At Issue - Has Trump made conspiracy theories mainstream? | Analysis from Washington

Episode Date: May 16, 2026

CBC’s weekly podcast, Two Blocks from the White House, takes a clear-eyed look at what’s happening in the U.S. right now and what it means for Canadians. In this episode, Washington correspondents Katie Simpson, Paul Hunter and Willy Lowry dig into the long history of conspiracy theories in American politics, and ask whether Trump has helped push them into the mainstream.Find and follow Two Blocks from the White House wherever you get your podcasts, or here: https://link.mgln.ai/2BFTWHxAtIssue0526

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This week, Washington correspondents, Katie Simpson, Paul Hunter, and Willie Lowry dig into the long history of conspiracy theories in American politics and ask whether Trump has helped push them into the mainstream conversation. from UFOs to missing scientists, fringe ideas, and conspiracy theories have come to the forefront during U.S. President Donald Trump's second administration. Have a listen. Willie, Katie, what's the wackiest conspiracy theory you've had to read up on since becoming a Washington correspondent? Katie, you first. Go. Picture this. It is a Saturday in late November in 2020. I am in Washington at a stop-the-steel rally when a woman insists to me

that the reason Joe Biden won the 2020 election is that dogs in Michigan, people's pets, voted. And that's why Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. And she was dead serious. She looked me straight in the eye. And I'm like, I don't even know what to do with that. And that was just at the start of conspiracy theories around the 2020 election. Really?

Well, that's amazing. And I do sometimes, you know, the world is probably better if seen through the eyes of our dogs. But, you know, like where to start? There are so many. I mean, for me, I moved in January 2021. And my first few years here felt like it was spent almost entirely batting down one Q&on theory. after the other. I mean, of course, the one that really stands out is Pizza Gate from 2016, of course, referencing or alluding to an allegation that Hillary Clinton was running a pedophile ring out of the basement of a pizza restaurant here in Washington. One of my favorite moments since living here was going to a birthday party for my child and realizing it was in said basement.

And Comet Pinkhole pizza. Holy cow. Great little joint. Listen, today we're going to talk about conspiracy theories because understanding them has become an inescapable part of the job we do here. And now the Trump administration is regularly, or so it seems, engaging with fringe ideas and conspiracy theories. So today we're asking, has Trump made conspiracy mainstream and why that matters? I'm Paul Hunter. I'm Katie Simpson.

And I'm Willie Lowry, where CBC's Washington correspondence, two blocks from the White House. Katie, let's start with you. I mean, how important is it for political reporters to keep an eye on the conspiracy theories in today's landscape? So I don't know if Canadians are going to realize this. But any time I go out on an assignment outside of Washington, D.C., and I'm going to do some political reporting. I make sure that I am up to speed on whatever the biggest and most prominent conspiracy theories are based on political leaning. So if I'm going into an environment where I'm talking to Trump voters, I need to know what the MAGA base is talking about. If I'm going into an environment where I'm going to talk to Democratic voters and who lean progressive, I need to know what they're talking about. And it's very different territory.

but because they are they are so mainstream that I have to equip myself and arm myself with this information because I'm likely going to encounter it. So, you know, if it's on the right side, on the MAGA side, it's about election fraud, it can be about a whole host of things that Donald Trump really talks about quite frequently on the, some of the conspiracy theories that I've sort of had to sort of navigate on the left side, maybe for Democratic voters. A lot of it has to do with whatever it is the president says particularly about his health. They don't believe what's going on with his health. They think the White House is lying about that. And there are legitimate questions about what is going on with the president's health. But those kinds of things. And it's

this, it's so mainstream that you have to be prepared to navigate it when you are going out into, you know, the rest of America outside of Washington, D.C. and talking to American voters. Because, you know, we've talked to various times about, you know, working the line at a Trump rally and trying to understand the MAGA thing. And it's complicated because they are true believers. And it's the same conspiracies, right? It's hard to have a conversation because there is no conversation to be had because people who believe truly believe.

That complicates our job. There's no dissuading. Not that it's necessarily a journalist's job to dissuade. No. Correct. That's a good way to put it. I agree with that. I very much agree with that.

I don't see it as my role as a journalist going into this place where if conspiracy theories are being shared, it is not my job to be, hey, you're wrong. And this is like, because it's that scolding. No, I'm here to report on what is happening in America. And if Americans are talking about this, it's my job to put it into context for a Canadian audience to say, hey, these people are saying, X, Y, Z, here's what's true. Here's what's not true. And put it in context so Canadians can better understand what's happening in America.

But I'm not going to sit there and lecture some person about, you know, well, this conspiracy theory is wrong and da-da-da. Like, I'm not, I'm not going to certainly do that. Yeah, and for two reasons, right? One, you're never going to leave that place, right? Like, those conversations are often just circular. But also, as you were suggesting, it's kind of our job to absorb and absorb that into our understanding of this place

and then find and reflect that in our reporting. Yeah, and Paul, some of your reporting lately on the national, on your world tonight, you've been touching on some of these things that are hotbeds for conspiracy theories. You know, unidentified flying objects who have gone through a glow-up. Now they're called UAPs instead of UFOs. And missing scientists. Here's the thing.

I am. I am. I did a talk once on the UFO, UAP. It's like a whole glow-up and a branding thing. But anyway, but Paul, you've had to do this too recently. Yeah, what a break from the regular cut and thrust of this place. Well, I almost did a story on the missing scientist. this, and I did do a piece on the UFOs.

Both have presidential connections, which I think legit draws it into this conversation. Which one first? Let's do UFOs first. As he promised a long time ago, Donald Trump approved the release of a whack of files on UFO, UAP sightings and things like this. As you can attest, Katie, it was delicious stuff, and it proved absolutely nothing, right? And that was sort of the fun of it. Okay, we still don't know, even though all this stuff.

And yet, that conspiracy theory, if that's the right way to put it, I guess, that UFOs are a thing and exist and we've been visited, it persists, right? Let's go to Barack Obama for a second. Not too long ago, he said, tongue in cheek, that effectively speaking, they are real or that he thinks they are somewhere out there. But he was not saying that their bodies exist in a warehouse in Ohio or someplace, right? It got to the point where, I mean, Obama's got the presidential library open up in Chicago. He's doing the rounds of interview shows, and he was on with Stephen Colbert. And Colbert asked him to clarify his comments on whether UFOs are real. Here's a bit of that.

Here's the thing. Uh-huh. For those of you who still think that, you know, we've got little green men underground somewhere. Yeah? One of the things you learn as president is, is government is terrible at keeping secrets. This idea of conspiracy theories, if there were aliens or aliens spaceships or anything

under the control of the United States government that we knew about seen, photographs, what have you, I promise you, some guy guarding the installation would have taken a selfie with one of the, of the aliens and send it to his girlfriend and present. Right. And that's the thing. Like that's the perfect debunker of that conspiracy.

Surely to God, the government is terrible at keeping secrets. And it could not have been keeping this secret like JFK and all that kind of stuff. It stretches credulity to think that these things could be kept secret, as Obama said. Now, the missing scientists is a whole other thing. We were going to do a piece on this, and then the White House correspondent's dinner shooting happened, and this got sort of punted down the line, and we may or may not get to it in the end. But the story is that there's a whole bunch of, you know, scientists and researchers in America who've been found mysteriously dead or have gone missing, and that brought this conspiracy theory

that there must be some connection here, maybe China's behind it, maybe Russia's behind it. The difference here is that Donald Trump, in a sense, gave it oxygen by, I think in a chopper talk one day saying that he had just come from a security meeting on it. It was referred to the FBI. All of a sudden, it's making headlines everywhere. And that affects us because then how can you, if the president of the United States is saying maybe there's something to this, you're left as a journalist thinking, well, that's the president of the United States. So maybe there's something to this. And then we have to do news stories on it and becomes a kind of a circular thing where that feeds upon itself. And thus is born a conspiracy theory, which, by the way, eventually Trump himself sort of debunked.

Anytime that Donald Trump or any U.S. president speaks, the assumption is that the White House or the intelligence community has provided information to the president because he has access to the most information in the world of any other human being on the planet. And so when he says something, I know that we are in a moment, right. now with the president that has a very different relationship with the truth, but so do all presidents, if we're going to really get into it. That sounds a little conspiratorial. Exactly, right? Exactly. Exactly. But, Paul, to your earlier point about Barack Obama and, you know, the government is really bad at keeping secrets, I was told once by a very senior staffer who worked in the Trudeau government years ago. And he couldn't stop laughing.

He starts saying, you know, conspiracy theories. And he would talk about, how people who thought that the government was, you know, engaging in conspiracy theories. And he said to me, Katie, we can't even do what we're trying to do. How do you think we are going to carry out things secretly? We have stated these objectives of the things we want to do, and we can't even do that. And that always sort of stuck with me. That and he also described that if when they were hiring new people to come into, whether it be like the prime minister's office or senior government sort of staffers on the political side,

they'd ask particularly the young people, you know, what impression do you have of government and like or what it's like to work in a political office? And they would say if they said the West Wing, it was not going to be a hire that's going to fit. But if you said Veep, because what is government life really like? It's actually like Veep. Everything is a mess. Nothing is actually happening the way you want it to happen. And it's all over the map. It's all over the map. But it is all happening in this kind of post-truth world. And this, again, complicates life for journalists in this city because you don't know what to believe. And, you know, the first thing I thought when you mentioned that a couple of minutes ago was sunshine and bleach as a cure for COVID.

I was, you know, on the air on news network when Trump said that and had to come out of it and saying, like, is that, does he know stuff that we don't know? Like, is he, because he is the president. Because he's the president again. And this is why, be they conspiracy theories, which seem to be everywhere these days, or just straight up comments from the president, when the president gives oxygen to conspiracy theories or says stuff like sunshine is a potential cure for COVID, like, what do you do with that? I don't know the answer. I think at this point, I'm going to start trying some sunshine and bleach because that's why I'm not in the office right now. I don't have COVID, but I have a really bad cold. Sunshine is good, well, you Katie.

It is a beautiful day, Katie, so I do suggest getting outside and soaking in some rays. If you're watching us on YouTube and wondering why I'm not in the studio, it's because I've got a bad cold and I don't want to make everyone in the office sick. But that's where we are, at least at this point. You know, and the conspiracy theories, they pop up so quickly because of social media. People immediately have access to just say whatever they want, whatever they want. And great, awesome, great, but it does have an impact on, on conspiracy theories. And Willie, you know, almost immediately, almost immediately after the shooting, the White House

correspondence dinner, you know, conspiracy theories just sort of spread like wildfire on social media. Yeah, abound, almost instantaneously. A lot of them kind of suggesting that the, this whole thing was staged. some suggesting that it was staged by the president himself. Because he was low in the polls. Exactly. So one survey that I read, and this is like crazy here, suggests that one in four Americans believe it was staged. For the White House correspondence dinner, one in three Democrats that were polled thought it was staged, one in eight Republicans. So again, these conspiracies go both ways, both the right and the left, are.

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Why do we think this is happening, though? Like, why? Like, what moment are we in that makes this, this, like, why this is happening now? And people see things that just don't believe it. I mean, it's a great question. I think social media has, it allows it. It allows it to just spread so much farther than in era's past. But also, there's something about the printed word.

And when I say the printed word, I mean, texts on a screen even, that kind of gives things credence in a way, I believe. And I think, you know, reading something kind of makes it seem more believable. And people are reading, you know, there's social media is very much unfiltered for the most part, right? So these conspiracy theories are allowed to propagate and kind of spread and then they're consumed. Two things. One, I will say, I mean, I was at the White House correspondence dinner. Yes, I was going to ask.

It was real, right? It was real. As real as the cheese and crackers at the end of the day. As real as the cheese and crackers. They were delicious. I'm just going to say. I want to say that that was whispered in the room. And I don't know now whether I'm misremembering because it was the story that it did pop up so quickly.

But I want to say that I feel people were talking about even then. Just as a sort of, well, that was convenient timing, wasn't it? But that's part of conspiracy theory. But to be fair, to journalists, as a. general kind of feeling, we're pretty much cynics. I spoke with the widow of one of the dead scientists who was Canadian living in San Diego and his widow was also obviously, well, maybe not obviously, but whose widow was also Canadian. And we're going to interview her for that piece. And she almost didn't want to.

And I think because to worry about giving it oxygen, she did say her late husband would have laughed at this because it was so. ridiculous. And I think there is that side, or the comet ping pong. I mean, that was a real thing. The guy brought a gun all the way up from North Carolina. It had real world ramifications. And the thing about the real world ramifications, one thing I think that we should highlight is that it's profitable to spread conspiracy theories because of clicks and views. With social media platforms rewarding people getting high clicks and high views, people put out, you know, whatever they'd like. It doesn't have to be verified, doesn't have to be accurate. And as long as they continue to get clicks in views and whether it links them to another website to sell products or whether they just get revenue from views, you know, as long as this remains profitable, spreading whether it's conspiracy theories, misinformation or disinformation, as long as there is a profit to be made, this will continue. There is also a political benefit, Katie, and we've talked about Trump a lot because he does seem to engage with concerns.

conspiracy theories, but that's not a new thing for him. I mean, it goes back to, well, I was going to say to his first term, but before the first term, with the birther conspiracy. Tell us about that. Yeah, let's go back to about 2011, and this is when Barack Obama was president, and there is this online conspiracy that Barack Obama actually doesn't qualify to be president because he wasn't actually American-born. Barack Obama and his team had produced a short-form birth certificate, showing that he was born in Honolulu and born to an American mother. And the thing is that that didn't satisfy Donald Trump and others in the online echo chamber who were critics of Barack Obama for whatever sort of reasons. And of course, a lot of this conversation had a lot of dog whistles to people who might not like Barack Obama. because of issues related to racism and sort of dog whistle in that sort of era, being the first black president of the United States,

Donald Trump just kept pushing. His grandmother was saying that he was born right down the road, and I'm not talking about this country. I'm talking about a totally different country called Kenya. Using Twitter back when Twitter was really rising to prominence and other public appearances to question whether Barack Obama was really an American citizen, and it got to the point where the White House did the questioning and the online sort of fervor led the White House to release Barack Obama's long form birth certificate.

And we the media covered all of it. We the media covered all of it, though, right? That's the thing, right? And so are we complicit, right? Because on its face, that was quite arguably a ridiculous suggestion. And yet we gave credence, we, the media, gave credence to what Donald Trump was doing to Donald Trump's benefit, right? And he took that and ran with it. And what lessons did he learn from that that he could get national media attention? Did it help sort of resonate with Americans who might be inclined to start questioning that kind of thing?

And we've seen Donald Trump be able to weaponize this over and, and over and over again. So much of what the conversation around Jeffrey Epstein and the horrific abuse of women and girls that took place for years, so much of that ended up being, for a long time, was sort of delegitimized because it got so sucked into the conspiracy underworld that people didn't really take it seriously

because it was so wrapped up and, well, this and that, and all kinds of outlets. landish claims. And it turns out that these women, hundreds of women, had been victimized, very real, horrific crimes committed against them. And even though Donald Trump denies knowing what Jeffrey Epstein was doing, he denies any wrongdoing. He very aggressively and adamantly does that. But Donald Trump and people that he put in prominent roles spent years peddling in conspiracy theories, whether it's for clicks, views, and listens. people like Cash Patel, people like Dan Boingino.

Like Cash Patel is the FBI director, Dan Boingino, was the number two. And by elevating these people, it's a nod to the conspiracy-minded folks who might not be engaged to vote. Remember, Donald Trump built a very diverse coalition to win in 2024. And part of that was getting people who are not regular voters out to the polls. And some of that, some of that, is the, the, conspiracy-minded folks who look at things like that and say, I want to see these files. I want to know what's going on with the deep state. So I'm going to give Donald Trump my vote. It's another question about whether that's now coming to bite him in coming to bite him and there's political consequences.

But are there consequences? Who's going to jail? Not in America. Not in America. Well, I mean, Katie made a number of points there. But I mean, does it seem that, I mean, are we right to think that it's that it seems like in Trump's second term now that it's like conspiracy theories have. there are just more of them all the time? Yesterday on truth social, the president's social media platform, I think gives us kind of a perfect example for how conspiracy theories are spread and circulated in Trump's second term. He posted dozens and dozens of times last night. Most of them were reposts, so essentially retweeting or reposting someone else's comments. But I'm just going to go through them because a little bit. So he reposted a post claiming that Obama knew about Hillary Clinton's emails.

He reposted something about Dominion voting systems about how forensic images confirm that an anonymous user logged into an election management system remotely on November 5th, 2020, suggesting I'm not even sure what. He ret posted something saying that Obama is the most demonic. force in American politics in decades. I mean, the list just goes on and on and on. And again, as we've already said, this is the president of the United States. Even if it's a mere repost and not his own words, he's got millions and millions of followers. Millions of Americans, you know, take what he says as gospel, right? So this is in part how these theories are spread. We're so used to the fact that Donald Trump posts things that are not, I'm trying to phrase this properly, that are not rooted in reality on social media. And it's to the point that we don't even cover it as news anymore.

And it's like when Donald Trump is sitting in the Oval Office and he speaks for 60 minutes and we parse out, you know, a 15 second line of what's new about, you know, whatever story we're covering that day. It's like, you know, 15 seconds about, okay, here's the latest update on what's going on with the war in Iraq. on. And we're sort of just, we're so used to and numb of the other, say, 60 minutes of what he has to say, whether it be rooted in reality or not rooted in reality. I'm specifically thinking about election fraud claims, claiming that the 2020 election was stolen from him. It doesn't even make the news anymore because it happened so frequently and we all just shrug it off. And it's like, has the world just been trained to ignore this when is the real story? Here is the most powerful person in the universe sitting in front of the biggest platform on earth, speaking for 60 minutes and a significant

portion of that is absolutely not rooted in reality or truth. And one of the questions we're asking here is whether Trump has made conspiracy theories mainstream by doing it and normalizing it. There's a word we've used a lot. Does he normalize this kind of thinking? Often in a lot of what Trump has said, I think it's fair to say on conspiracy theories or other things, there's sometimes like a hint of something, a grain of something that is sort of true, which allows you to believe the rest of it. And by the way, that again,

another theme in this conversation, that it does complicate what journalists do, because there is a little bit of truth there, but it is amplified in an incorrect or misleading way, and that becomes the problem. And yet there it is in the mainstream. I feel that was our weekly dose of Uncle Paul's wisdom. It's my favorite part of the podcast. Mine too. When's he going to get off that soapbox you're both thinking? Why does this matter?

Why does this matter? Why do we go there before we wrap up? What does this mean to people, to voters, to democracy to get all high and mighty about it, either of you? I mean, I think it matters because, as we've suggested, a significant percent of the population, believes a lot of these theories, right? So that's going to influence potentially how they vote. And that, of course, influences who's running this country. Katie? A significant part of Republican voters believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.

And we can talk about conspiracy theories. We can talk about lies. We can talk about people purposely trying to mislead voters. And it's sort of a confluence of all of those kinds of things. getting to the moment we saw culminating in January 6, where a lot of those people may have thought that they were on the right side of history. Those are the kinds of consequences of this world. It is reshaping democracy because we do not have a grasp on what the truth is. There's no common set of facts that people can sort of all agree on. And on that note, we need to sign off for today. We'll get back to audience questions again next week. And if you have something you'd like to ask or feedback about what you're hearing, send an email to Washington Pod, all one word

at cbc.ca.ca. That's WashingtonPod at cBC.ca. Or leave a comment for us on Spotify. And if you like what you're hearing, spread the word. Tell a friend about this podcast and follow us on your favorite podcast app and never miss an episode. You want to say something. I do, Paul. And thank you for giving me the opening. I'd be remiss if I did not, you know, highlight my shirt. And we may lay it. in the land of the red, white, and blue, but go blue-blanc-hoose tonight. I also have a Canadian reference.

This is a Northern Reflections. This is a retro 90s Northern Reflection sweatshirt that because I'm homesick I'm going to wear today. Did you know what I learned just this morning? Katie, Paul Hunter loves the Canadians. Absolutely rabid, die-hard half-span. Back to the dynasties of the 70s. Thanks, you too.

We'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. That was this week's episode of two blocks from the White House. It's called that because the CBC Bureau is just two blocks away. To keep up with the latest news coming out of Washington, find and follow that show, wherever you get your podcast so you don't miss an episode. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca.ca.