Perhaps no modern politician has done more to mainstream conspiracy theories than President Donald Trump.
After effectively launching his career in Republican politics with false “birther” claims about then-President Barack Obama, Trump has spent a decade lobbying for all kinds of wild theories, such as “stolen” the 2020 election, Haitian immigrants eating people’s pets, and the like. He also cultivated allies who helped him push those principles, often to convince many of his supporters.
But the monster Trump helped create may now be coming for him.
Relatively few high-profile Trump allies have turned on him on the Iran war and other issues, but those who have turned come disproportionately from the conspiratorial ranks of Trump’s followers. We’re talking about people like Marjorie Taylor Green, Tucker Carlson and various other influencers.
Lately, they’ve increasingly been feeding their audience anti-Trump conspiracy theories.
One thing that has recently been discovered is that there is something suspicious about the 2024 assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania – suggesting it may have been staged. Other theories put the president in Israel’s sights or even “compromise” in some other way; Trump and his administration’s loyalty to Republicans is questionable; And that too may be the Antichrist.
Of course, there is no real evidence of any actual foul play. But worryingly for Trump, some of these theories seem to be gaining some traction, at least on social media.
The Butler principles are now the most prevalent – although they are often couched in ask-the-questions framing (a tactic Trump has personally used before).
Joe Kent, who recently resigned as the Trump administration’s counterterrorism chief, citing the Iran war, told Carlson that Butler’s investigation was suspiciously suppressed.
Green, a former GOP congresswoman from Georgia, said in a social media post on Sunday that she had not called Butler a “thug”: “But there are a lot of questions that deserve public answers.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene wears a “Trump Was Right About Everything” hat during President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol on March 4, 2025. – Al Drago/Bloomberg/Getty Images/File
Podcaster Joe Rogan has occasionally hinted at such questions, and fellow podcaster Tim Dillon recently said: “I think it was staged.”
Carlson and Candace Owens, meanwhile, have questioned one player in many such conspiracy theories: Israel. (Notably, both have focused extensively on Israel in their commentary and have repeatedly faced accusations of anti-Semitism.) Carlson suggests that Kent may have a point that Butler’s lack of more thorough research shows Israel’s influence in the US government.
Accused would-be murderer Thomas Matthew Crooks left little in the way of a paper trail. But FBI officials under both Trump and former President Joe Biden have concluded that Crooks acted alone.
Other such theories have also been speculatively implicated in Israel, particularly the idea that Trump has compromised or looked at the Jewish state.
Carlson compared Trump to a slave in an interview with Newsmax earlier this month, saying, “I feel sorry for him as I do for all slaves. He’s not free at this moment.”
And on a new show this week, Theo Vaughn, another former Trump-supporting podcaster, suggested that one logical explanation for the Iran war is that Trump was in Israel’s grip.
“I don’t understand,” Vaughan said. “So, yeah, it’s our president, and this **king is freaking out. And it’s sick, and it looks like he’s just been compromised by this dark government over there by Israel. And I don’t know. It’s dark. It’s dark.”
White nationalist Nick Fuentes has detailed an elaborate conspiracy theory in which JD Vance was effectively installed as a vice president to be a tool of powerful forces in the tech industry.
And Fuentes’ comments were posted Friday by former GOP vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin — though Palin insisted they were only meant to highlight the outcry over her role in the tea party movement. (Palin hasn’t turned against Trump, though she has been critical of him on two fronts lately.)
Trump’s decision in late 2015 to appear on Alex Jones’s conspiracy theory-filled show, In Prejudice, was a major statement of intent about Trump’s willingness to ally with conspiracy theorists. But Jones is now wielding such principles against Trump by cutting ties with Iran, accusing Trump on Monday of trying to help Democrats take over his platform Infowars (The Onion, a satirical news site that is working to take on Infowars, is not controlled by the Democratic Party).
And then there’s perhaps the least-sold theory that’s gaining some traction — that Trump might be anti-Trump. In Christian theology, the Antichrist is a person who appears before the second coming of Jesus to deceive people and embodies a false savior.
It was a theory Carlson alluded to recently amid his big break with Trump. And Wired magazine found that some Trump supporters with significant followings are starting to ask questions about it.
Tucker Carlson attends an event at the White House in January. – Kevin Lamarck/Reuters
It remains to be seen what will happen to those principles on the right. It could be that some sudden Trump skeptics are just freaking out and it will all subside.
But it’s not hard to see some of them gaining real purchase, especially since the theories involve a familiar perpetrator (Israel) and a familiar set of circumstances that often give rise to such theories (attempted murder).
Trump targets have proven very successful in spreading such theories in the past, including Jones, Owens and Carlson. And the theories are also gaining some traction among a class of podcasters — people like Dylan and Vaughan — who were valued Trump supporters in part because they spoke to people who were less politically engaged and perhaps more easily influenced.
Republican Party leaders have largely stood by in recent months as anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiment has grown in their ranks, particularly among younger Republicans. And they’ve often tried to ignore the metastasizing conspiracy theories about Charlie Kirk’s murder, which Owens has pushed most forcefully.
But while they may wish they’d pushed back more forcefully, those sensitivities could now feed into conspiracy theories involving Trump — aided by recently ousted allies.
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