President Trump has a problem with spreading conspiracy theories that at times aren’t even worth combing through for the truth, according to a CNN fact-checker.
Daniel Dale, who joined CNN after a stint as the Toronto Star’s Washington bureau chief, remarked how Trump suggesting that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is being controlled by people in the “dark shadows” is strikingly nonsensical.
“It’s almost too stupid to fact-check,” Dale said. “I mean, when you have Fox’s Laura Ingraham telling you it sounds like a conspiracy theory, it’s probably a conspiracy theory. Joe Biden is his own man. His campaign is run by Democrats, many of them conventional Democrats for many decades, and there are no shadow figures on the streets wearing dark clothing pulling Joe Biden’s strings.”
Trump made the comment to Fox News host Laura Ingraham in an interview that aired Monday night.
Ingraham, noting that it sounded like a conspiracy theory, asked what the “dark shadows” comment meant, to which Trump responded, “They’re people that are on the streets. They’re people that are controlling the streets.”
He then said there is an investigation into a group of “thugs” in “dark uniforms” who traveled on a plane to Washington.
The President claims people in the dark shadows who control the streets are really controlling Biden. He goes on to talk about a plane full of people wearing black uniforms but then says he can’t reveal anymore because it’s under investigation pic.twitter.com/AAk5GX0eWu
— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) September 1, 2020
Dale said there have been other hoaxes that Trump has promoted in the past, including the “birther” conspiracy theory that former President Barack Obama was born outside of the United States and linking Sen. Ted Cruz’s father to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
“It’s a long pattern. This president is a conspiracy theorist,” Dale said. “He just does this, and he’s doing it again.”
