The Conspiracy Theory That Flopped: Merchan Sentencing Trump To 4 Years Prison, Keeping Him From WH

It must be a real bummer to have a conspiracy theory all laid out, and a wrenchingly emotional one at that, and then watch it go nowhere. In right-wing media, billions of dollars have been made from conspiracy theory. It is the coin of the realm. That’s the awfulness of the world that we live in. Andrew Breitbart was the progenitor of this new wave of fact-free, emotionally laden *journalism.* Fox News, under Roger Ailes, was a more legitimate version of Breitbart. They snuck the CT in between the lines at first.

There was a market for CT, but it’s not like Breitbart or even Fox News went viral — not until the Father Of All Lies, Donald Trump, appeared on the political scene. Trump began his political career lying like a rug and has never once stopped. John Barron’s and David Dennison’s skill set and personas were co-opted to politics. And an entire industry of right-wing propaganda sprouted up, Towers of Babel rising from the desert overnight, taking over the airwaves and the internet.

And as to social media? You saw how Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook got played by the Russians during the 2016 election and how he had to explain it to Congress. Facebook and Twitter put extra guardrails up and then Elon Musk bought Twitter. And all the guardrails came down. Musk altered the algorithm to favor right-wing propaganda and between Musk doing that, and the Russians paying right-wing influencers, we live in a cesspool of disinformation and its cousin, defamation. Here is Jack Posobiec trying to make a buck with a great sounding conspiracy theory. I’m sure he’s miserable that it’s falling on its ass. You see what potential it has.

I think the CN drops his revenue somewhat. I don't know the details and don't really care.

Still, the fact that he got anything at all for spreading misinformation is the basic absurdity of this platform under King Leon.

— Mike Morton (@TheMikeMorton) January 4, 2025

You see the obvious here. It’s all-caps hysteria and the idea is to hook the MAGA reader into, “OMG, that awful leftie judge could sentence Trump to prison and he’ll rot in a cell for four years and not go back to Washington, OMFG, what do we do now?” And the answer will always be: “Send X amount of $$$ to so and so.”

Don’t think for one nano second that if Posobiec or any of them could find a way for this to get traction that they wouldn’t be playing it to the hilt. They would. And Fox News would jump on board, knowing that it was pure hyperbole and bullshit, but if it could make an advertising buck, fine.

This is unfortunately the legacy that Trump created and the one that he will leave behind, completely apart from whatever he manages to screw up in Washington that will end up in the history books.

Conspiracy theory sites existed before Trump. There is a market for telling people the earth is flat or the continents on the map do not reflect the actual land mass of the world, or the Holocaust never happened, or that man never went to the moon but some guys in space suits just jumped up and down in the Nevada desert and pretended to be weightless, while a camera slowed down their jumps and made it appear that way.

There’s always going to be a market for this claptrap because the world is filled with lazy people who would rather listen to a fairy tale about how the world is or what has happened in it, than simply study history and science and find out how things really work and how they came to be.

Lies are Trump’s legacy. Deception and falsehood and the promulgation and broadcasting of same, throughout all manner of media, are Trump’s bequeathment. The conspiracy theorists on social media platforms and their own podcasts are Trump’s high priests and falsehood is their dogma.

Lies pay. Entertaining lies pay bigly and that is how Trump has conducted his entire life. He comes up with a gimmick to make money, whether it’s an airline, steaks, vodka, you name it. And then it flops and he starts over.

But the United States government is a bit big to flop — not that it can’t. We have seen many empires perish in the history of the world. This one might also.

Some honesty in this last tweet. We’re looking at just that, a crime spree. Trump 2.0 is going to be the biggest white collar ongoing crime, or compilation of associated crimes, in the history of the world. I wish that statement was conspiracy theory. Alas, it’s simply a description of what will be, logically extrapolated from what has been. You don’t need to be Nostradamus to call this shot.

Trump isn’t going to change his spots. His henchmen aren’t. If anything, they’re all going to get worse. It’s time to start thinking about best case and worst case scenarios. That’s necessary because we know we are going to get damaged as a country and as a culture. That’s a no brainer. The only question is how badly? Will the public coffers merely be pillaged, as Trump and his billionaire buddies run off with our loot, or will we all be studying how to speak Russian because that’s the language of our overlords?

Nothing is outside the realm of possibility.

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