When Donald Trump is a full on birther promoting this racist conspiracy theory.
He goes to Las Vegas.
Mitt Romney does and accepts Trump's endorsement, hugs him, says how excited he is, and praises Trump. So here is good old decent Mitt Romney validating Donald Trump, the racist conspiracy theorist. So yes, Mitt, it was always there, and yes you helped.
I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea.
I served in the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years, living undercover all around the.
World, and in my thirty three years with the CIA, I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Although we don't usually look at it this way, we created conspiracies.
In our operations. We got people to believe things that weren't true.
Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the news almost every day.
We'll break them down for you to determine whether they could be real or whether we're being manipulated.
Welcome to Mission Implausible.
All right, guys, my new favorite show with slow horses. Have you watched slow horses?
I love slow horses.
I'm suing them though you are, Yeah, because it's about a you know, incompetent older intelligence officers and are like, that's.
Clearly why that's my life story they're talking about.
If you haven't seen it, I mean you guys have, But it's about a group of sort of failed intelligence officers who aren't fired there.
It could be genre. It's interesting.
It came from a writer who has no experience in intelligence, and it's interested Like slow Horses comes up, but it's not realistic. But the sort of painful bureaucratic stuff that happens in there does feel realistic, even though the fact that people are getting shot on the streets of London doesn't.
I mean that it does give an impression of a lot of choices happen because of like higher ups making political moves and bureaucratic sleeping with.
Each other and trying to screw each other.
So let's get into conspiracy theories and who entertains them in our politics and why.
We've spoken some about how conspiracies have started to infect our poll politics. We've spoken also about how foreign enemies are weaponizing conspiracies, and so I think we should dig into how specifically they're being used in the political system.
Right now, this has been a big issue within journalism. We call it both sideism, where whatever the issue is, you know, if someone's saying climate change is real, we have to find someone who says climate change isn't real. It's really hard for journalists when there really is not
both sides, certainly not too equal sides. So it's not to say no democrat at all has ever thought of a conspiracy theory, you know, because there's lots of them, but clearly as a tool of power, a tool of influence, Republicans and Republican leaning media is just way over indexed. So I think it would be a disservice to the truth to pretend this is some kind of bipartisan issue right now.
So today I want to welcome David Korn. David's a prolific journalist and author. He's presently the Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones magazine, and he's written about conspiration to see some real some not in books and articles for decades, everything from the CIA to JFK assassination, the Iraq invasion, Trump and Russia.
It was really really great to have you here.
Good to do with you, guys.
So we want to talk a little bit about conspiracies taking over our political space. Conspiracies have always seemed to have been in politics, but it seems to be an increasing problem. The world's richest man is now a conspiracy theorist, and one of our political parties relies on conspiracies to keep their followers angry and confused. And it seems like now they're not even doing just to attract voters, because more and more actual conspiracy theorists themselves are getting elected.
So the question really is why Republicans, more than Democrats, at least at this point, seem to embrace conspiracy theories.
That's a really good question. I wrote a book came out last year that it's called American Psychosis, historical investigation of how the Republican Party went crazy. And it's been very easy for us to focus on what's happened the last couple of years with Donald Trump, who rose to power as a conspiracy theorist pushing the racist birth conspiracy
theory about Barack Obama. Correct, but this is very similar to the nineteen fifties when the Republican Party was almost destroyed at the end of World War Two because they'd been isolationist and it had been pro business during the depression, it really had no standing. It grasped this new conspiracy theory, which was McCarthyism, that the Democrats and even Republicans were
doing the bidding of the Soviet Union. And McCarthy even accused George C. Marshall, who was Eisenhower's Defense secretary, the guy who helped win the war a few years earlier, he now said that he was a Communist agent in a conspiracy. There's the word right, so immense that it
was almost unfathomable, and the Republican Party rallied around Joe McCarthy. Eisenhower, when he was running for president, wanted to denounce McCarthy, but his advisors talked him out of it, and he hated the guy, but publicly didn't do much to push that off. So there are a lot of reasons why the Republican Party establishment, even though they disparaged McCarthy privately thought he was a charlatan and a drunk, went along with this, And so it's kind of in the DNA
of the party. What we see with Trump and his conspiracy theories is that they're often designed to turn your political opponents or some opposing force into an ultimate evil. It's basically a process of othering. So QAnon democrats aren't bad because of their policies. They're bad because they're killing babies, trafficking and sects in their pedophiles, and they want to create a one world government. It's this notion of the enemy within, which often is the heart of conspiracy theories.
If you go this is what Barry Goward did in nineteen sixty four. He cut a deal with a John Birch society. They were in favor of him because he was a far right candidate. They were paranoid, wackos. They
were McCarthyism on steroids. The leader of the Birches believed that Eisenhower himself had been a Communist agent, and the Communists that infiltrated every pta, every church, every union, every media outlet, and they were responsible for the rise of abstract art, you know, an avant garde theater, and of course we're behind the civil rights movement and the anti war movement. Obviously, they were wackos, and so he brought him into the party and they kind of stayed there.
David, I love the historical precedents on this.
I mean, you could take it back to the Know Nothing Party right eighteen fifties in the United States, where it was the Whigs were claiming that the new Catholic immigrants were at the best of the pope and were taking over.
So what's your sense.
Of the difference between now and something that seems to be a constant in either US politics or in the way human beings, you know, process information.
Instead of those pamphlets that were being handed out with the John Birch Society, we have this free flow of information and you have Donald Trump tweeting a q Andon influencer, Elon Musk doing that and literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people see it instantaneously. Donald Trump's core narrative was conspiracy oriented that people were out to get him, the deep State you are proud members of were out to get him, and everything was a conspiracy against him.
And then he tried to make it about well, that means they're against you as well as voters.
So you've mentioned Trump and I'm trying to reach back. There's been so much he retweeted, so I don't know whether that means he believes it, but he's sort of serving it up to people who want to know what he thinks, but there was a retweet of I think it was that bin Laden was still alive and he was being held by the US government and all the people who were involved in the killing of bin Laden they were all killed. I don't think today anybody believes that.
And yet this was.
Put out if he paid no price for it with the stuff that comes out sometimes fire host wise, do you think people really believe it or is it almost sort of like a nihilism you can believe anything and nothing at the same time.
That's a really good question, you know. I did this book with Mike Gizikov called Hubris about the selling of the Iraq War, and one debate I have over and over again with people is whether George Bush lied when he said that Iraq had WMD's and so is it you know, George Costanza, Seinfeld, Jerry, Remember, it's not a lie if you believe it, right, right? And so did they believe this? Cheney said things that were demonstrably untrue
about the intelligence. As you get to Donald Trump, it becomes even more intriguing because he is such a liar. He lies about everything. Does he have a conception of truth like the rest of us in which one could say that he is lying or is he just not believe in anything resembling the truth.
But let's go back quickly to the Joseph McCarthy and sort of the history of how the party became this way. In all conspiracies are in many conspiracies, there's a neuggative truth that the conspiracy is built around. And with Joseph McCarthy, who was claiming there was red spies throughout the government, in fact, there were a lot of spies in the government at the time we now know with Whitiker Chambers brought up things the atomic program was riddled with spies.
In fact, when Truman became president, arguably Stalin knew more about the US atomic program than Truman did. There were spies in the USS there were spies in the State Department, there were spies in the Treasury Department, there were spies in the White House. Of course, it wasn't anything like what Justin McCarthy and his followers were spewing, but there was a neuggative truth there that sort of this was all built on.
Let me kind of siddle up to your question by also reminding people that back in the nineties, the Conservatives and Republicans unleashed this fusillade of conspiracy theory against the Clintons. Remember Vince Foster, Yeah, right right.
There are all the.
Stuff about how the Clintons killed Vince Foster, and also how the Clintons killed dozens of other people.
You know.
Jerry Fowell, the leader of something called the Moral Majority, which helped elect Ronald Reagan president in nineteen eighty, was out there with a video claiming that the Clintons, on their way to power, had killed dozens of people. And there was also the conspiracy theory that they were running a drug operation on the Arkansas. And yet people like Nut Ginridge before and after he became speaker, and even good old Bob Dole saying we need to look into
these things, you know. And Rush Lumbaugh was you know, writing high at that point, who was a drug addict. Yeah, he was a drug actut Yeah, and he was out there giving voice and spreading all these Clinton conspiracy theories. The nugget of truth was that Vince Foster did indeed commit suicide. With Trump and bertherism, there was nothing. There was a guy who made a claim. As a writer, what I'm always conscious of is that everybody likes a
good story. Donald Trump has made money by telling people that you could become rich if you go to Trump University. Alex Jones was a great showman, and he started as a late night radio host talking about this stuff in the wee hours, which is some perfect time to do it and to find hundreds of thousands of people. And then you know, all these companies selling survival seeds, you know, advertise with him and he makes a lot of money.
Let's take a break, we'll be right back, and we're back.
So, David, I'm sure you saw this Atlantic article about Mitt Romney, but one of the things that he said is that there are other senators like Hawley and Cruz in vance who know better, but they use disinformation or conspiracies or what have you. They exploit them. In other words, they know the stuff they're saying is lies, but they know it benefits them. So I want to talk a
little bit about how people are purposely exploiting conspiracies. And I think back to twenty sixteen when you did excellent reporting on Russia and Steve Bannon's Cambridge Analytica was taking massive information from Facebook data and they were using that to identify and target people with neurotic and conspiratorial dispositions, and then they were purposely disseminating propaganda to deepen and
accentuate those traits. In other words, they were finding angry right wing people who never voted, and they were pumping disinformation to them to get them even more angry to get out and vote. And so they were creating this machine to contaminate America with paranoia in order to get votes.
And so how would you explain now these groups? And we're talking mostly about Republicans now, but you know, there's RFK, there's Cornel West, there's these other people on the left that know better but are exploiting conspiracies and disinformation for their own purpose or for political purpose.
I don't know what you do other then call the massholes. I mean, seriously, there are people who know better.
So what do you think about Mitt Romney in his position?
Now, First I.
Should say I feel a bond with Mitt Romney because I was the reporter who broke the story of the forty seven percent remarks in twenty twelve that caused his campaign a fair amount of difficulty, and it's one of the biggest stories I've done in my career, so I feel kind of tied to the guy. I know, people know him, and as I've said, you know, I think
in some ways he's a decent fellow. But at some point he says, I want to know whether the elements of trump Ism have always been within the party and whether the GOP establishment, meaning him, helped enable that or encourage that. And the answer is yes, and yes, I mean that's the whole point of my book. It was always there, and that people like NT and others used it to their advantage but also turned a bit of a blind eye to it and thought, once we get elected,
we can shove these people to the side. And you know, the best example is in twenty twelve, when he's running for president and when Donald Trump is a full on birther promoting this race's conspiracy theory. He goes to Las Vegas. Mitt Romney does and accepts Trump's endorsement, hugs him, says how excited he is, and praises Trump. So here is good, old decent Knit Romney validating Donald Trump, the racist conspiracy theorist.
So yes, Mitt, it was always there, and yes, hands me to say this, but you helped and when I look at these people that you mentioned, John, I mean, I don't know how they sleep at night. I've been at hearings with Jim Jordan and he just says things again that are not true. And I know a few times I'd gone up to him or Mark Meadows when Medals was in congressizing, you know what you just said was not true. It's not what the report says, and they would say, no, it's true, it's true. It's true.
Yeah, there's there's Bartolini's law, and I'm trying to remember exactly how that goes.
And it's the other word.
The other term for it is the asymmetric principle, Right that it's much quicker to make up a fact, and it's exponentially more difficult and takes more time to show that fact to not be true, to actually do a Snopes on it. Right, you know, you can make stuff up and no one has comes back and checks on it.
Later, they say who just they say a democratic president is going to take your guns. They come in, they didn't take the guns. Next one comes in, they're going to take your guns.
They're like no. In the Obama years, this right winger who Trump hardened de Nesh de Susan did movies and documentaries about Obama's secret plan to impose the dictatorship direct the economy. Well, still waiting. I'm still waiting for flying cars too, And so he got that totally wrong.
When I was younger in the seventies, the mid seventies, I went to Germany as a young man and I had this one conversation I'll never forget. It was a small town in Bavaria, and I was talking to somebody who was an elderly gentleman in his eighties, but he admitted that he was in this small town. He was a Nazi in the Nazi Party, and he had a position of influence in this small town called Fussen. And I asked him, ah, you know, how did you you know?
He says, I never really believed.
It, the conspiracy theories behind it, the Jewish conspiracy and all the rest of it. And I said, well, how could you be in the party and hold a position? He said, well, if I didn't do it, then the real Nazis, the people to be afraid of, would be there. So I look at Lindsey Graham as one person, I'm like, is this what he's thinking? I mean, if I don't get on this train, then somebody who really believes this stuff will get on, and that would be much worse.
Right, That's what Jim Kelly and Rense, previous people were chiefs of staff Trump have explicitly said that they wanted to be guardrails. And it sure seems that everybody who went in thinking they could do that were proven wrong.
I mean, the one thing that comes to me, and I don't think we have an answer, is like what broke McCarthyism.
You know, McCarthyism in a small way was broken by McCarthy. He ran hearings that ended up being foolish, and it was seen from being mean spirited and hate driven, and he was drinking a lot, and he kind of like sowed the seeds of his own destruction. But the notion of commy plot, some version blacklists, all that continued on
without McCarthy well into the fifties, sixties, and seventies. In the eighties, you even had Ronald Reagan redbaiting the nuclear freeze movement, putting out material that his own FBI said wasn't true, that the freeze movement was being controlled out of Moscow. So McCarthy has lived on as an impulse within American politics, and so that's why I say trump Ism will live on with or without Donald Trump. So
there's no going back. The question is whether the party collapses, whether it continues in a trumpy fashion, if there's some external event that changes things. But for now, I think the immediate future, in the near future, I think the technical term is that the Republican Party is fucked.
David, is there any sense that you have of how much of this is being manipulated or used by Republicans that know better and how much of it is about actual believers? So is there any sense that you have?
That is such a difficult question to answer because I do ponder it almost on a daily basis. Do they really believe that Russia did not attack? Do they really believe the election was stolen? Do they really believe that the deep state is plotting against Trump? On an hourly basis, do they really believe that ever at president is going to come in and impose a dictatorship or take guns away?
It's do they really believe? Marjorie tail A Green that Ukrainians are harvesting the organs of children, which is now per reason for opposing military assistance to Ukraine. Does Tucker Carlson believe the US was working with secret biological weapons labs in Ukraine and that's why Putin had to invade? There was something interesting that happened a couple of years back,
and that's all. These text messages came out from Paul Manifort's phone, And he was working with the Russians or in touch with the Russian during the twenty sixteen campaign while he was CEO or chief executive of the Trump campaign and was later deemed to be a counterintelligence threat by the Bipartisan sent Intelligence Committee for what he did
with the Russians during the campaign. But he was texting to and from Sean Hannity, and Sean Hannity was on talking about all the Russian stuff was fogus, a hoax, and Manafort was writing in saying, you're right. You're doing such a great job, Sean, And you know they want me to say all these things they implicate Trump and I'm not going to do it, And Sean was writing
back then, you are a hero, Paul Manafort. You are a hero for standing firm and not letting anyone buy this bullshit about Russia, and I realized they really they seem to believe this.
So David, based on that point, we actually have a dramatic reading for you here. It's a selection of texts between Sean Hannity and Paul Manifort. Brendan Jennings is going to be reading the part of Sean Hannity and Mark Raiderman will be reading the part of Paul Manafort.
Please know you're in my prayers.
Thank you. I need them. I feel so violated from what I'm seeing today.
There are so many obvious crimes that are not being investigated AJRC nothing. I am truly frightened for the future of this country. We love, God help us in a world if we don't get all this straightened out. I pray that God give you the grace and peace in this difficult moment. I sadly know from experience that in times like these, friends will abandon you. The apostles Peter Jesus, they showed us this. Know this very hard, stand tall and strong in my prayers.
Sean.
Did you see last night?
Yes, very clever Pierro sort of God Heraldo missed it.
Yes, she is smart. I know and have great attorneys that I now keep on retainer to help and protect me. There has never been a time thirty years Radio twenty two on Fox where I felt a bull's eye is at my head every single day.
I hope Potus understands your point.
I tell them a lot, real lot, brutal, honest relationship, and I'll say it all on air.
Your attitude keeps you free.
Are you up?
Just saw your last text? They have a ratchet up pressure on me with this bs on my bail.
My brother thinking about you. Merry Christmas in twenty eighteen is the year of exposing the truth.
John, Your ears must have been burning. Just told my relatives how you will not give up?
Ever?
You watching?
Yes, I love you. You're the best that was powerful. In a fair world, you would get a Pulitzer for your incredible reporting.
Lol. I'll take those assholes going to jail. How you. I am disgusted at this corruption. It should not happen in the USA. I can tell you Potus is disgusted too.
I live in a nightmare every day, but I won't give in it.
Tell Paul and they don't give a shit.
They relish it. Great interview with Rudy tonight. You are so important to saving our country.
Hillary belongs in jail.
I am really proud to be associated with you against these bad people.
These are bad people.
And they are destroying our country.
Either we win or welcome to Venezuela or worse.
Pure and simple, I think that's pretty self explanatory. It's sort of, you know, too, conment trying to cont each other, right.
Yeah, one of them looking for money, one of them looking to go on a show, which is also money for him. So you know, it's interesting they both have the same political bent, but they're also trying to benefit financially off of it.
I'd like to know, and I don't recall from this whether this is after or before. Paul Manifort, in his book, admits that he was working with Constantine Khalimnik, a Russian intelligence officer, while he was on the Trump campaign.
Passing campaign data to a billionaire.
And passing confidential data that the Russians can operationalize and the FBI is watching. Now he's admitted that this guy is an agent of Russian intelligence if he's working with them and not telling anybody.
I think we knew that before he admitted it, but none of us.
And who let off who gave this guy a pardon? I don't want to go there, but we all know who that is.
I think we're seeing a little bit behind the scenes of the kind of stuff that we see actually out in front. And that's what's sort of right odd about this is the conspiratorial thinking has become just part and parcel of the politics. Like these people are publicly saying things that in the past would have been at best hidden if they actually believe these things.
But now, as someone you know, as you and I, as people who've actually like unraveled conspiracies against us, and as someone who's been involved in national security and you and counterintelligence issues, those are things that I would be
worried about as actual conspiracies. When you've got a you know, someone that close to the president who is secretly working with the Russians, or whose national security advisor is lying to the FBI about his connections to the Russians, or about his foreign policy advisor telling the Australians that the Russians are operating against the Democrats. All of these things come together and I see a pattern that you know could be a conspiracy.
Well, the Russian intelligence services have had decades and decades of experience playing these conspiratorial games and using they have terms for all of these people, useful idiots or whatever to do their bidding. And so in a lot of ways, you know, Sean Hannity and Paul Manniford are sort of like mice that the Kremlin cat can just play with to achieve its goals.
Let's take a breather and back in a moment.
And we're back when you see. Like the Ginny Thomas texts to Mark Meadows, I wrote about her conspiracy theories back in twenty thirteen, over a decade ago. Now I got access to some memos from a group that she was running at the time, and so she's writing to Mark Meadows and she has promoted other conspiracy theories previously, so she does believe it.
We have a dramatic reading of a selection of Mark Meadows and Genny Thomas protects Greg Hess as Mark Meadows and Lily Sullivan as Genny Thomas.
Watermark ballads and over twelve states have been part of a huge Trump and military white hat sting operation. In twelve key battleground states, Biden crime family and ballot fraud co conspirators, elected officials, bureaucrats, social media censorship mongers, fake stream media reporters, etc. Are being arrested and detained for ballot fraud right now and overcoming days, and we'll be living in barges off gim to face military tribunals. Per Sedition.
Do not concede. It takes time for the army who is gathering for his back.
Mark.
I wanted to text you and tell you for days that you are in my prayers. Help this great president stand firm.
Mark.
The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest hests of our history.
I will stand firm. We will fight until there is no fight left. Our country is too precious to give up on. Thanks for all you do.
Tearing up and praying for you guys. Oh proud to know you just forwarded to your Gmail an email I sent Jared This am Sydney Powell. An improved coordination now will help the cavalry come and fraud exposed and America saved. Mark, don't want to wake you. Sounds like Sydney and her team are getting inundated with evidence of fraud. Make a plan, release the kraken and save us from the Left taking America down.
Made that way probably bias.
Tears are flowing at what Rudy is doing right now.
This is a fight of good versus evil. Evil always looks like the victor until the king of King's triumphs. Do not grow weary and well doing the fight continues. I've staked my career on it, well, at least my time in DC on it.
Thank you needed that. This plus a conversation with a best friend just now, I will try to keep holding on America is worth it. We are living through what feels like the end of America amazing times, the end of liberty.
Boy, when I hear that, you know, we talk about conspiracies, we talk about politicians using information for political benefit or sometimes for personal financial benefit. Boy, and these guys sound like true believers. They sound like they actually believe this stuff, which is oftentimes not what we think is happening behind the scenes.
Yeah, this is this is cult stuff.
I mean, it's okay to believe things if you have evidence, but if you have no evidence or the evidence.
Is so bad.
You know, Italy Gate, Italian s satellites Steel. In the election, there was a congressman named Bob English. He was from South Carolina, he was like a ninety nine percent conservative rating. This is like in the early two thousand and nine period. Twenty ten, he cared about climate change. He thought it was real, and he came up with a whole plan, a conservative plan for Republicans, you know, private enterprise based, free market solutions, met with a House Republican caucus, presented
it to is two hundred and some other Republicans. Crickets, crickets, thank you very.
Much, Bob. Don't send anything, no questions. He was up for election, as they all were in twenty ten. This is the tea party period. He goes down to his district in South Carolina and people are saying to him, how come you're not calling Obama a socialist. He goes, well, I disagree with the guy. I'm almost everything, and I criticize his pology, but you know he's a socialist who wants to take over America already president. But he goes, well, I don't find that useful. I'm going to go with
him on the facts. Well, we're not sure we're with you. Then if you don't say he's a socialist wants to destroy the country. And as the year goes on, things get worse, And he talked about one particular meeting at a house meeting with some of his previous supporters, and they said, well, what about that number in the back of your Social Security card? What number in the back of your Social Security card? They go, you know that number that shows what camp you're going to be sent to?
And he says, well, I'm not sure that's what it means.
Well, if you don't know that, if you're unaware of that, why should we send you back to Washington. He ended up being destroyed in the Republican primary by a guy named Trey Goudi, who went on to run all those Benghazi hearings and all the Benghazi conspiracy theories and all that. But in some ways, intent doesn't matter. It's the action that matters. I mean, motives are good for understanding and maybe for dealing with. But at the end of the day,
Lindsey Graham is doing what Lindsay Graham is doing. Whether he believes it or not. We can use that to judge him. But he's still out there helping a guy who wants to impose an authoritarian regime should he get back in the White House.
This has been a real treat. It really has. I've really enjoyed this.
Well, thank you guys, it's been very interesting talking to you, particularly with your perspective from the inner sanctum of the deep state.
The deep State.
Well, a big thank you to David Korn for spending so much time with us today. He's been covering these issues for decades and we really really appreciate it. And so that's all for today with Mission Implausible.
Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'shay, John Cipher, and Jonathan Stern.
The associate producer is Rachel Harner.
Mission Implausible is a production of Honorable, Mention and Abominable Pictures for iHeartMedia.