How do you silence a conspiracy theory?

The Star

2 days ago

AS a presidential candidate, Donald Trump loved a conspiracy theory.
He started his political career by stoking the lie that then president Barack Obama was not born in the United States.
By 2024, he complained, falsely, that non-citizens would vote in the November election and throw the result to Democrats.
He declared on a debate stage that immigrants in Ohio were eating people's pets.
He promised to release government files on Sept 11 and the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and told Fox News that 'I guess I would' release the government's files on Jeffrey Epstein, too.
As president, though, he's finding out that it's a whole lot easier to start a conspiracy theory than it is to put one to rest.
That was the challenge facing Trump, as his political supporters staged an open revolt over his administration's decision not to release further materials about Epstein, a convicted sex offender who hobnobbed with the global elite before he died by suicide in prison in 2019.
Putting the genie back in the bottle
They could be forgiven for expecting more details. Trump installed two vocal Epstein conspiracy theorists and right-wing media personalities, Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, to run the FBI after both men spent years telling their audiences there really was a there there.
This spring, Attorney General Pam Bondi promised big revelations about the case that have come to nothing.
It turns out, though, it is a whole lot easier to be a conspiracy theorist when you're not president, you don't control both houses of Congress, and you haven't handpicked the leaders of the nation's premier investigative agencies.
Trump had tried to put the genie back in the bottle. He admonished a reporter for asking about the matter at a recent Cabinet meeting – 'Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?' – and then, over last weekend, told off his followers, in a lengthy social media post.
'What's going on with my 'boys' and, in some cases, 'gals?'' Trump asked, urging them to 'not waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.'
On his podcast, however, Steve Bannon, an influential former Trump adviser, suggested that the furore wasn't going anywhere – and that it posed a real political risk for Trump.
'You're going to lose 10% of the MAGA movement,' he said, warning that this could cost Republicans dozens of House seats in the midterm elections next year.
The problem with a conspiracy theory is, of course, the more you talk about it, the more interest people take in it.
The whole thing is born of distrust – so who wants to listen to someone telling them there's nothing to see, even if that someone is Trump himself?
This is not usually a problem for Trump and his allies. The president has reaped political gains from many a conspiracy theory without having to offer up proof for any of them. And rarely has he needed to squelch one he or his allies stoked.
Years of theories
Trump has spent years railing about what he describes, without evidence, as systemic fraud in the 2020 election — a fiction that gave his supporters a grievance to rally around and insulated him from having to reckon with his electoral vulnerabilities or admit defeat.
His claims about non-citizens voting have shaped executive orders and legislation in Congress though he never came up with proof that it happens on a significant scale.
And he echoed unproved claims about Social Security fraud as Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency riffled through the department's data this year.
At times, members of the Trump administration have laboured to show that they were trying.
In late May, Bongino said on the social platform X that the FBI was redoubling its investigations into several enduring Washington mysteries, including the pipe bombs found in Washington on Jan 6, 2021, the cocaine found at the White House in 2023 and the enduring question of who leaked the Supreme Court decision in the Dobbs case, which ultimately overturned the constitutional right to abortion.
'I try to read as much of your feedback as possible but the workday is busy, and my office is a SCIF with limited phone access,' Bongino said, using the official acronym for the secure area – or 'sensitive compartmented information facility' – where he works.
Still, the Epstein matter is a rare instance in which the Trump administration has actually been expected to offer proof of a conspiracy theory that moves the president's followers.
That might be why, in his social media post last Saturday, Trump sought to divert their attention back to a conspiracy theory he's never had to prove.
'The 2020 Election was Rigged and Stolen, and they tried to do the same thing in 2024,' Trump wrote, promising that Bondi, his attorney general, was 'looking into' that – 'and much more.' — ©2025 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.