I’ve reached the inescapable conclusion that Republicans are terrible at concocting conspiracy theories.
Their latest — claiming that a nefarious “secret society” in the Federal Bureau of Investigation is working to bring down President Donald Trump — has crumbled under the weight of its own stupidity, joining the shards of conspiracies past: Barack Obama’s birth certificate is fake; Hillary Clinton runs a pizza parlor-based child sex ring; the CIA hacked the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 presidential election and made it look like Russians did the hacking.
All were perfectly good conspiracy theories demolished by the existence of provable facts to the contrary that rendered the conspiracies believable only to crazy people and Fox News host Sean Hannity.
Consider this most recent failure.
It began earlier this week when two Republican congressmen — Trey Gowdy and John Ratcliffe — took to Fox News to present a snippet of a text message between an FBI agent and a bureau lawyer that read: “Perhaps this is the first meeting of the secret society.”
The only logical conclusion that can be drawn from a context-free sentence like that is that the nation’s premiere law-enforcement agency is home to a secretive cabal of anti-Trump operatives eager to end Trump's presidency.
The secret society news spread like wildfire across the fever-fields of conservative media. It was now all-but-certain the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was a hoax and the entire FBI was polluted with lib-loving, coup-plotting agents.
The liberal media watchdog Media Matters for America counted more than 100 references to “secret society” during Fox News broadcasts Tuesday and Wednesday.
Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, discussing the text between senior FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page — the two were having an affair at the time — said: “We have an informant talking about a group that was holding secret meetings off-site. There is so much smoke here. There is so much suspicion.”
The conspiracy grew even more serious when it was revealed that the FBI had lost several months of texts between the agent and the lawyer.
COVERUP! CAN YOU IMAGINE WHAT THOSE MISSING TEXTS MUST SAY?!?!
Even Trump tweeted that the missing messages were “one of the biggest stories in a long time.”
But then things began to unravel. On Wednesday night, ABC News reported the full text message: “Are you even going to give out your calendars? Seems kind of depressing. Maybe it should just be the first meeting of the secret society.”
The calendars, according to the New York Times, referred to gag gifts, calendars featuring Russian President Vladimir Putin shirtless and in manly poses. The secret society was clearly a joke alluding to conspiracies Trump had concocted about the FBI and the Justice Department favoring Clinton.
Even Johnson, the senator who days earlier was all-in on the secret society talk, admitted to CNN that the reference might have been in jest: “It’s a real possibility.”
And the missing text messages? Oh, they found those. Turns out there was a widespread glitch that affected thousands of FBI phones. The Justice Department’s inspector general informed the Senate that the messages were recovered this week.
Just like that, a conspiracy theory that was heard and read by millions upon millions of people went POOF!
It’s a shame, really. Conspiracies theories are great fun. And I happen to be very good at creating them — one I laid out in an old column alleged that an army of rhino warriors are being bred in Trump Tower in Chicago, and it has NEVER been disproved. So allow me to help my conservative friends.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...fbi-secret-society-huppke-20180125-story.html
Go to the link for the alien connection. Worth the trip.
Their latest — claiming that a nefarious “secret society” in the Federal Bureau of Investigation is working to bring down President Donald Trump — has crumbled under the weight of its own stupidity, joining the shards of conspiracies past: Barack Obama’s birth certificate is fake; Hillary Clinton runs a pizza parlor-based child sex ring; the CIA hacked the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 presidential election and made it look like Russians did the hacking.
All were perfectly good conspiracy theories demolished by the existence of provable facts to the contrary that rendered the conspiracies believable only to crazy people and Fox News host Sean Hannity.
Consider this most recent failure.
It began earlier this week when two Republican congressmen — Trey Gowdy and John Ratcliffe — took to Fox News to present a snippet of a text message between an FBI agent and a bureau lawyer that read: “Perhaps this is the first meeting of the secret society.”
The only logical conclusion that can be drawn from a context-free sentence like that is that the nation’s premiere law-enforcement agency is home to a secretive cabal of anti-Trump operatives eager to end Trump's presidency.
The secret society news spread like wildfire across the fever-fields of conservative media. It was now all-but-certain the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was a hoax and the entire FBI was polluted with lib-loving, coup-plotting agents.
The liberal media watchdog Media Matters for America counted more than 100 references to “secret society” during Fox News broadcasts Tuesday and Wednesday.
Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, discussing the text between senior FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page — the two were having an affair at the time — said: “We have an informant talking about a group that was holding secret meetings off-site. There is so much smoke here. There is so much suspicion.”
The conspiracy grew even more serious when it was revealed that the FBI had lost several months of texts between the agent and the lawyer.
COVERUP! CAN YOU IMAGINE WHAT THOSE MISSING TEXTS MUST SAY?!?!
Even Trump tweeted that the missing messages were “one of the biggest stories in a long time.”
But then things began to unravel. On Wednesday night, ABC News reported the full text message: “Are you even going to give out your calendars? Seems kind of depressing. Maybe it should just be the first meeting of the secret society.”
The calendars, according to the New York Times, referred to gag gifts, calendars featuring Russian President Vladimir Putin shirtless and in manly poses. The secret society was clearly a joke alluding to conspiracies Trump had concocted about the FBI and the Justice Department favoring Clinton.
Even Johnson, the senator who days earlier was all-in on the secret society talk, admitted to CNN that the reference might have been in jest: “It’s a real possibility.”
And the missing text messages? Oh, they found those. Turns out there was a widespread glitch that affected thousands of FBI phones. The Justice Department’s inspector general informed the Senate that the messages were recovered this week.
Just like that, a conspiracy theory that was heard and read by millions upon millions of people went POOF!
It’s a shame, really. Conspiracies theories are great fun. And I happen to be very good at creating them — one I laid out in an old column alleged that an army of rhino warriors are being bred in Trump Tower in Chicago, and it has NEVER been disproved. So allow me to help my conservative friends.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...fbi-secret-society-huppke-20180125-story.html
Go to the link for the alien connection. Worth the trip.