All posts tagged "Conspiracy Theories"

Right-wing influencers were spreading conspiracy theories about the rat-borne illness that has left three luxury cruise ship passengers dead, according to reports on Thursday.

Experts from the World Health Organization have said that the hantavirus outbreak on MV Hondius is being transmitted human-to-human and that MAGA social media accounts are now suggesting the virus was purposefully introduced to the passengers, The Daily Beast reported. The ship has been stranded off Cape Verde throughout the week but is now back to sailing with the plan to disembark passengers in the Canary Islands starting on Monday. Eight confirmed cases have been connected to the cruise, prompting medical evacuations in South Africa, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.

MAGA followers were sharing their unfounded claims....

Conspiracy theories — including claims that Barron Trump is a time traveler or that 11 dead scientists were killed by aliens — distract Americans from real issues, an analyst wrote Tuesday.

The Guardian's Arwa Mahdawi suggested that President Donald Trump, who once led the "birther" conspiracy that former President Barack Obama was not born in the United States despite the fact that Obama was born in Hawaii, has pushed forward other speculations and baseless ideas.

"Since then, Trump has fanned the flames of various other bonkers ideas," Mahdawi wrote. "The conspiracy theory du jour being that there is a coordinated plot, possibly involving UFOs, behind the disappearances and deaths of at least 11 US scientists linked to nuclear and space research programmes. Trump recently called the situation 'pretty serious stuff.' The House Oversight Committee chair, James Comer, also went on Fox & Friends to warn that 'something sinister could be happening'. Now the House Oversight Committee is looking into 'a possible sinister connection between the deaths and disappearances', and the FBI might get involved."...

President Donald Trump's MAGA supporters have started to turn on him, using his affinity for conspiracy theories to flip the script, a columnist reported on Friday.

Matt Lewis, an opinion contributor for The Hill, revealed how Trump's long-time use of 'extreme conclusions,' including his firm belief that the 2020 election was stolen, his claims that former President Barack Obama was not born in America (although Obama was born in Hawaii), and his belief that Haitian immigrants living in Ohio were eating cats and dogs, was haunting him.

"Regardless, we have entered a new and possibly ironic phase of the timeline: Trump is finally discovering what it’s like to be on the losing end of a conspiracy theory," Lewis wrote....

WASHINGTON — On Capitol Hill, questions keep mounting about Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s 2020 election investigation and whether she’s using foreign surveillance officers and resources on U.S. soil.

Democrats demanding answers about why DNI Gabbard was present for the hugely controversial FBI raid on an election office in Fulton County, Georgia last month are eager to grill her when she publicly testifies before the Senate intelligence Committee in March.

“It raises serious questions, because it would be a violation, in some cases, of laws if our foreign intelligence service was operating in the United States,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) told Raw Story on Capitol Hill. ...

On Jan. 6, 2021, author and ethnographer Noelle Cook drove to Washington, D.C. On Capitol Hill, she was shocked to come upon a scene of people smashed against the walls of Congress and emergency responders taking away the body of Ashli Babbitt, the Air Force veteran who was shot dead by police as she attempted to crawl through a broken window and into the Speaker’s Lobby, outside the House chamber.

Cook had not shown up to take part in the “Stop the Steal” rally, which ended in the storming of the U.S. Capitol by rioters who believed Donald Trump’s lie that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election.

As a researcher and amateur photographer, Cook thought the rally might inspire a project. ...

Well after President Donald Trump pardoned the roughly 1,500 defendants arrested, charged and/or convicted as part of the January 6 2021 siege of the U.S. Capitol, the person who left pipe bombs outside the headquarters of the Democratic and Republican National Committee offices remained at large. But even after an arrest has been made in the case, conspiracy theories about the alleged pipe bomber continue to run rampant.

In a Monday article for The Bulwark, writer Will Sommer observed that conspiracy theories about the January 6 attempted pipe bombing were being trafficked even by people who are now members of the Trump administration: FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino alleged in a January 2025 episode of his podcast (prior to his appointment) that the would-be bomber was part of an "inside job."

However, the Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced that it had made an arrest in the case, and identified 30 year-old Virginia resident Brian Cole Jr. as the suspect. Cole told investigators that he believed Trump's claims that the 2020 election was "stolen," even though President Joe Biden was certified as the winner of both the popular vote and the Electoral College. But despite the DOJ naming a suspect, Sommer pointed out that MAGA was still not satisfied and convinced something was still amiss....