No matter how thoroughly Trump’s favorite conspiracy theories are debunked, he sticks with them. Never mind that fact checkers have disproven those theories, or that investigations disprove them, or that the theories have long been given up by more sane people, those theories are Trump’s favorite bits and pieces to repeat whenever he’s cornered.
Disregard the question about Hillary Clinton and the DNC paying the Russian government, since it makes no sense and doesn’t even relate to the Fusion GPS and the dossier produced that links Trump’s campaign to Russian government operatives in order to show the details behind their alleged collusion. That question makes no sense and has no basis in fact, like many of Trump’s theories, but there aren’t even any pieces of the real story that might determine where Trump could have even dreamed it up.
Instead, there are two other favorite Trump theories in his tweets that have been floated around the right-wing conspiracy theory crowd and that have been disproven but remain part of their narrative. The first is that it was the Fusion GPS dossier, compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, that was used to gain a FISA warrant to spy on Trump’s campaign and began the entire investigation into Trump’s possible ties to Russia during the presidential campaign.
Repeatedly, that story has been debunked. Fusion GPS says that their reports to American intelligence agencies was only taken seriously because other intelligence agencies in friendly allied countries had already passed information indicating that Trump’s campaign may have been working with Russia. An Australian diplomat reported to the FBI long before anyone knew that a dossier existed that a member of Trump’s campaign, George Papadopolous, had too much to drink at a gathering and bragged about the alleged collusion, which the diplomat then told the FBI. The dossier was not used to begin the investigation.
There’s yet a second debunked conspiracy theory in Trump’s tweets, as well. According to Trump and the news sites he likes to follow (Fox News, The Daily Caller, Breitbart, and The Gateway Pundit), Hillary Clinton and the DNC smashed their internet servers rather than allow Russian hacks of their emails to be investigated by the FBI. It adds an aura of deep, dark mystery around the DNC as well as Hillary Clinton, and indicates that there were things they needed to hide to protect their criminal and dangerous organization.
Again, this is a theory already proven to be untrue. PolitiFact rated the story false. Snopes rated the story false. James Comey stated publicly that the servers had been investigated by a trusted independent firm who supplied their findings to the FBI. That doesn’t fit into Trump’s redirection, though, so it’s a theory that has held on despite proof that it isn’t true.
Twitter responded Trump’s tweets immediately, and that response can be seen below:
Featured image via Getty/Pool
