Please Advise! What’s with the Trump Conspiracies?

[Editor’s note: Steve Burgess is an accredited spin doctor with a PhD in Centrifugal Rhetoric from the University of SASE, situated on the lovely campus of PO Box 7650, Cayman Islands. In this space he dispenses PR advice to politicians, the rich and famous, the troubled and well-heeled, the wealthy and gullible.]

Dear Dr. Steve,

In the aftermath of Saturday's assassination attempt against Donald Trump, two of the trending phrases on X were “Staged” and “Reichstag.”

Is everything about conspiracies now?

Signed,

Moon Man

Dear MM,

The attempt on Donald Trump's life had to be an exquisite dilemma for the online conspiracy gang, a sort of Sophie's Choice for Republican basement trolls. Their political messiah had been violently attacked and narrowly escaped death.

And their typing hands were tied — they could hardly accuse their own boss of a nefarious scheme. They were like starving men staring through the windows of a five-star restaurant. So many connections to make, so many wild stories to spin, so many false flags to wave. Theories, theories, everywhere, and not a plot to link.

There was of course absolutely no reason to believe the assassination attempt was faked — a man died, two others were critically wounded, and the shooter himself killed. But that has never stopped paranoia promulgators before. And you had to admit that the answer to the old question, Cui bono? (who benefits?), was most definitely Donald Trump.

A photo of a bloodied Trump with his fist in the air, taken by Evan Vucci, was online within minutes of the shooting. As the Washington Post's Philip Kennicott wrote, “Vucci’s photo will create a reality more real than reality, transforming the chaos and messiness of a few moments of peril onstage in Pennsylvania into a surpassing icon of Trump’s courage, resolve and heroism.”

It was just too perfect to be true. No wonder the Reichstag fire and Hitler’s clever use of it to extend his powers immediately surfaced on social media. Right-wing conspiracy theorists must have been like dogs with biscuits balanced on their noses, looking balefully at the scrumptious treat but not allowed to eat.

But if Republicans couldn't accuse Trump of plotting, they could of course accuse Joe Biden. And here we saw that the practice of insane speculation has moved from the sweaty troll farms and shabby basements directly into the race to be Trump's vice-president.

Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance quickly tweeted that Biden's campaign rhetoric “led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination.” Vance, author of the acclaimed book Hillbilly Elegy turned bomb-throwing Trump veep, is a marvel of nature — a butterfly who has magically transformed into a worm. No one will ever have to make a biographical movie about Vance. Just take any film version of A Christmas Carol starring Ebenezer Scrooge and run it backwards.

Republican Congressperson Marjorie Taylor Greene made similar remarks, but in her case it hits differently — any statement from Greene simply invokes wonder that this laboratory experiment is capable of human speech. They are both part and parcel of a Republican party that has taken the old U.S. army slogan, “Be the best that you can be,” and flipped it. Today's GOP is one long audition for the lead role in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Biden responded admirably, with a speech decrying political violence of all kinds and saying that ballots must decide elections. An important point, but it leaves unanswered the question of what determines those ballot results. Will American voters remember all the things Trump has advocated? Will they muse on his own use of and advocacy for political violence? Will they take note that his pet Judge Aileen Cannon, like the Supreme Court before her, took aim at the rule of law this week and did not miss? Will a spontaneous photo op weigh more heavily than the mountain of sewage that constitutes Trump's public record?

A nation that elected a reality show huckster to the White House despite the absence of any discernible virtue, not a single, stale crumb of human decency, is not a democratic body to be trusted to keep such things in perspective. In the age of Trump, Vance, Greene, et al, a heroic tableau on the cover of Time could fill the void left by the absence of a human soul.