Let’s be honest, conspiracy theories have invaded our political discourse far more than just the odd “Area 51”-esque corker of yesteryear. Today, you can barely keep track of them all, and so I thought it might be interesting to look at a handful I have that might actually be true.
—Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone or may not have killed Kennedy at all. Before he was killed suspiciously the next day, he vehemently denied a role in the Kennedy assassination, even calling himself a patsy. What political assassin have you ever seen that didn’t want credit for a successful assassination? The entire point is to send a message about your worldview.
—Pedophiles seek out the seminary. Sometimes, it may be because they think it’ll cure what’s wrong with them, but (just like nuts who are drawn to mental health) I think the real reason is because it gives them a position of power over their victims. And they also are belonging to an institution that gives them access to children without the accountability most schools have, and the Catholic Church will protect them from charges.
—Melania Trump is a former escort and/or a “Red Sparrow.” We know that Trump loves prostitutes, Playboy bunnies, porn stars, strippers, Club 54 girls, and women he can pay to show him affection. We can’t find much evidence of Melania’s “modeling” work before she met Donald, and Melania is nude or close to it in most of the earliest pictures (just like you would be in an escort catalogue). And Trump has said that the way he got her to date him in the first place was that he would call up different friends and see if they would put her in billboards. So it’s making it sound like the majority of her modeling gigs came after meeting Trump…okay, but where did Trump meet her? According to him, he saw her in a “modeling” catalogue, and then tried to find out who she was. Trump has lied a lot about his past, and so it wouldn’t be totally out of character for him to “massage” this truth: he found her in an escort catalogue. Also, various publications have published insinuations or outright accusals that Melania was an escort, and she has been very, very litigious towards this. It clearly hits a nerve. We haven’t seen her react to anything else in the way she does this allegation, making me even more convinced that it’s true.
Then there’s the less-evidence-based, but “gut feeling” possibility that Melania could very well be a Russian intelligence asset deliberately put into Trump’s orbit. And then there’s the “newer” conspiracy that either of these possibilities were orchestrated by Jeffrey Epstein. Any way you slice it, there doesn’t seem to be a “Meet Cute” love story between Trump and Melania, a woman who has never acted like she can stand to be around him for more than public photo ops.
—Trump did not actually win in 2016. We know that Russia wanted Trump to win. 17 intelligence agencies and various social media networks (FB, Twitter) have said that Russian influence was heavy—their troll farms were lit up with online support of him, and Trump has obviously accepted lots of Russian cash over the years for his various businesses. [When Goldman Sachs labeled him “radioactive” to lend money to, the only place he could find to write him checks was Russia, with American real estate like Trump’s “empire” being a favorite way for shady Russians to launder money.] Maybe they also know the truth about how Trump met Melania or his exact relationship with her, and are using “Kompromat” to influence him in addition to huge amounts of cash. Regardless, Trump was their man in 2016, and Putin personally blamed Hillary Clinton for the revolt against him while she was Secretary of State.
If Russia believes Hillary will be the death knell for them (or at least Putin’s government) and Trump has shown every indication he’ll be in their back pocket (and has certainly lived up–or down–to that promise since then), Russia would have been sufficiently motivated to pull out all the stops to get him into the White House. If you’re with me so far, think about what Russia is capable of: they’ve influenced and manipulated elections all over the globe for decades, they have huge sums of cash that can buy influence, and they can hack anything from power grids to nuclear power plants to major U.S. banks. Would it really be that hard for them to hack a dozen voting machines in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania?
If you believe Russia was sufficiently motivated to influence the election (which is not up for dispute) and you believe Russia has the technological capacities to hack voting machines (which is not up for dispute), then how can you be so confident they didn’t rig an election where the other candidate won by more than 3 million votes? Maybe every poll showed HRC winning, and maybe she won the popular vote by such a huge margin (by far the biggest margin a POTUS has ever won and then lost the electoral college) because Russia used the motive and means we know they possess to hack a few voting machines and swing a mere 77,000 in three states.