From pizzagate to the Parkland students being crisis actors, Donald Trump Jr. has never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like. He’s right there on the fake news bandwagon with his father, tweeting at least 48 times since Trump Sr. took office about fake news, and this isn’t just madness, there’s a method to it, to use social media to grab back the news cycle on any given day when something happens that threatens the Trumps’ interests or the alt-right ideology that they depend upon to survive. Politico:
Joseph Uscinski, a professor at the University of Miami and co-author of “American Conspiracy Theories,” said Trump Jr. and others are using these theories strategically, to direct the national conversation, under the guise of just innocently sharing and spreading stories.
Peddling falsehoods in the aftermath of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland was part of an effort by Trump supporters to “change the playing field” and shift the debate away from gun control, Uscinski said.
“If something happens and they don’t like the narrative, they use a conspiracy theory to change the narrative,” said Uscinski. “This is what was done with Parkland.”
Trump Jr. unhesitatingly endorses the most paranoid commentary around the issues of the day, teeing up the ball for Matt Drudge and Alex Jones to hit.
More recently there was this
Right Wing Watch media researcher Jared Holt said this about Donald Trump Jr.’s propensity for promoting online conspiracy theories.
“Trump Jr.’s interaction with fringe figures from the right-wing social media universe sends a strong message of validation to those communities and gives mainstream oxygen to segments of conservative politics that are largely unmoored from reality,” Holt wrote in an email.
He added: “In a lot of ways, he’s the president’s ambassador to the unhinged underbelly of right-wing politics.”
Junior’s most notable achievement was the ”Deplorables” meme posted on Instagram with himself, Senior and Pepe the Frog. Plus there’s all the retweeting of other dementia that Junior participates in, such as this one
A retweet is an explicit endorsement and with the Trump name attached to it, it gains momentum quickly in the virtual firmament. Trump Junior keeps the right wing fires stoked and the base stirred up at all times, and apparently that’s his job as his father’s P.R. man.
“Empowering conspiracy theorists and fringe voices with an endorsement from the president of the United States’ son will only amplify the ignorant at the expense of everybody else,” warned Kurt Bardella, a former spokesman for the alt-right news site Breitbart News who has since become a Trump critic.
There are two Americas, each one running off of a different information system than the other, and Donald Trump Jr. is the pied piper of paranoia.