a “legitimate” talking point against Clinton.

In reality, Sputnik’s declared “‘October surprise’” quoted “two sentences from a 10,000 word piece” Eichenwald wrote for Newsweek “which apparently Blumenthal had emailed to Podesta.” Contrary to the lies from Sputnik and Trump, Eichenwald’s article is not about how the Benghazi attacks are Hillary Clinton’s fault, but rather “the obscene politicization of the assault that killed four Americans” and “the Republican Benghazi committee which was engaged in a political show trial disguised as a Congressional investigation.”

Even though “once they realized their error, Sputnik took the article down,” Trump continued to use Russian state media’s lie as a weapon against his political opponent. This fits Trump and his campaign’s pattern of questionable relations with Russia, including calls for the Kremlin to commit a cyberattack against Hillary Clinton.

Reality

So how did Donald Trump end up advancing the same falsehood put out by Putin’s mouthpiece?

On the internet a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its shoes on, and this incorrect story was clearly shared enough in the areas of the internet where conspiracy theories and pro-Russian views thrive. Trump must have seen this story on Sputnik or shared on a site that uses Russian propaganda as a source.

If the dark areas of the internet where conspiracy theories are incubated is where Trump and his campaign go looking for information then this should be a major concern.

Media

Trump Says Illegal Immigrants Pouring Across the Border to Vote

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The federal government is allowing illegal immigrants to flow into the U.S. so they can vote, Donald Trump alleged Friday, fueling his own argument that November’s presidential election will be rigged against him.

At a roundtable with National Border Patrol Council members Friday morning inside Trump Tower, Art Del Cueto, national vice president of the union that represents Border Patrol agents, told the Republican presidential nominee that agents have been advised not to deport illegal immigrants with criminal records, according to a pool report.

Trump conveyed his appreciation for Border Patrol agents, telling them their jobs would be so much easier if they just allowed people to come across the border.

“But you love our country,” Trump said, adding, “You know many people are coming in with criminal records.”

Del Cueto told Trump that he has spoken to a number of agents who are in charge of processing. “And the problem that we’re seeing reflected through us as a voice is that some of these individuals that were apprehended with criminal records, they’re not, they’re checking their records, they see that they have criminal records, but they’re setting them aside because at this point they are saying immigration is so tied up with trying to get the people who are on the waiting list to hurry up and get them their immigration status corrected,” he said.

“Why? Trump asked. “So they can go ahead and vote before the election,” Del Cueto responded.

“Big statement, fellas,” Trump said, motioning to reporters, whom he accused of concealing from the public what they just heard. “You’re not going to write it. That’s huge. But they’re letting people pour into the country so they can go and vote.”

Del Cueto said the government wants “to hurry up and fast track them so they can go ahead and vote in the election,” prompting Trump to promote himself as a change agent.

“You hear a thing like that, and it’s a disgrace,” he said. “Well, it will be a lot different if I get elected.”

The real estate mogul suggested at last week’s presidential debate that he would accept the outcome of the election — but his rhetoric before and after his first faceoff with Hillary Clinton has contradicted that claim.

“The answer is, if she wins, I will absolutely support her,” Trump told debate moderator Lester Holt, indicating that he would concede the election if he lost to Clinton without floating conspiracies of a rigged election.

At a rally in Henderson, Nevada, on Wednesday, Trump again hinted of a rigged election, urging his supporters to turn out even on their death beds so “the other side” doesn’t steal the election.

“I say kiddingly, but I mean it: I don’t care how sick you are. I don’t care if you just came back from the doctor and he gave you the worst possible prognosis, meaning it’s over, you won’t be around in two weeks,” Trump said. “Doesn’t matter. Hang out ‘til Nov. 8. Get out and vote. And then all we’re gonna say is we love you and we will remember you always. Get out and vote. And don’t let the other side take this election away from us because this is the last chance we get.”

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham on Thursday condemned Trump for sowing doubt in voters’ minds by questioning the integrity of the presidential election.

“I don’t think it’s good for democracy to have a major candidate for president doubt the outcome. Now, could the election be compromised from hacking and all kind of nefarious activities?” he told CNN. “Yeah, that’s possible, but being rigged means it’s rigged against you. And I think Mr. Trump’s fate is in his own hands. The system’s not rigged against him, as far as I can tell, and when you suggest it might be, then that’s a message to your supporters and to the country as a whole that you can’t trust the outcome of an American election.”

He added, “We got enough problems here at home without making people believe that we’re not gonna honestly elect the next president.”

(h/t Politico)

Reality

Since 1996, federal law has prohibited non-citizens from voting in federal elections, punishing them by fines, imprisonment, inadmissibility, and deportation.

There’s no evidence, though, that immigrants (a) come to the country illegally to vote, (b) register to vote illegally and (c) cast votes in federal elections on any substantive scale.

Media

The Washington Post

Trump Mocks Clinton Stumble

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Donald Trump mocked Hillary Clinton for stumbling during a 9/11 memorial event last month, imitating her fall that doctors chalked up to dehydration.

It’s a personal attack Republicans have warned Trump, the party’s presidential nominee, to avoid. But while he has refused to engage on the issue, even publicly wishing her well, his tone changed Saturday night after an especially heated week.

“Here’s a woman — she’s supposed to fight all these different things — and she can’t make it 15 feet to her car, give me a break,” he said during a rally in Manheim, Pa.

Trump then began to mimic Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, toppling over, stepping away from his microphone and pretending to stumble.

“She’s home resting right now, getting ready for her next speech, which is going to be 15 minutes in about two to three days. Folks, we need stamina, we need energy, we need people that are going to turn deals around,” Trump said.

Cellphone video of Clinton stumbling as aides led her to a car at a 9/11 memorial in New York City last month prompted the campaign to admit that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia, which ultimately led to dehydration.

It played into conservative theories that Clinton is not as healthy as she claims. Trump allies have long questioned Clinton’s health.

But Clinton’s staffers pushed back at those rumors by releasing more of Clinton’s health records, including a note from her doctor outlining her care.

The diagnosis led her to take a few days off from the campaign trail before returning.
Trump has regularly questioned Clinton’s stamina on the stump, and while he remained cordial in the aftermath of the September episode, wishing her well in a statement and in subsequent rallies, his allies continued to float those concerns, as well as conspiracy theories.

When Trump hit Clinton’s “stamina” once again during Monday’s presidential debate, Clinton struck back.

“As soon as he travels to 112 countries and negotiates a peace deal, a cease-fire, a release of dissidents, an opening of new opportunities in nations around the world, or even spends 11 hours testifying in front of a congressional committee, he can talk to me about stamina,” Clinton responded.

(h/t The Hill)

Reality

Trump’s “Charity” Gave $10,000 Quack Anti-Vaccination Group

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Donald Trump has spent years indulging in anti-vaccination conspiracy theories, so it’s little surprise that his shady “charity” foundation donated a chunk of cash to one of the nation’s biggest anti-vaccination campaigns.

The Daily Beast reports that in 2010, the Trump Foundation gave $10,000 to Jenny McCarthy’s Generation Rescue, a nonprofit group whose primary goal is to promote false links between vaccinations and autism.

“McCarthy’s charity promotes ‘alternative vaccination physicians’ and has a grant program to provide families with autistic children with vitamins, minerals, and supplements; urine testing; and ‘dietary intervention training,’” The Daily Beast notes.

None of the claims that Generation Rescue makes about vaccinations have any basis in scientific reality, and its “alternative” methods for disease prevention have not proven effective.

(h/t Raw Story)

Reality

A little back story… way back in 1998 there was a Doctor called Andrew Wakefield who published a study in the well-respected medical journal The Lancet that linked the MMR vaccine to autism. Funny thing about well-respected scientific journals is, people in your field of study read your paper and try to duplicate the results, this is called peer-review. Nobody could duplicate the results so people became suspicious. Looking harder they found a sub-standard sample size of only 13 subjects, many subjects who already showed signs of autism at the start of the study, discovered data that was fraudulently modified, uncovered plans by Wakefield exploit the new market he created by profiting from his findings, and a discovered conflict of interest. Every single study that has been performed in regards to vaccines and autism continues to find no link between the two. In short Doctor Wakefield is now Mr. Wakefield and can never study medicine again and vaccines remain one of the greatest discoveries of human history.

Just like Mr. Trump, you probably have one friend, who is not a doctor or scientist, who has some story that might shed doubt in your mind that vaccines do cause autism. Think about this; That is just one story versus the vast body of evidence in well-performed scientific studies over decades of time, all publicly available to read, and all show absolutely no link. Know anyone with polio? Know anyone who died from smallpox? I’ll bet good money the answer is no. Thank you vaccines. And thank you evidence-based science.

There should be zero surprise that year after year we experience outbreaks of vaccine preventable disease in the areas that have the lowest vaccination rates where many adults and children die. We’re not at all implying that Donald Trump or Jenny McCarthy is responsible for these deaths. What we are saying is that when you are a leader and you go around promoting dangerous conspiracy theories, what you are doing is reinforcing someone’s deeply held beliefs and this makes it all the more harder for them to accept new factual information. It is very irresponsible and dangerous on the part of Donald Trump to propagate these false claims.

Trump Peddles Google Conspiracy Theory

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Donald Trump on Wednesday touted a long-debunked conspiracy theory that the most popular internet search engine suppresses negative headlines about his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

Trump didn’t cite a source to back up his claim, but the most recent report alleging this came from Sputnik News, a Russian state-owned news agency.

“Google search engine was suppressing the bad news about Hillary Clinton,” Trump said, apparently referring to Google searches during the first presidential debate on Monday night.

Trump’s remarks Wednesday night came two weeks after Sputnik News, a Russian government-controlled news agency, published a report claiming that Google search results are biased in Clinton’s favor. Conservative news outlets, including Breitbart News, whose chairman became Trump’s campaign CEO last month, linked to the report.

Trump has been repeatedly criticized for being too praiseworthy of Russian President Vladimir Putin and for promoting foreign policies that would benefit Russian interests around the world. And several of his top advisers — most notably his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort — have extensive ties to Russian government officials and oligarchs.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment asking where Trump sourced his claim.

But the remark was not an off-the-cuff ad lib — it was included in the prepared remarks Trump read from during his rally speech Wednesday night.

The conspiracy theory first popped up in a viral video dating back to June, in which the pop culture site SourceFed claimed Google actively altered search recommendations to benefit Clinton’s campaign, which search engine optimization experts quickly debunked.

Despite what you might have seen online, Google is not manipulating its search results to favor Hillary Clinton.

Google also rebuked the claim in a statement last June.

“Our autocomplete algorithm will not show a predicted query that is offensive or disparaging when displayed in conjunction with a person’s name,” a Google spokeswoman said. “Google autocomplete does not favor any candidate or cause. Claims to the contrary simply misunderstand how autocomplete works.”

(h/t CNN)

Trump Cites Hacked and Fake Online Polls to Prove He Won Debate

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Part of Donald Trump’s persona is that he “wins all the time.” So what happens when he objectively loses in the first presidential debate in virtually every scientific poll by a far more prepared opponent? Apparently Trump goes into full denial and finds every online poll that supports the outcome he desired and it doesn’t help that pro-Trump media like Fox News joins him.

However there are a couple of problems with using online polls for gauging election results. First, they are not restricted to likely voters, so an 8-year old who is not of age can cast their vote. Scientific polls look for sample demographics that are in-line with the national population, online polls do not. Also, most online polls do little to prevent duplicate votes. For example, you can vote on a laptop, then a phone, then an iPad. You can also open the poll and vote in different browsers, such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. If you turn on a browser’s “privacy mode” then browser cookies are disabled, which are used to track your activity on a website, and this opens up to hacking using automated programs called “bots” which can continuously cast votes.

On top of the issues with online polling, each online poll Trump cited is either faked, didn’t exist, or was the victim of a coordinated hacking attack.

For example, the morning after the debate Trump called into Fox and Friends and claimed:

“I won Slate,” Trump insisted on Fox & Friends Tuesday morning. “I won Drudge in almost 90% of the vote in the poll, I won Time Magazine. I won CBS. I won every single poll other than CNN.”

Trump also made the same claim at his event in Miami, Florida the same day. The reason why this is so strange is that CBS never held an online poll, they did however conduct a focus group of undecided voters, and Clinton came out ahead.

Later, Trump tweeted out an image of 11 online surveys which he felt backed up his claims.

Again, outside of the inherent problems with online polling, some of the numbers did not even match up. The white supremacist site Breitbart.com held a more scientific poll which had Clinton winning at 48% to Trump’s 43%, a far cry from Trump winning at 75% as he claims.

But most important, every single one of these polls were the victim of a coordinated attack by hackers on 4chan, who used automated bots to vote multiple times and skew the results.

4chan-first-debate-online-poll-hack

In the end, even Fox News had to remind employees that unscientific online polls “do not meet our editorial standards,” and had to go so far as to reprimand Trump spokesperson Sean Hannity for continuously using online polls to justify his belief that Trump won.

Even so, Sean Hannity still continues to push these online polls on his show in defiance of ethics and standards.

At Debate, Trump Says He “Did a Good Job” On Racist Birther Issue

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Hillary Clinton sharply criticized Donald Trump for pushing a “racist birther lie” about President Obama during a heated exchange at Monday night’s presidential debate at Hofstra University.

Moderator Lester Holt asked Trump to explain his yearslong campaign supporting the conspiracy theory questioning Obama’s citizenship and birthplace.

“I was the one that got him to produce the birth certificate, and I think I did a good job,” Trump said.

“We’re talking about racial healing in this segment,” Holt interjected. “What do you say to Americans, people of color, who…”

Trump cut him off. “I say nothing,” he said, again congratulating himself for getting Obama to release his long-form birth certificate from Hawaii in 2011.

Rather than answer the question, Trump set off on a fantastical diversion. He reiterated the lie that Clinton started the racist Birther conspiracy. Then he went further to claim that Clinton’s campaign manager in 2008 admitted it on CNN last week:

“[H]er campaign manager, Patty Doyle, went to — they were in the campaign, her campaign against President Obama, fought very hard – and you can go look it up and you can check it out – and if you look at CNN this past week, Patty Solis Doyle was on Wolf Blitzer saying that this happened.”

That didn’t happen, Trump is misrepresenting what was said in the Wolf Blitzer interview. Here is the video on CNN where Solis Doyle explained that a rogue staffer sent out an email promoting a birther conspiracy, and that person was promptly fired, which does not match at all what Trump described.

“There was a volunteer coordinator, I believe in late 2007, I think in December. One of our volunteer coordinators in one of the counties in Iowa, I don’t recall whether they were an actual a paid staffer, but they did forward an email that promoted the conspiracy.”

“The birther conspiracy?” Blitzer asked.
“Yeah. Hillary made the decision immediately to let that person go. We let that person go, and it was so, you know, beyond the pale, Wolf, and you know, so not worthy the kind of campaign that certainly Hillary wanted to run or that we as a staff wanted to run that I called David Plouffe, who was obviously managing Barack Obama’s campaign in ’07, to apologize and basically say this is not coming from us.”

Trump also brought up longtime Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal pushing birtherism to McClatchy, thereby tying Hillary to the conspiracy theory. However there is no direct proof of this, and even as McClatchy concedes, is ultimately a case of he-said-she-said which can’t be considered as strong evidence.

Trump said that “Blumenthal sent McClatchy — a highly respected reporter at McClatchy — to Kenya to find out about it. They were pressing it very hard.”

According to James Asher, an editor in McClatchy’s Washington bureau in 2008, Blumenthal suggested the news organization look into Obama’s roots, and Asher said he asked a Nairobi-based reporter to look into the tip. McClatchy last week reported that there is no direct proof that Blumenthal shared the birther rumor, though Blumenthal did share other ideas about Obama with Asher. Asher has said he recalls the conversation clearly, but has no record of it.

Blumenthal told Fox News earlier this month “This is false. Never happened, period,” adding: “Donald Trump cannot distract from the inescapable fact that he is the one who embraced and promoted the racist birther lie and bears the responsibility for it.”

(h/t Yahoo, DailyKos, McClatchy)

Media

During Debate Trump Claims He Didn’t Call Climate Change a Chinese Hoax, He Did

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Hillary Clinton called out Donald Trump at their first debate for labeling climate change a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.

Trump denied saying that. But his own Twitter feed contradicts him, with the real-estate magnate tweeting back in 2012 that global warming was a hoax.

Trump’s tweet said, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”

(h/t MarketWatch)

Reality

There is nothing in the scientific literature that can back up Donald Trump’s claim. On the contrary there is overwhelming scientific evidence that carbon dioxide [CO2] is a pollutant.

For anyone who disagrees with the empirical evidence that CO2 is a pollutant ask yourself; Would you ever think it is safe to breath in the exhaust from your car for an extended period of time? (Prius and Tesla owners pretend you have a Chevy.) You absolutely wouldn’t because tragically hundreds of people die each year from carbon monoxide [CO] poisoning. Along with carbon monoxide, cars release carbon dioxide [CO2], hydrocarbons [HC], nitrogen oxides [NOx], and other particulates which are all pollutants, have proven contributions to climate change, and are harmful to your health.

Science has been aware for over 150 years that carbon in the atmosphere will retain heat. The year was 1859 to be exact, and it was scientist John Tyndall who made the discovery that carbon in the atmosphere trapped heat. Then in 1896 Svante Arrhenius calculated that, based on this simple principle of physics, higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere would raise global temperatures. These discoveries are the cornerstones of climate science, in 150 years have yet to be disputed, and instead continues to be confirmed by observation.

To explain further, the science, in short, says the following. CO2 lets through short wave light, the kind that passes through our atmosphere, but traps long wave radiation, the kind that is reflected and travels back into space. This experiment can be done in a laboratory, and should you have the time you could see it for yourself.

The site at this link has compiled a list of just a handful of the published scientific papers of laboratory measurements of CO2 absorption properties, ranging from 1861 all the way up to 2008. Knowing this evidence, scientist reached a consensus a long time ago that CO2 is indeed a contributor to global warming.

Just to reiterate here, Donald Trump’s acceptance of science predates the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, the American Civil War, and the First Transcontinental Railroad. This is the equivalent trying to attack a state-of-the-art military drone with a Civil War era musket.

Media

 

 

Trump Jr. Compares Syrian Refugees to Poisoned Skittles

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Donald Trump’s eldest son has caused uproar on social media by comparing Syrian refugees to the fruit-flavoured sweets Skittles.

Trying to suggest the US should not accept any refugees, Donald Trump Jr posted an image that asked:

“If I had a bowl of skittles and I told you just three would kill you, would you take a handful?”

“That’s our Syrian refugee problem.”

He added: “This image says it all. Let’s end the politically correct agenda that doesn’t put America first.”

The food analogy has been used before to imply that, if a few people in a group are bad, it would be dangerous to take a single one in.

The language in Donald Jr’s tweet was used in a post by conservative radio host Joe Walsh in August. Joe Walsh was a former single-term Congressman most remembered for being kicked off the air for using racial epitaphs to describe African Americans and for trying to incite violence against President Barack Obama.

But following the tweet by the Republican presidential candidate’s son, the company that owns Skittles, Wrigley, stepped in.

“Skittles are candy. Refugees are people,” said Denise Young, vice-president of corporate affairs for Wrigley America.

“We don’t feel it is an appropriate analogy,” she added. “We will respectfully refrain from further commentary as anything we say could be misinterpreted as marketing.”

Meanwhile the photographer who took the picture of the Skittles said the picture was used without his permission and revealed that he was himself a former refugee.

(h/t BBC)

Reality

In the US, each year, you are far more likely to die due to choking on candy than due to a terrorist attack by a refugee. According to the US National Safety Council and Cato Institute you have a:

  • 1 in 3,408 chance of choking to death on food
  • 1 in 3,640,000,000 chance of being killed by a refugee in a terror attack

The fact is, the refugee resettlement program is the single most difficult way to enter the United States. So refusing refugees was truly about preventing some “Trojan horse” terrorist, it is such a highly ineffective policy that should put into question the very qualifications of this candidate.

Instead this follows a pattern of white supremacist from Donald Trump Jr. and his father and keeping brown people with different beliefs from them out of the country. Some examples include:

  • On March 3rd, Donald Trump Jr. appeared on a radio show and took questions from a known white supremacist.
  • On July 5th, Donald Trump Jr. liked a tweet by one of the worst and most active member of the “alt-right” neo-Nazi movement on Twitter.
  • On August, 29th, Donald Trump Jr. retweeted a post from known white supremacist Kevin MacDonald.
  • On September, 10th, Donald Trump Jr. shared a meme with him next to a white nationalist symbol.
  • On September, 15th, Donald Trump Jr. casually made a holocaust joke on a radio show.

Trump Jr. Claims Children In Europe Are Being Raped By Migrants Daily

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Donald Trump Jr. on Wednesday defended his father’s position on banning refugees from countries where there is known to be terrorism, citing Europe — where he claims migrants rape children daily — as a dangerous example.

Trump Jr. was being interviewed on Facebook Live by a reporter for Salt Lake City’s local CBS affiliate when he made the allegation after being asked what he would say to citizens of Utah who were worried his father’s rhetoric on refugees.

“I think its an important thing, but I think we also have to be able to vet people who are coming in to our country,” Trump Jr. said, emphasizing the need for common sense policies.

“If you look at what’s happened in Europe as it relates to the migrant flows, you know, and you’re hearing about young children being raped daily, and you’re looking at countries that were very good and peaceful countries, the statistics are going through the roof in terms of those kind of attacks—we just have to be intelligent with what we’re doing,” he continued.

Trump Jr.’s comment comes after his tweet on Monday comparing refugees to skittles. Additionally, on Tuesday, he retweeted a Breitbart story titled: “Europe’s Rape Epidemic: Western Women Will Be Sacrificed At The Alter Of Mass Migration”

(h/t Buzzfeed)

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