The Conspiracy Theory Problem

The current regime has spun so many lies that we all feel dirty when we question something that looks fishy

I’ve never been a conspiracy guy, but I’ll admit they can be fun. When I was a young adult, most everyone’s favorite involved an international cabal consisting of people better off than the rest of us called the Trilateral Commission. I never bought into it, but I loved reading about it.

Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash

According to the conspiracy theory, the Trilateral Commission ran the world. The question wasn’t which world leader was part of the Trilateral Commission. The question was who wasn’t.

Conspiracy theories surrounding it were bolstered by the fact that the thing actually existed. In fact, it still does, even if the excitement that once surrounded it has mostly died off.

The Trilateral Commission was founded in 1973 by one of the world’s oligarchs at the time, David Rockefeller, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former national security advisor under Jimmy Carter, along with a group of influential private citizens from around the world. This sharing of hands alone raised eyebrows. The organization was filled with folks from both parties. This, too, got people chattering. The phrase “world government” echoed through the beer glasses that made up the rumor-dissemination networks of those days.

It didn’t help matters that the organization never had many members. Usually around 400 or so. This raised suspicions because its membership consisted of an almost impossible class to be a part of.

Its mission statement was not earth-shattering or controversial. It began with an acknowledgement that of the two main foreign policy philosophies of its time, power politics was out, and interdependence was in.¹ By itself, the organization’s opening statement would not set off alarm bells:²

“Growing interdependence is a fact of life of the contemporary world. It transcends and influences national systems... While it is important to develop greater cooperation among all the countries of the world, Japan, Western Europe, and North America, in view of their great weight in the world economy and their massive relations with one another, bear a special responsibility for developing effective cooperation, both in their own interests and in those of the rest of the world.”

What stoked conspiracy theories was its membership, which was a who’s who of international elites, from Jimmy Carter to a deputy director of the CIA and enough international CEOs to cause a small riot if they were to appear together chumming with someone like Zohran Mamdani.

The Trilateral Commission still exists, presumably mostly as a quiet international organization devoted to facilitating free trade, but the rumors and fiction surrounding it have largely disappeared.

Then came Trump

When Trump 1.0 descended upon us with its toxic brimstone, so did a new class of conspiracy theories. Most of us have heard the worst of them by now. For example: Pizzagate, in which Hillary Clinton held captive children in pizza ovens or some such. I’ve never been much of a student of Pizzagate, so I may have the details wrong.

Trump himself has promoted dozens of conspiracy theories, including one that claimed Obama was born in Kenya. The worst of his promoted conspiracies, as we all know, led to a riot on January 6, 2021, that resulted in the deaths of several law enforcement officers and a never-ending battle against the certified results of the 2020 elections. 50+ failed lawsuits on his behalf never silenced the election deniers.

And now they control the levers of power.

One result is that it becomes nearly impossible for groups who find problems with the 2024 elections, groups such as This Will Hold, to gain any traction, because Trump was the boy in diapers who cried wolf, thus eroding confidence in any evidence of well-researched voting discrepancies and ballot tampering.

Any attempt to accuse Republicans of election trickery during the midterms will be met by the same fate. Democrats called Trump and his minions out on their false claims of election fraud, easily defeated him in dozens of different courthouses, and will thus face immediate pushback when they try to stop Republicans from trying to throw the midterm elections.

You don’t need to be convinced by the reams of data the “This Will Hold” folks present to understand how dangerous it is to discount everyone who points out something looking fishy.

The same is true with the current kerfuffle over the guy who crashed Trump’s dinner party in Washington, D.C., last Sunday night.

According to Newsguard, social media posts calling the incident “staged” reached 80 million views.³

It makes sense, on the surface, to immediately want to debunk this kind of stuff. For one thing, it reeks of QAnon. In fact, Newsguard derisively calls those who promote the “staged” theory “BlueAnon.”

The problem here, though, given the dearth of information about the event, the fact that the Justice Department is currently headed by Trump’s personal attorney, and the fact that the current occupant of the Oval Office is a serial liar, convicted criminal, thief, con man, and, according to reams of evidence, was at least at one time a prolific pedophile, dismissing inquiries one day after the event occurs is more dangerous than any conspiracy theory that pops up.

Besides, this regime lost its right to dismiss conspiracy theories ten years ago, but especially after January 6. Trump’s devotion to conspiracy theories is the reason that the far-right press is the 2026 version of the Weekly World News.

So when people question why a mild-mannered, and apparently troubled, software engineer was carrying multiple knives through a well-protected entrance and easily scooted past several Secret Service agents while holding a long gun in his hand, I think it’s fair to ask questions. Who was he going to use all those knives on? Would he know how to use one in combat against elite law enforcement personnel?

When we are told that he had the presence of mind to send out a bizarre “manifesto” to his loved ones ten minutes before confronting Secret Service agents, who are probably among the most lethal armed services personnel in the world, it really is okay to scratch our heads and wonder a bit.

When a well-trained Secret Service agent shoots five times⁴ at the mild-mannered engineer and misses, it’s okay to raise a red flag without Newsguard telling us to lower the flag less than 24 hours after the incident takes place. Sorry, Newsguard, that’s a white flag.

Especially when you consider that the motives for a staged event like this are not in question. Distraction from Iran, which in turn was a distraction from the Epstein Files, to name just two.

The chances are extremely high that the party crasher was simply a kook. It would not be easy for this regime to pull off a staged event like an assassination scare because these morons can’t even really keep their bathroom habits secret.

But what if it was staged? Unlikely? Yes. But how will we know if we simply accept what the Trump propaganda machine tells us with no inquiry, no curiosity, no questions?

Thanks for reading!

Footnotes

1. Power politics, pushed hard by a fella named Hans Morgenthau (who called it realism), was much like it sounds: The idea was that nations tend to want to extend their power through one or more forms of imperialism, including the subtle but possibly most effective kind, cultural imperialism. War was considered a legitimate form of diplomacy by some of its practitioners.

Interdependence was promoted most actively by Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, who argued that nations that become economically interdependent tend to eschew war as a means to advance their interests. Today, we see interdependence in action in the China-U.S. relationship, where a war would result in a form of mutually assured destruction involving not nukes, but broken supply chains and resource deprivation.

2. Contributors. “Non-Governmental, Non-Partisan Discussion Group Founded by David Rockefeller in July 1973, to Foster Closer Cooperation among North America, Western Europe, and Japan.” Wikipedia.org. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., November 23, 2002. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilateral_Commission.

3. ‘Staged’ Shooting Claims Hit 80 Million Views — and Counting

4. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/04/27/us/white-house-dinner-trump-shooting/3c11577e-ce29-5847-a768-5cf1ea79e10b