Fringe conspiracy talking points migrated directly into a presidential campaign via its candidate

Evidence

Jones and Trump were in fact longtime mutual fans. After announcing his run, candidate Trump made one of his first media appearances on Jones’s show, appearing via Skype from Trump Tower. Jones endorsed him early and often and, in turn, many of the radio host’s favorite talking points started turning up in Trump’s speeches. Jones began darkly predicting that the elections would be “rigged” in Clinton’s favor, a claim that Trump quickly made a central tenet of the latter days of his campaign. At the end of September, Jones began predicting that Clinton would be on performance-enhancing drugs of some kind during the presidential debates; by October, Trump was implying that, too, and demanding that Clinton be drug tested. — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 20

Categorization

• XREF: Connectable to vault claims about Christian nationalism and how shared epistemic style crosses partisan mainstreaming; also to the reader’s core thesis on conspiracy-to-power pipelines. — connects to: Presidential politics mainstreamed conspiracy theory speech — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 449; Once-fringe conspiracies can enter mainstream political discourse en masse — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 44; Presidential office converts personal conspiracism into publicly authoritative claims — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 169 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Presidential politics mainstreamed conspiracy theory speech #corroborates (0.85) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 449
• Once-fringe conspiracies can enter mainstream political discourse en masse #expands (0.80) — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 44
• Presidential office converts personal conspiracism into publicly authoritative claims #expands (0.75) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 169
• Trump brought conspiratorial claims into the White House presidency itself #expands (0.75) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 157