President Donald Trump relied on conspiracy theorists to win his re-election, CNN data analyst Harry Enten told anchor Sara Sidner Tuesday — and now that he is in charge of releasing the "Epstein files," it's blowing up in his face.
"Let's talk about 2020 for Harris versus Trump margin, right?" said Enten. "QAnon believers. Look at this margin that Donald Trump built up among QAnon believers. He won them by 61 points, or he was at least leading amongst them by 61 points back during the 2024 campaign.
" ... Donald Trump would not have won the presidency in 2024 if it were not for the backing of QAnon believers. That is a bottom line. That is a true statement that is in the polling data."
"I'm curious what you saw in the primary and how they played a role in that as well," said Sidner.
"So, you know ... it's not just QAnon conspiracy theory in which Donald Trump has swum in those waters," said Enten. For example, he added, Trump only won 16 percent of voters who accepted the legitimacy of the 2020 election, but overwhelmingly won voters who believed it was rigged."
Even going back to 2016, conspiracy theorist beliefs were a massive indicator of Trump support, Enten continued.
"What was one of the big foundational beliefs of how Donald Trump rose up within the Republican ranks?" he said. "It was pushing the conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States of America. So choice for 2016 GOP nominee by belief that Obama was born in the U.S. Look, Donald Trump, back in September of 2015 was only pulling 27 percent of that vote. But look at this. If you believe that Barack Obama was foreign-born, he was getting 51 percent of that vote."
But over the last few days, Trump has been hammered by his supporters for backing off a conspiracy theory he'd previously promoted. MAGA is furious after Trump Department of Justice declared there was no client list of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
A widely held theory is that there is a list of powerful people who were associated with the disgraced billionaire. Trump current denial of that has caused major blowback for him.
"So the bottom line is Donald Trump from the very beginning has been pushing conspiracy theories over and over and over again, and he has benefited from them historically," Enten concluded. "And now, finally! It's coming back to actually bite him."
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