Tag: conspiracy theory

Trump Drops ‘Birther’ Theory, but Floats a New False One: Clinton Started It

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Donald Trump finally admitted Friday that “President Barack Obama was born in the United States,” reversing himself on the issue that propelled him into national politics five years ago.

Trump sought to end his longstanding attempt to discredit the nation’s first African-American president with just a few sentences tacked on at the end as he unveiled his new hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington.

But the issue isn’t likely to die down any time soon — especially as Trump continues to falsely blame Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for starting the “birtherism” controversy. Clinton said earlier Friday that Trump’s acknowledgment of Obama’s birthplace doesn’t go far enough and that he must also apologize.

“For five years, he has led the birther movement to delegitimize our first black president,” Clinton said at an event in Washington. “His campaign was founded on this outrageous lie.”

Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961.

Trump offered no apologies for his leading role in the birther movement and didn’t explain what drove him to change his mind. The President dismissed Trump’s criticism Friday, joking with reporters at the White House and saying, “I was pretty confident about where I was born.”

Speaking at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, Friday, First Lady Michelle Obama addressed the controversy head on.

“There were those who questioned and continue to question for the past eight years up through this very day whether my husband was even born in this country,” she said. “Well, during his time in office, I think Barack has answered those questions with the example he set by going high when they low.”

Rep. G.K. Butterfield, a North Carolina Democrat who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus, called Trump a “disgusting fraud.”

Birtherism controversy

The birtherism controversy exploded the previous night when Trump said in an interview with The Washington Post that he still wasn’t prepared to acknowledge Obama’s birthplace. Within a few hours, the campaign released a statement — attributed to his spokesman — that said Trump now believes Obama was born in the United States.

Trump finally said the words out loud Friday morning.

“President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Period,” Trump said, ignoring reporters’ questions despite earlier indications he would hold a press conference. “Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again.”

The developments over the past day were steeped in political motivations. With 53 days before the presidential election, Trump is moving into a margin of error race with Clinton and trying to broaden his appeal while maintaining his grip on the GOP base. Trump has tried to improve his dismal standing among minority voters and moderate Republicans in recent weeks, many of whom see birtherism as racially motivated and an insult to Obama.

He is also aiming to take the issue of Obama’s birthplace and legitimacy off the table by the time of the crucial debate with Clinton September 26.

Trump has declined other opportunities during the past two weeks to refute his original birtherism.

When local Philadelphia TV station WPVI asked Trump on September 2 about his past statements, Trump replied: “I don’t talk about it anymore. I told you, I don’t talk about it anymore.”

He repeated the same line when asked about it during a gaggle with reporters aboard his plane last week.

And in an interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly last week, Trump again said, “I don’t bother talking about it.”

Trump’s extraordinary attempt to prove Obama was not a natural-born US citizen and was therefore not qualified to be president started on the conservative fringe but gathered momentum and became a major issue. The White House initially tried to ignore the birtherism movement as the work of conspiracy theorists, but Trump’s huge media profile propelled the issue through conservative media and it eventually gained traction.

The saga only ended in a surreal and extraordinary moment in American politics when the sitting President went to the White House briefing room in April 2011 and produced his long-form birth certificate.

‘Sideshows and carnival barkers’

“We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers,” Obama said at the time, in a clear reference to Trump.

In his statement Thursday night, Trump spokesman Jason Miller said, “Mr. Trump did a great service to the President and the country by bringing closure to the issue that Hillary Clinton and her team first raised.”

He was referring to a controversy from the 2008 Democratic primary fight between Obama and Clinton. In a March 2008 interview with “60 Minutes,” Clinton said she took then-Sen. Obama’s word that he was not a Muslim, but when pressed if she believed he was, she replied, “No. No, there is nothing to base that on — as far as I know.”

Clinton, however, was not questioning Obama’s birthplace.

Clinton slammed Trump’s comments to the Post while speaking at a Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute event in Washington Thursday, saying he needs to stop his “ugliness” and “bigotry.”

“He was asked one more time: Where was President Obama born? And he still wouldn’t say Hawaii. He still wouldn’t say America. This man wants to be our next president? When will he stop this ugliness, this bigotry?” she said. “This is the best he can do. This is who he is. And so we need to decide who we are.”

Clinton’s campaign later tweeted, “President Obama’s successor cannot and will not be the man who led the racist birther movement. Period.”

The ‘birther’ controversy

Trump’s embrace of the birther controversy seemed outlandish when it began. In retrospect, it looks like a template for the fact-challenged approach he has adopted in his presidential campaign.

After Obama’s news conference, the real-estate developer claimed credit for getting the President to produce evidence of his birthplace.

“Today I’m very proud of myself because I’ve accomplished something that nobody else was able to accomplish,” Trump said in New Hampshire, after Obama’s news conference.

In subsequent years, Obama poked fun at the birtherism controversy and used it to ridicule Trump, most memorably in a savage takedown at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner in 2011.

“Now, I know that he’s taken some flak lately, but no one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald,” Obama said.

“And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter — like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?”

(h/t CNN)

Reality

The first idea that Barack Obama was not a naturally born citizen can actually be traced back to 2004 with the loony racist ravings of Judah Benjamin and Andy Martin. But the origins of the birther conspiracy theory for the 2008 presidential cycle did indeed start with supporters of Hillary Clinton, but there is no evidence that it came from Clinton directly. Most of the noise from the idiot birther conspiracy theorists came after Jun 13, 2008, days after Clinton ended her campaign on June 7, 2008.

While it is true there was some hand from Clinton supporters who were not associated with her campaign, the idea that she started it or was “all in” as Trump previously claimed, is pure fiction.

Trump Defiant, Won’t Say Obama Was Born in United States

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Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said in an interview in Canton, Ohio that he remains unwilling to say that President Obama is born in the United States, that he is more bullish than ever on his chances to win and that he is not exploring the launch of a new media company in case he loses the race.

Trump also made a far-from-subtle push — in the interview and in a letter from his doctor released Thursday — to be seen as vigorous and healthy as his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, returned to the campaign trail after being treated for mild pneumonia.

In the interview, conducted late Wednesday aboard his private plane as it idled on the tarmac here, Trump suggested he is not eager to change his pitch or his positions even as he works to reach out to minority voters, many of whom are deeply offended by his long-refuted suggestion that Obama is not a U.S. citizen. Trump refused to say whether he believes Obama was born in Hawaii.

“I’ll answer that question at the right time,” Trump said. “I just don’t want to answer it yet.”

When asked whether his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, was accurate when she said recently that he now believes Obama was born in this country, Trump responded: “It’s okay. She’s allowed to speak what she thinks. I want to focus on jobs. I want to focus on other things.”

He added: “I don’t talk about it anymore. The reason I don’t is because then everyone is going to be talking about it as opposed to jobs, the military, the vets, security.”

In the interview, Trump defended his wife’s immigration history; attacked targets including CNN host Anderson Cooper and Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.); and said he had been “respectful” since Clinton fell ill but “that doesn’t mean that I’m going to stay there.”

Sitting in his plush, cream-and-gold cabin as his top aides looked on, Trump began by repeatedly recounting his poll numbers, which have ticked up nationally and in some key states.

Trump said a possible turning point in the race came last week when Clinton said that “half” of his supporters belonged in a “basket of deplorables” — a remark she has since said she regrets.

“It’s the single biggest mistake in this political cycle, a massive comment, bigger than 47 percent,” Trump said, a reference to Mitt Romney’s controversial 2012 statement at a fundraiser about voters who receive government benefits or pay little in taxes. “When I first heard it, I couldn’t believe that she said it.”

Clinton and her campaign argue that some Trump backers are racist and misogynistic and have sought to link him to the “alt-right” movement of self-avowed white nationalists, many of whom have rallied around his candidacy.

Trump was a leading and vocal proponent of the debunked conspiracy theory that the nation’s first black president was born overseas and thus not eligible for the White House. Obama released his long-form Hawaiian birth certificate in 2011, but Trump has never disavowed his earlier claims.

(h/t Washington Post)

Reality

First of all, President Obama was born in Hawaii. Shut up.

The first idea that Barack Obama was not a naturally born citizen can actually be traced back to 2004 with the loony racist ravings of Judah Benjamin and Andy Martin. But the origins of the birther conspiracy theory for the 2008 presidential cycle did indeed start with supporters of Hillary Clinton, but there is no evidence that it came from Clinton directly. Most of the noise from the idiot birther conspiracy theorists came after Jun 13, 2008, days after Clinton ended her campaign on June 7, 2008.

While it is true there was some hand from Clinton supporters, the idea that she started it or was “all in” as Trump claimed, is pure fiction.

The New Birthers: Trump Pushes Hillary Clinton Health Conspiracy

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From Donald Trump and his top surrogates to the right-wing media and its engine rooms of outrage in the blogosphere, Hillary Clinton’s opponents are ramping up efforts to sow doubt over the candidate’s health.

The campaign — which goes back years — has escalated to shouting over the summer, as Trump spiraled in the polls while mostly failing to connect with voters outside his base demographic. Now, as the race enters a crucial phase, there has been a growing push to fundamentally undermine Clinton’s candidacy.

Much in the way “birthers” (Trump was among the most prominent) sought similar ends by questioning President Barack Obama’s citizenship, the “healthers” are using junk science and conspiracy theories to argue that Clinton is suffering from a series of debilitating brain injuries.

In an interview on “Fox News Sunday” this weekend, former New York City mayor and Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani first accused the mainstream media of hiding evidence, then encouraged doubters to “go online and put down ‘Hillary Clinton illness.'”

There is absolutely no credible evidence to backstop any of these claims, including on the “videos” Giuliani cited. Clinton’s physician — the only person to speak on the record who has actually examined her — has repeatedly affirmed the former secretary of state’s health and fitness for the highest office in the land.

During an appearance Monday night on the Jimmy Kimmel show, Clinton called the GOP claims about her health a “wacky strategy.”

“I don’t know why they are saying this,” she said. “I think on the one hand, it is part of the wacky strategy, just say all these crazy things and maybe you can get some people to believe you.”

But for those who want to believe, the structure of the lie borders on impenetrable — baked into its “medical” assertions is the tightly held belief that the press is in cahoots with Clinton, protecting her political prospects by working overtime to hide her imagined ailment.

(h/t CNN)

Reality

The facts, though, tell a very different story. This is it.

The roots of the health conspiracy theory go back to late 2012

Days before she was first scheduled to testify on Capitol Hill about the Benghazi terror attack in December 2012, Clinton suffered a concussion after becoming dehydrated and fainting. Her appearance, scheduled for December 20, was pushed back as she recovered.

In a bit of dark irony, Clinton’s political opponents then, most notably the Republican former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, suggested that Clinton was faking it — that the secretary of state, as Bolton put it, had come down with a “diplomatic illness” in order to avoid the congressional inquiry.

In the weeks after the injury, Clinton would be hospitalized and prescribed blood thinners to dissolve a blood clot located in a vein behind her right ear. The diagnosis was made during a follow-up exam related to her concussion. The clot did not, per Clinton’s doctors, result in a stroke or any other neurological complications.

On January 23, 2013, a little more than a month after she was first slated to appear before Congress, Clinton testified at length to Senate and House committees about the Benghazi attacks.

Karl Rove helped plant the seeds in 2014

In May 2014, more than a year after Clinton left the State Department, Republican strategist Karl Rove made headlines by suggesting Clinton had suffered brain damage in 2012.

“Thirty days in the hospital? And when she reappears, she’s wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury?” he said, according to a New York Post report. “We need to know what’s up with that.”

Rove would attempt to walk back his comments a day after they were made public, telling Fox News of the brain damage comment that he “never used that phrase.”

He also conceded that Clinton had not, as he first said, spent a month in the hospital. She was there for about three days. Politifact also slapped a “False” tag on Rove’s claim that Clinton’s prismatic glasses indicated her injuries had been worse than initially let on.

The talk would mostly die down over the next year. In July 2015, Clinton’s longtime physician, Dr. Lisa Bardack, delivered her a clean bill of health.

“(Clinton) had follow-up testing in 2013, which revealed complete resolution of the effects of the concussion as well as total dissolution of the thrombosis,” Bardack wrote. “Mrs. Clinton also tested negative for all clotting disorders.”

The alleged ‘seizures’

The rumors have traveled with remarkable speed through the pipeline connecting small conservative and right-wing blogs to larger outlets like Breitbart, Infowars and Fox News.

First, there was the muffin shop.

During a June photo op in Washington, Clinton turned back reporters’ questions with what AP correspondent Lisa Lerer in a first person account titled “Video proves Clinton suffering seizures? Not so, I was there,” described as “an exaggerated motion, shaking her head vigorously for a few seconds.”

“After the exchange,” Lerer wrote, “(Clinton) took a few more photos, exited the shop and greeted supporters waiting outside.”

End of story? Not quite.

More than a month later, pro-Trump blogger Jim Hoft picked up the video and, on his Gateway Pundit site, ran a headline blaring, “Wow! Did Hillary Clinton Just Suffer a Seizure on Camera?” She had not, of course, as had been clear to everyone present. But the video soon went viral. Less than a week later, after Clinton delivered her convention address, he was back at it, publishing a GIF of the nominee’s amused face (there were a lot of balloons falling) under a similar title: “Wow! Media Missed This=> Did Hillary Suffer Another Seizure After Her DNC Speech?”

In the coming days and weeks, conservative media and the Trump campaign itself began to pick up the thread. Fox News host Sean Hannity, an unabashed supporter of the GOP nominee, dove in with particular gusto, gathering panels of “experts” to examine video clips of Clinton coughing and, again, batting her head at the D.C. muffin shop.
None of the physicians convened by Hannity had examined Clinton and at least one, Fox News medical correspondent Dr. David Samadi, is a urologist. When an actual neurologist, Dr. Fiona Gupta, joined the group, she mostly dismissed Hannity’s questions, saying, “It’s just so hard to speculate based on snippets (of video).”

When he pressed on (“It almost seems seizure-esque to me”), another Fox News contributor, Dr. Marc Siegel, an internist, pushed back.

“Well I’m not a neurologist,” Siegel said, “and I don’t think that necessarily looks like a seizure.”

The ‘fall’

At around the same time Hannity was hosting his panels, a blog called the American Mirror and the Drudge Report gave a boost to a photograph that had been floating around for months. Taken back in February, the image shows Clinton being helped up a flight of stairs outside a halfway house in in North Charleston, South Carolina.

“The questionable health condition of Hillary Clinton should be a major issue of the 2016 campaign,” the American Mirror post begins. “The latest evidence comes in the form of Clinton being helped up a set of stairs by multiple individuals outside what appears to be a home.”

But the Getty Images photo caption — filed months earlier — tells a very different story.

It reads: “Democratic Presidential candidate, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton slips as she walks up the stairs into the non-profit SC Strong, a 2 year residential facility that helps former felons, substance abusers, and homeless move into self-sufficiency.

The “syringe” and fake medical records

As the conspiracy theories took flight, boosted by Trump’s repeated assertions that Clinton is too chronically tired or weak to handle the White House workload, “questions” from right-wing bloggers and gadflies about Clinton’s security detail began to focus in on a single piece of equipment carried by one agent.

On Twitter and on assorted blogs, conspiracy theorists began to focus on images they believed to show, as one headline put it, “Hillary’s Handler Carrying Auto-Injector Syringe For Anti-Seizure Drug Diazepam.”

But again, this was simply not the case. Hannity broadcast the story to his millions of viewers, citing the Gateway Pundit and its sources, with no evidence of his own.

Indeed, the Secret Service has weighed in repeatedly when asked. On Monday morning, spokeswoman Nicole Mainor dismissed the report in an email to CNN.

“The item in the Detail Leader’s hand is a flashlight,” she said.

The rumors took a more serious turn around this time, when a since-deleted Twitter account called @HillsMedRecords shared what purported to be leaked medical record showing Clinton having been diagnosed with early-onset dementia. Snopes.com, a fact-checking website, quickly snuffed them out and Clinton’s doctor — whose letterhead was used in the images featuring the fake reports — put out a statement explaining that the documents are “false, were not written by me and are not based on any medical facts.”

The Trump-Breitbart connection

Breitbart News has been a house organ for Trump since the early days of his run, but the union became more formal last week when the media company’s executive chairman, Steve Bannon, was hired as campaign CEO.

It has also been among the most consistent and highly trafficked peddlers of the conspiracy theories surrounding Clinton’s health. When she was slightly late returning to a debate stage in December — there had been a hold up entering the bathroom — Breitbart published a story weeks later citing “a law enforcement source with inside connections” who said Clinton “was missing from the stage due to health issues stemming from a previous brain injury.”

Trump himself has begun to allude more and more baldly to these suggestions, most notably in a pair of speeches last week when he questioned Clinton’s “mental and physical” stamina. On Friday, he tweeted: “#WheresHillary? Sleeping!!!!!”

All this as Drudge doubled down by bannering its site with an absurd Heat Street post, titled, “MUST SEE: Photos of Hillary Clinton Propped Up on Pillows.” The images, with arrows superimposed to point out the pillows, show Clinton — fully alert, engaged, sometimes addressing large audiences — in the presence of small pillows that she sometimes placed behind her back when she was seated.

By the end of last week, at least one prominent Republican Trump supporter had heard about enough. After “Fox and Friends” played a clip of Dr. Drew Pinsky, of “Celebrity Rehab” semi-fame and HLN host, discussing his “grave concern” for Clinton, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich lost his patience.

“With all due respect to television doctors, when you have a doctor who has never seen the patient begin to give you a complicated, fancy-sounding analysis based on what?” Gingrich said.

“I mean, I would be very cautious and I would recommend to doctors for professional reasons to be very cautious deciding you’re going to start analyzing people.”

Reality

The sad truth is that Trump and his campaign continues to promote baseless conspiracy theories even in the face of overwhelming evidence. From a rigged election, to a link between vaccines and autism, to climate change denial, there seems to be no conspiracy theory they won’t try to push on voters who may not be informed of the facts or may be intentionally adverse to accepting new information that does not conform to their preconceived beliefs.

Trump: I’m Not a Big Believer in Man-Made Climate Change

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In the wide-ranging interview with the Miami Herald which focused on key South Florida issues, Trump continued to question climate change caused by humans.

Trump spoke to the Herald at the Fontainebleau Hotel, steps from the shoreline and not far from streets the city of Miami Beach has spent millions of dollars elevating to fend off rising seas.

“I’m not a big believer in man-made climate change,” Trump said, despite vast scientific evidence to the contrary. “There could be some impact, but I don’t believe it’s a devastating impact.”

In the past, Trump has called climate change a “hoax.”

“I would say that it goes up, it goes down,” he said. “Certainly climate has changed. … The problem we have is our businesses are suffering. Our businesses are unable to compete in this country because other countries aren’t being forced to do what our businesses are being forced to do, and it makes us uncompetitive.”

If cities like Miami Beach want to set local rules to fight the effects of rising seas, though, Trump said he wouldn’t get in their way.

“If the local government feels that way, they should do it,” he said. “If they’re doing the roads, and if they want to make them higher, I think that’s probably not the worst thing I’ve ever heard, if you’re going to do them anyway.”

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.

Trump Doubles-Down That Obama ‘Literally’ Founded ISIS

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Donald Trump said twice Thursday that he meant exactly what he said when he called President Barack Obama the “founder of ISIS” and objected when a conservative radio show host tried to clarify the GOP nominee’s position.

Trump was asked by host Hugh Hewitt about the comments Trump made Wednesday night in Florida, and Hewitt said he understood Trump to mean “that he (Obama) created the vacuum, he lost the peace.”

Trump objected.

“No, I meant he’s the founder of ISIS,” Trump said. “I do. He was the most valuable player. I give him the most valuable player award. I give her, too, by the way, Hillary Clinton.”

Hewitt pushed back again, saying that Obama is “not sympathetic” to ISIS and “hates” and is “trying to kill them.”

“I don’t care,” Trump said, according to a show transcript. “He was the founder. His, the way he got out of Iraq was that that was the founding of ISIS, okay?”

Hewitt and Trump went back and forth after that, with Hewitt warning Trump that his critics would seize on his use of “founder” as more example of Trump being loose with words.

But the GOP nominee remained steadfast, saying it was “no mistake” what he said, standing by his labeling of the Democratic opponent as a “co-founder.”

“Do you not like that?” Trump asked Hewitt.

“I think I would say they created, they lost the peace. They created the Libyan vacuum, they created the vacuum into which ISIS came, but they didn’t create ISIS. That’s what I would say,” Hewitt said.

“Well, I disagree,” Trump replied, and Hewitt moved on.

The criticism that the policies of President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are mostly originating from right-wing conspiracy cranks like Breitbart.com, Alex Jones, or Senator John McCain. Taking the idea a step further to suggest Obama and Clinton literally founded the terrorist group is something far more nefarious.

Former ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul hit Trump on the comments, saying they mimicked Russian talking points designed to sow anger toward the US and the West.
“BTW, Trumps line that Obama founded ISIS echoes exactly a myth propagated by Russian state-controlled media and bloggers,” McFaul tweeted.

(h/t CNN)

Reality

Trump claiming that because President Obama withdrew troops from Iraq, thus creating ISIS, is patently false.

First, Obama was honoring an agreement between Iraq and the United States for a timeline to withdraw troops signed on December 14, 2008 by President George W. Bush. You might remember the press conference to announce the strategic agreement more for Bush dodging a shoe thrown at him than the actual details of the timeline.

Second, will require quick history lesson to show at no time did Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama walk into a room and declare, “Hey guys you know what would be a great idea? A new Islamic caliphate in the Levant!”

ISIS was originally formed in 1999 under the name “Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad” and was greatly expanded in 2003 by former members of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party who were out of a job after the George W. Bush-lead invasion of Iraq, which was based on faulty evidence. Without a strong-man dictator in the area and a weak Iraqi government, ISIS had a chance to expand even more by pledging allegiance to Osama Bin Laden and changed their name to al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI or ISI) in 2004.

After years of fighting in the Iraqi Civil War and blowing themselves up, in 2011 some members of AQI saw an opportunity in the Syrian Civil War and left on an expedition calling themselves al-Nusra. Al-Nusra joined the Free Syrian Army (FEA), a loose confederation of different factions fighting the Assad Syrian government, and were known to be the largest, best organized, and most experienced, having fought an insurgent campaign against American forces since the start of the invasion of Iraq. This caused many Islamic fundamentalist FEA fighters leave their factions for al-Nusra, where their membership continued to grow. In December 2011, shortly after al-Nusra joined the FEA, President Obama declared the group a terrorist organization, and prevented them from receiving weapons from the US in the fight against the Assad government.

After political infighting Al-Qaeda disavowed AQI, and eventually AQI and al-Nusra merged together under the new name ISIS in 2013.

This is not the first time Donald Trump has made this false claim. Back in January 2nd at a rally in Biloxi, Mississippi he told the crowd that, “Hillary Clinton created ISIS with Obama.” On June 13th in an interview with Fox News and again in a tweet on June 15th, Trump suggested that President Obama was an ISIS sympathizer.

Media

Hugh Hewitt Show:

Speech at National Association of Home Builders:

Trump Adviser Claims Father of War Hero Is a “Muslim Brotherhood Agent”

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Roger Stone, an informal adviser to Donald Trump, took to Twitter on Sunday to claim that Khizr Khan, the father of a slain war hero who spoke at last week’s Democratic National Convention, is working for the Muslim Brotherhood.

The link that accompanied Stone’s tweet outlines a conspiracy theory that claims Khan is working to bring radical Muslims to the United States. The article Stone linked to also alleges that Khan’s son, Captain Humayun Khan, was a Muslim martyr who was killed “before his Islamist mission was accomplished.”

The article concludes, threateningly if not quite coherently: “What part of ‘they will be in the House of Islam by force in the near future’ don’t these democrats understand? More dead Americans?”

Of course, as with most low-budget far-right conspiracy sites, no actual evidence is ever presented.

Stone’s shocking tweets come just a day after Trump told ABC News that, like the Khan family, he has made many sacrifices. The Republican nominee also attacked Khan’s wife, who stood alongside her husband during his DNC address, suggesting that perhaps she “wasn’t allowed” to speak because of the couple’s Muslim faith.

(h/t Mother Jones, Slate)

Reality

The Muslim Brotherhood is a conservative Middle Eastern Islamic organization that may have some connections to terrorist activity; in the world of American far-right conspiracy theories, however, the Brotherhood is believed to be seeking to infiltrate and destroy the U.S. government.

Donald Trump Pushes Conspiracy Theory That Obama Supports ISIS

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Twitter

Donald Trump said he was right to imply that President Obama is an ISIS sympathizer.

In an attempt to defend his controversial claims that the president supports the terrorist group, the presumptive Republican nominee tweeted a story from anti-Obama website Breitbart.com that cites a newly discovered “secret” memo the website says proves Obama is an ISIS supporter.

The memo, as it turns out, is neither secret nor does it demonstrate the administration’s support for ISIS or any other policy. Indeed, it’s a recently declassified and heavily redacted intelligence field report from August 2012 about the worsening security situation in Iraq, obtained by the conservative watchdog Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information lawsuit.

Breitbart falsely concludes that because the memo mentions that al Qaeda in Iraq (a precursor to ISIS) is fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the Obama administration therefore supports ISIS.

The Obama administration, particularly through its State Department, has spoken at length about the complicated process of vetting the array of opposition groups in order to avoid supporting those with ties to extremism.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest Monday responded to a question about Trump’s claims the same day. “Well, I think what is clear is, if you take a look at the president’s record, it speaks for itself,” Earnest said. “And that record includes a lot of dead terrorists.”

(h/t ABC News)

Reality

The Washington Post did an enormous fact-check and came to the conclusion that the Brietbart.com article was a pack of crap. This should come to the surprise of no-one who reads Brietbart.com and can recognize it as dishonest and willfully deceptive. For more information you can read the fact-check here, but in the Washington Post’s expert summary:

“This is what happens when people with little understanding of policy or context choose to willfully misinterpret documents. This is a relatively unimportant memo, with little information not in newspapers at the time. Rather than showing that the Obama administration is supporting terrorist groups, the information in the memo demonstrates why the administration was so reluctant to back rebel groups in Syria, often to the annoyance of Republican hawks.

Moreover, the memo was not sent directly to Clinton’s office, as asserted by Breitbart.

Trump, as a presumptive presidential nominee, really needs to rely on more accurate information when making factual claims.”

This all stems from Donald Trump’s debunked rekindling of the old conservative trope that President Barack Obama is a secret Muslim hellbent on overthrowing the government. Donald Trump said:

Look, we’re led by a man that either is not tough, not smart, or he’s got something else in mind,” Trump said on Fox News. “And the something else in mind — you know, people can’t believe it. People cannot, they cannot believe that President Obama is acting the way he acts and can’t even mention the words ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’ There’s something going on. It’s inconceivable. There’s something going on.

 

Donald Trump Connects President Obama to Orlando Shooting

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Donald Trump seemed to suggest that President Barack Obama had an ulterior motive concerning how he addresses and handles terror attacks, because he does not say the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism.”

Trump said Monday morning on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends”:

We’re led by a man who is very — look, we’re led by a man that either is not tough, not smart, or he’s got something else in mind. And the something else in mind, you know, people can’t believe it.

 

People cannot believe, they cannot believe that President Obama is acting the way he acts and he can’t even mention the words ‘radical Islamic terrorism.’ There’s something going on. It’s inconceivable. There’s something going on.

Asked earlier why he had tweeted that Obama should resign because he wouldn’t say the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism,” Trump said:

He doesn’t get it or he gets it better than anybody understands. It’s one or the other, and either one is unacceptable.

A Trump spokeswoman did not respond to a request for an explanation of what Trump meant. But asked on NBC’s “Today Show” about the comments, Trump said that “a lot of people” thought Obama does not want to understand terrorism.

Well, there a lot of people who think maybe he doesn’t want to get it. A lot of people think maybe he doesn’t want to know about it. I happen to think he just doesn’t know what he’s doing, but there are many people that think maybe he doesn’t want to get it, he doesn’t want to see what’s really happening.

And later, speaking to Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, Trump offered yet another explanation when questioned about what he meant.

I can’t define it. Nobody knows what’s going on. Nobody knows why (Obama) doesn’t have more anger, more competitive zeal. It’s almost like he’s falling asleep.

Trump has been on the defense since tweeting Sunday that he did not need congratulations for being “right” about the Orlando nightclub shooting. On Sunday, Trump tweeted that Obama should resign for not using the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism.” Obama dubbed the shooting an “act of terror” and an “act of hate” in his response Sunday afternoon.

Reality

So instead of thinking diplomatically on foreign affairs and having a tangible policy, Trump instead turns to an old baseless conservative political smear from 2007 that Obama is a covert Muslim extremist.

For those who may be too young or have forgotten, Fox News was famous for their political smears against the then-Senator Obama saying things like:

None of these hand any kernel of truth. So it came to no surprise when Fox News defended Trump, writing:

The Washington Post story featured comments Trump made earlier in the day on Fox News, when he made a made a vague statement about Obama interpreted by some as a reference to his sympathies.

Interpreted by some? Excuse me? If Donald Trump was not trying to infer the right-wing conspiracy theory that President Obama does not act because he is an undercover Muslim, can Fox News please try to come up with a plausible explanation of what Trump was actually talking about?

Fact is, this is not the first time Donald Trump has pushed the Muslim Obama conspiracy theory:

Finally, Trump took the opportunity to bring up the old conservative trope that Obama refuses to acknowledge terrorism, and until he does we’ll be vulnerable to terrorists… or something. However there is a very good reason why President Obama, and before him George W. Bush, will not speak the words “radical Islamic terrorism” when referring to terrorist groups like ISIS. They may sound like small words to Republican critics like Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz, but they have big meaning. The members of ISIS and other terrorist groups are desperate for legitimacy. This is why ISIS calls themselves the “Islamic State.” They try to portray themselves as religious leaders, holy warriors in defense of Islam. And they propagate the notion that America, and the West, is at war with Islam. For a President of the United States to infer that we are at war with the Islamic religion, it would have immediate consequences from our Muslim allies in the middle-east as well as give terrorist groups the legitimacy they exactly desire.

Media

Fox and Friends:

NBC Today Show:

O’Reilly Factor:

 

Trump Brings Up Debunked Vince Foster Conspiracy Theory As “Very Fishy”

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Deputy White House counsel Vince Foster suicide.

There’s no such thing as a conspiracy theory that Donald Trump will not believe.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Trump called the circumstances surrounding former Clinton Deputy White House counsel Vince Foster’s death in 1993 “very fishy,” saying the aide had “intimate knowledge” of events surrounding the Clintons.

I don’t bring [Foster] up because I don’t know enough to really discuss it. I will say there are people who continue to bring it up because they think it was absolutely a murder. I don’t do that because I don’t think it’s fair.

Deputy White House counsel Vince Foster was found dead in Fort Marcy Park off the George Washington Parkway in Virginia, outside Washington, D.C., on July 20, 1993.

(h/t The Hill)

Reality

Donald Trump didn’t want to discuss the Foster conspiracy theory… by discussing it? How is that statement not dishonest?

Vince Foster’s death in 1993 was concluded to have been a suicide by inquiries/investigations conducted by the United States Park Police, the Department of Justice, the FBI, the United States Congress, Independent Counsel Robert B. Fiske, CNN, and Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr who was not a fan of the Clintons. The idea that Vincent Foster’s death was anything other than a suicide flies in the face of all available evidence, including Foster’s own suicide note. But yet this never stops wingnut conspiracy sites like WND, Breibart, and The Daily Mail from keeping fiction alive.

This is not the only false or unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that Donald Trump subscribes to. Some examples are:

Trump Promotes Fake Fox News Theory With Fake Photo

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Twitter

Real-estate mogul Donald Trump promoted a fake photo and a conspiracy theory in the middle of his Thursday-morning tweetstorm blasting Fox News and one of the network’s anchors, Megyn Kelly.

Trump tweeted someone’s photo that supposedly shows Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Alwaleed’s sister, and Kelly.

The text on the image stated:

“Most people don’t know that the co-owner of Fox News is Prince Al-Waleed of Saudi Arabia here with his sister and with host Mygan [sic] Kelly. In case you only watch Fox News and you missed it everywhere else. GOOGLE IT!”

(h/t Business Insider)

Reality

We Googled the claim… which yielded multiple fact-checking websites declaring that it was mostly false. Snopes.com reported that the photo was a fabrication and found the original photo of Kelly.

Both Snopes.com and PolitiFact reported that the ownership claim wasn’t true, but the billionaire Saudi prince’s investment company owns a smaller amount of 21st Century Fox.

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