Donald Trump’s “Morning Joe” conspiracy theory falls to pieces
On a certain date last year in December you went to the grocery store to buy a bag of apples. Permit me to reframe that. On a certain date last year in December you claim that you went to the grocery store to buy a bag of apples. After diligently searching your trash out back I came across a receipt from the exact same date. Sure, the apples are there, but so is a bottle of sparkling water and some window cleaner. Not only that, I found a movie ticket from the very same night that you claim you were buying the alleged apples. But if you were at the movies, how could you have been at the grocery store?
Clearly you are lying. Something is very fishy about your apples-buying claim. You can’t even keep your story straight. Was it a bag of apples, sparkling water, window cleaner, or all three that you bought? What’s going on here? What possible motive would you have to lie?
Searching the news archives of your town I notice that a young woman disappeared three days before your alleged grocery store shopping trip. I’m not saying there’s a connection, but I’m not saying there isn’t one either. And if you think about it, there has to be a connection. Anyone doubting me is a sheep. In fact they’re all sheep. They are in fact, sheeple, and aren’t I just ever so clever for saying it that way? I mean, all you have to do is follow the money. I mean, who benefits? Clearly you do, and if I can ask the question in Latin, so much the better. Cui bono?
We can even give your so-called alibi a name. Let’s call it Applegate. Your apples-buying lie has now been exposed and given a sound bite, and you deserve everything you get from now on in the way of infamy for your part in Applegate. It’s an outrage that the press won’t take me and others who see through you seriously. But the press are in on it too. They’re working with the government to protect you. There’s something nasty going on here and we will get to the bottom of it, even if it takes months, years, decades. Even if I have to write a book about it that will yield fabulous royalties for months, years, decades.
Here’s the truth of the matter. On a certain day in December, 2019, you bought a bag of apples from the grocery store and you mentioned it to somebody. That’s a simple, innocent fact. That you didn’t mention the other stuff you bought, or the movie that you went to that same night plays absolutely no role. It’s the kind of innocent omission that goes on all the time. In fact, innocent omissions happen every day, because we don’t have time to tell everyone everything we ever did, and they don’t want to listen to it in any case. In fact, it could have been a bag of oranges that you actually bought and you were mistaken about the apples. That’s also possible, and that’s also equally innocent.
That is how conspiracy theories work. They are created by and believed by people who aren’t clever but think they are, or by people who are out to deceive from the very beginning. These conspiracy theorists see “problems” with otherwise innocent, everyday occurrences, and they collect those problems into a little bag they keep. Then they go looking for other problems. Once their little bag is full they publish — on the internet, on a blog, even in a book. They ignore perfectly plausible explanations for the “problems” they find and hope their readers don’t bother to look for them. They are in luck. Amazing as it may seem, their readers will never, ever, ever google a single thing the conspiracy theorist claims. Virtually none of them will, and they will resent anyone who does. They have grown to trust the conspiracy theorist, and they see him or her as a friend who will tell them the truth when everyone else lies. To google the conspiracy theory is a kind of betrayal of that trust. Besides, whatever comes up in a google search is probably part of the lie, too. That’s how deep the conspiracy goes.
What’s more, in the world of the conspiracy theorist there are no innocent mistakes or coincidences. Everything that doesn’t fit perfectly into the orthodoxy of the world they have created is sinister and suspect. After a while no piece of information can be trusted that doesn’t conform to the conspiracy. In time the conspiracy theory takes the shape of a religion. After a while, people who are vested in conspiracy theories become as impervious to evidence as any person in the throes of a devout religious conviction.
The notion that Joe Scarborough is a murderer is a vile, stupid, irresponsible conspiracy theory advanced by people like Donald Trump who wish to discredit him. It is a perfect specimen of the type. It is a conspiracy theory advanced without evidence. It is dripping with the innuendo of coverups, deceptions, coincidences and hidden motivations.
Trump employs hot button expressions, freighted with prejudice, like “Psycho Joe” and “Cold Case,” as convenient soundbites to stir up suspicion against Scarborough in the minds of his slavering followers.
Scarborough was a Republican congressman from a Florida district from 1995 to 2001. In July 2001, a member of his staff, 28-year-old Lori Klausutis, was found dead in Scarborough’s office in Fort Walton Beach. Medical authorities determined Klausutis died after losing consciousness from an abnormal heart rhythm, before collapsing and striking her head. She had told a colleague a day earlier that she was feeling unwell.
That Scarborough resigned from Congress September 5, 2001, was an unfortunate coincidence that is made much of by irresponsible people. His reason, that his five children were entering their formative years and he wanted to be remembered more as a father than a congressman, is perfectly reasonable on its face. There are absolutely no circumstances to suggest otherwise, nor is there a shred of evidence to suggest otherwise. His leaving had nothing to do with the death of his staff member. Besides which, if he’d known that the September 11th attacks would happen six days after his resignation it would have been a staggeringly stupid move. But in the minds of the conspiracy theorists, everything is suspicious and there are no coincidences.
Joe Scarborough is not responsible for the death of Lori Klausutis. This is not a “cold case” but a closed one, and therefore no case at all. That the president of the United States would try to make something of it is an act of unbelievable irresponsibility, but typical of the child-raping mass murderer Donald Trump, and typical of the irresponsible mind of the conspiracy theorist.
By the way, I call Trump a child rapist and mass murderer because there is actual and compelling evidence sufficient to indict, try by a jury of his peers and convict Donald Trump of child rape and mass murders in a court of law. Evidence is the difference between provable crimes and the tinfoil hat conspiracy theories that incessantly plague the internet. They are different, and it is important to learn and understand those differences.
There are a million reasons why Donald Trump must go in November and this has been another of them. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.