Bulwark Takes - MAGA Loons Are In Charge (w/ Tom Joscelyn) | Bulwark on Sunday

Episode Date: April 6, 2025

Bill Kristol and Tom Joscelyn break down how far-right conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones and Laura Loomer are now driving Trump’s agenda, and what that means for America’s future. The MAGA fringe isn’t fringe anymore.

Hi, I'm Bill Kristol. Welcome to The Bulwark Live on Sunday. I'm very pleased to be joined today by old friend and colleague Tom Jocelyn. We worked together over the years at the Weekly Standard, and Tom has since written for The Bulwark. He trained originally as an economist and worked as an economist and knows a lot about why these tariffs are crazy. But we're not going to focus on that exactly today because after that, Tom worked on the Middle East, on counterterrorism, and then on the Trump phenomenon here at home, was the top writer, key staff member on the January 6th committee report, January 6th committee, key writer of that report. So Tom, and now senior fellow at Just Security, very fine outfit connected to NYU, which you should all look at the website and see a lot of good legal analysis as well as tom's not entirely less legal than war i don't know what should we call it here legal adjacent i guess legal adjacent analysis anyway tom thanks for thanks for joining me today

no thanks for having me bill and we're going to talk about uh something tom and i were talking about just on the phone this week i thought this is really worth half an hour of our discussion with all of you which is uh people being surprised at how extreme Trump is being in the second term. And what's going on? These people are kind of crazy and the conspiracism. And Tom said this is always what was going to happen. The mega loons are in charge. And so, Tom, explain.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you saw what sort of our conversation came out of the fact that Laura Loomer, this far right, an extremist, was at the White House and having a meeting with Trump. And after her meeting, three NSC staffers are fired and the director of the NSA and the top deputy are fired. And there's some reporting now, a lot of reporting that these people were on her, basically her list of people who should have been fired by Trump and that Trump essentially took her recommendations and followed through on it. And the question, you know, there's a lot of people who are watching this and thinking, you know, my God, how can Laura Loomer have so much influence? Say a word about just who Laura Loomer is because it's worth it. I mean, she, I mean, she isn't, she's a, you know, right wing nutter, you know, I mean, she's known for 9-11 conspiracy theories. You last year bill she um was traveling with trump around the 9-11 anniversary and it caused a big stir and the

campaign was like okay we have to back away from this and kind of distance ourselves a little bit because she's so known for being so extreme she um she's somebody who a couple years ago she jumped a fence at nancy pelosi's home in california to stage a protest you know she's posted all sorts of crazy stuff online 9-11 conspiracy theories extremist stuff you know anti-immig protest you know she's posted all sorts of crazy stuff online 9-11 conspiracy theories extremist stuff you know anti-immigrant you know xenophobic hate stuff i mean all sorts of crazy conspiracy theories and nonsense she's well known and you know the interesting thing about laura loomer though that kind of came out in this new york times reporting about her influence with trump over this these firings is that she described herself as sort of the describes her mentor as

Roger Stone. And that's a key fact here because Roger Stone, I think is a seminal character in the evolution of how MAGA and right-wing conspiracism evolved into a dominant force now in our politics. Um, he's some, he's the longest serving political advisor to Donald Trump. Um, he's somebody who brokered the relationship between Donald Trump and Alex Jones back in 2015 when Trump goes on a show and endorses him. He's somebody who's been on Jones' show many, many times as a guest host on InfoWars. And Stone is one of the premier conspiracy theorists of our time, and he's been injecting this into our politics for a long time.

And so for Loomer to be, you know, say that this is the guy who was her mentor makes a lot of sense. I mean, this is how she probably helped get connected in the Trump world. You know, last year, too, she there's another fact for you. She floated this idea that Ron DeSantis, his wife, was faking breast cancer last year or faking cancer last year as part of this, you know, gambit against DeSantis when he was challenging Trump in the primary. You know, so this is somebody who what I would say about Laura Loomer is she's crazy. She traffics some crazy stuff. But it shows how these crazy conspiracy theories have been weaponized as a political weapon by Trump and by the people around Trump to push their agenda forward. And this is really what's driving MAGA and driving Trumpism in its policies. The MAGA loons, they really are in charge.

This shouldn't surprise anybody. This is a really key pillar of Trump's base, of Trump's political support, and it animates a lot of what drives him in his agenda. I think you said somewhere that the conspiracism isn't just a sidebar or a footnote to Trumpism and to their ascent to power. It's really at the heart of it. So explain. Yeah, conspiracism. I mean, you know, it's always been with us, right? I mean, the paranoid style has always been in American politics. We've always had conspiracy theories, you know, well on the John Birch Society, you know, and the Birchers and that whole phenomenon, which was tapped down so many decades ago. So this is something that pops up routinely on both the right and the left. But what I would say is what's very different about the moment we live in and really over the last decade is I think Donald Trump's key insight was that this online community

of conspiracists who are really extreme in their views is much larger than a lot of people realize. So, for example, you know, I saw this documentary on Alex Jones and I can't remember if it was the NBC one or the HBO one. There was this documentary on him and one of his producers was saying i think correctly that jones's audience for any one of his productions could be as large as like the nbc nightly news you know that's how many just to be clear he's the info wars guy right but the theory that the kids killed at sandy hook were yeah sorry i'm assuming everybody knows alex jones is because he's so toxic i mean he's the one

who spread the Sandy Hook conspiracy theory that this was a government operation to kill kids, to pretend that kids were killed in order to take people's guns away, right? So he's an anti-government extremist and conspiracy theorist who's well-known for trafficking in 9-11 conspiracy theories, trafficking

in these kind of gun conspiracies and other things. And he's somebody who's deeply unpopular amongst the mainstream, but has been very much embraced by MAGA, by Donald Trump, by J.D. Vance, by Elon Musk, Roger Stone. A lot of these people at the sort of core players in MAGA are Alex Jones guys. They're InfoWars guys. And that should be troubling to us, right?

Like you have the InfoWars mindset is basically running the government right now um which should be um a real wake-up call for anybody who thinks that there's some sort of sanity at the end of this mega rainbow you know the laura liu thing is incredible because she was tweeting against uh michael waltz the national security advisor and claiming that maybe signal the signal gate text thing was a setup or whatever, or that anyway, Schwartzwald's fired because he's also a neocon. People like me and you, 10 or 11 years ago. Once upon a time, yeah. Quite a while ago. And I remember joking to someone, like this is midweek, I suppose.

I mean, this is just Loomer tweeting, but of course, Trump is seeing or being shown these tweets. And next thing we know, they'll be on the phone together, and Trump will be acting on some of it. And then the other person just laughed. And I even was kind of half choking. And the next thing, literally, she's in the White House. She's on the phone with Trump.

And I think at least three, but maybe more, National Security senior staffers of Waltz were fired. For now, Waltz is there. For now, his deputy, Alex Wong, is there. But she's gone after him with the most vitriolic just kind of racist racist yeah i mean it's racist you know chinese chinese american i guess um and uh and for now they're still there and then the director of the national security agency is a four-star general very well respected i gather and very not political i didn't know i

don't know if you've ever dealt with him i I haven't. But I was struck that Republican members of Congress respected him, Democratic members and stuff. He's fired because Laura Loomer thinks he's bad because he was, I guess. The connection to General Milley was the premise of it. Yeah, he was put there in the Biden administration and Milley was chairman of the Georgians. I mean, what kind of level of – that is – that should really i mean it's more alarming that oh they're a little their doctrines are a little crazy or they're not personally the most admirable people in the world or whatever right yeah i mean this is the point though right like why is the president united states taking time out of his schedule to meet with Laura Loomer. Right. Right.

And the thing that's difficult for people like us, I think, to accept is that this online community of conspiracists and extremists has a lot more political sway and power now than people want to accept. Right. This lunacy really does drive Trump's agenda and drives Trump's politics. It's a key component of his whole political coalition. You know, when he goes on the Alex Jones show Infowars in December, 2015, and praises Jones and his audience, and he brings them into his political coalition explicitly, he does that. That's, there's a direct line from that moment to a lot of the crazy we're seeing

now is a direct line between that moment and Januaryuary 6 is a direct line to the crazy stuff we're seeing now and the way policy is being implemented and this is a phenomenon you know i pulled this you know as we were preparing for the show today i pulled this quote from i was thinking about how to best illustrate this to people right and i went back to hillbilly elegy by jd vance you know jd vance used to be a somewhat normal republican or seemingly normal right somebody who who certainly didn't entertain conspiracy theories as part of his political You know, J.D. Vance used to be a somewhat normal Republican or seemingly normal, right? Somebody who certainly didn't entertain conspiracy theories as part of his political platform. And in fact, in Hillbillyology, which he gained a lot of fame for, he warns about this on the right. And he writes, and if you just forgive me for a second to read a couple passages, which I think are very illustrative.

He writes, you know, many try to blame the anger and cynicism of working class whites on misinformation. Admittedly, there is an industry of conspiracy mongers and fringe lunatics writing about all manner of idiocy from Obama's alleged religious leanings to his ancestry. He says, but every major news organization, even the off malign Fox news have always helped told the truth about Obama's citizenship status and his religious views. In other words, he was saying that, you know, even right wing media at that time was basically holding, had a dam against this conspiracy theories for the most part, they were keeping that bay, you know? Um, but he, he went on to say many in the white working class, um, believe the absolute worst about their society. And he, he includes a sample of stuff, examples that he personally had witnessed, right?

His friends and family members were emailing him things or texting him things. And one of them was that Alex Jones had this 10-year anniversary of 9-11. He had this documentary suggesting the U.S. government was at fault for it. That was one of the things that his friends and family members had texted or emailed J.D. Vance and J.D. Vance said, this to say this is crazy right like this is obviously not true and he had other things about how the newtown gun massacre was engineered by the federal government that's a key alex jones conspiracy theory you know the government this deep state operation to pretend these kids were killed which is obviously disgusting obviously and he had he had a couple

of other other examples and he says the list goes list goes on. But here's the key point from Hillbillyology. And I'm going to connect this to where J.D. Vance is today. He writes, it's impossible to know how many people believe one or many of these stories. But if a third of our community questions the president's origin, meaning whether or not Obama really was an American, despite all evidence to the contrary, it's a good bet that the other conspiracies have broader currency than we'd like. This isn't some libertarian mistrust of government policy, which is healthy in any democracy. This is deep skepticism of the very institutions of our society, and it's becoming more and more mainstream. So J.D. Vance writes this.

I don't know. Hillbillyology is what? 2015, I think, 16. 15, 16, somewhere in there, right? He's warning about this phenomenon. J.D. Vance writes this, I don't know, Hillbillyology is what, 2015, I think, 16, 15, 16, somewhere in there, right? He's warning about this phenomenon. J.D. Vance is experiencing in his own communities. He's seeing in his own phenomenon. He's warning about the influence of people like Alex Jones and his conspiracy theories, conspiracy theories from the far right, like Laura Loomer and others, right?

Flash forward to J.D. Vance of today. So in 2021, J.D. Vance gave a speech and ProPublica did a transcript of his speech in which he defended Alex Jones. And he said, yeah, he traffics in what people call crazy things, but everybody believes crazy things. And there was a lot more truth in what Alex Jones had to say than like Rachel Maddow or somebody like that on MSNBC. You talk about the J.D. Vance of today. This is somebody who recently was, of course, during the campaign, you'll remember he was the origin of the idea these immigrants were eating cats and dogs in Ohio. He was the guy who was pushing that conspiracy theory. Some of his rhetoric has echoed the great

replacement theory, which is this white supremacist theory about what's going on with immigration. From a subject that's near and dear to my heart because of something I've spent so much time studying when it comes to January 6th, he took this, he's claimed that the conspiracy theory that the FBI planned January 6th or instigated January 6th to entrap Trump's followers was somehow vindicated by the Department of Justice's Office of Inspector General, which released a report on this a couple months ago. Of course, the report does exactly the opposite. It says that that's a conspiracy theory that's not based in fact at all.

So here's what I'm trying to say here with all these examples, right? Here's a guy who was a somewhat normal Republican or somewhat normal political figure on the rise who was warning about the influence of far-right conspiracists like Alex Jones, like Laura Loomer and their types, right? And he's saying this is a big problem, right? But he was warning it was becoming more mainstream. After January 6th, after Trump's failures during his first term, he embraces this stuff as a basis for his own political power. He welcomes this stuff into his own political agenda in order for him to move forward in Trump world, in MAGA world. Doesn't that tell you a lot about the moment we're at?

Yeah, it strikes me also that these things are not static. That is to say, you think, OK, OK, there's a bunch of conspiracists out here. Then there's, you know, mainstream, if you want, Trumpism, I guess, here, and there's just sort of a balance between them. But it does seem like once you don't have a dam, as you said, a barrier, a wall against the conspiracists, they drive the agenda, and everyone else ends up rationalizing what they're doing. January 6th is a great example of that. I mean, this was something that beforehand was inconceivable to 90%, 80% of Republicans,

even 70% probably of Trump supporters. And afterwards, gradually, and pretty quickly, though, actually, it all got kind of normalized or rationalized. Yeah, I mean, that's exactly what they did. It was one of the main things I was worried about when I quit my job and went to work for the january 6th committee because i was very worried about you know this january 6th should have been a moment to put put this conspiracy monster back in its box right and say you know we this is obviously leading to real world madness now in a way that is really detrimental for our democracy and threatens the very order of things and how we how our government functions but instead what the right did and what maga did and certainly trump and all the people around is they they doubled and tripled down on conspiracy

theories trying to deflect blame for not for january 6 trying to deflect blame for the assault on the capital and so you have today you know i wrote a few pieces for the bulwark on this the director of the fbi kash patel is a guy who spent four years insinuating or suggesting that the FBI itself planned January 6th. He actually writes, he actually said during one of his podcasts, you know, what was the FBI doing planning January 6th for a year, you know, and he did all sorts of, he trafficked all sorts of conspiracy theories on QAnon podcasts and other things. That's what he was doing for four years between, you years between the end of the first Trump administration and becoming the FBI director. And his deputy director, Dan Bongino, same kind of deal, right? I mean, it's the guy who was saying that the January 6th pipe bomb, there were pipe

bombs outside the DNC headquarters and another one outside the RNC or on Capitol Hill. And he insinuated that the DNC one was a setup, was a deep state fake. You know, the FBI had somehow had knowledge of that, that it wasn't letting out, you know, and Patel did the same thing. So what this, what should I tell you is, right? The thing, Bill, people ask me when I talk about this is, well, these people can't really believe this stuff, right?

Well, a couple of things on that. We don't really know. I mean, right. Cause you don't really know what's in somebody's mind. I i mean maybe these people do get indoctrinated in this crazy stuff excuse me and they start to believe it but here's the point even if they don't believe it this stuff is so politically powerful that they have to cater to it or think they have to cater to it for their political power within maga and within the right wing now. Right. That is what should tell you that that's the warning sign, right? Is that this stuff is not disqualifying any longer.

Instead, it's a source of power, a source of political power on the right to do these types of things. And we can go through, I got a whole list I prepared for here. We can talk more as we go on, but I've got, this is, there are all sorts of examples throughout the administration of this phenomenon. This is, this is what's happened, you know? Yeah. I mean, I think one good one is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who 50 out of 53 Republican senators voted to confirm. Actually, that one surprised me a little more than some of the others.

I hoped you could defeat one. They could hope one or two of these nominees could be defeated. It was so obviously unqualified in so many ways uh but you know there was some loyalty to hegseth from being on fox and patel from having been or worked on the hill and then sort of you know on their side so to speak kennedy hadn't been kennedy a little and of course he had a real political affiliation was on the left and with the environmentalists a little kooky anti-science types but they were mostly lefty kind of kooks you know and and the idea that they felt obligated to him, that was because Trump picked him, but the idea that Trump was comfortable with him,

and the idea that he is actually the secretary of HHS in some ways is even as crazy as Patel being at the FBI, or, you know, even more so even. Yeah, don't you think? I mean, we have this massive medical and biomedical and establishments and physicians and hospitals and it's whatever that's problems it's bureaucratic it's this is that it's pretty impressive done a lot of good for the united states of america and done a lot of good for the world and this guy an anti-vaxxer and a real crook i mean is in charge of the government's part of it and and having and it certainly has not and then he reassured the senators on the hill well of course you know he obviously reassured them but they

wanted to hear that he would be more reasonable in office so that's what they that was their justification for voting for him and of course that was going right ahead being so talk a little about that i'm just really astonished by the kennedy thing well the kennedy thing no this this speaks to the point i was talking about how powerful this is now as a political constituency, these conspiracies, right? Because remember, the reason RFK Jr.

gets to become Secretary of Health and Human Services is that he cuts a quid pro quo with Trump during the campaign. You know, that there was a worry both on the Trump side and on the left

that RFK Jr. would split the vote and would cause in the swing states, you know, basically either Trump to lose or to win, depending on who you're talking to. Right. But Trump was sufficiently worried about this that he cuts a deal with RFK Jr. where RFK Jr. says, all right, I'll endorse you, Trump, as long as you make me, you know, a secretary in your cabinet and you give me HHS. Right. And Trump followed through on the quid pro quo this shows you how powerful trump thinks conspiracism is for his political and in fact i think it probably is how powerful is

and let's talk about you know we just talked a moment ago about whether or not these people really believe this stuff or not well rfk jr is a guy who i think certainly since he predates a lot of maga and his views predate a lot of what we're talking about. He almost certainly believes this stuff. I mean, he's the guy who said that Wi-Fi causes cancer and quote unquote leaky brain. This is something he told, you know, Joe Rogan. You know, he's he's he's claimed the chemicals in the water supply turn children transgender. Right. You know, he's claimed that antidepressants are the real cause for school shootings, not guns, of course, or mental health issues or anything else, but drugs. He said he suggested a couple times or many times that AIDS may not even be caused by HIV. I mean, this is the guy who's leading the HHS, and he doesn't accept the subtle science on this. addition to stuff like his vaccine conspiracies right excuse me claiming for example that vaccines cause autism which has been roundly debunked you know so this is a guy who he rides you know one of the i know some of you know uh renee di resto i think you've done one of these conversations with right she writes in her book about um all this she's a somebody who studied online misinformation

disinformation ice communities forums and she has a really good summary in the beginning of her book, which I forget the name of it off the top of my head, but I've got it here in my library, that from 2014 onward, these communities of these vaccine skeptics really formed online and became very vocal and very influential and very powerful and were able to project themselves into local politics. RFK Jr. is a guy who was the leading advocate for that. He was the guy who rode that, who helped create that wave and then rode that wave to political power. So much so that 10 years later in 2024, he's getting a quid pro quo from Donald Trump to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services as long as he endorsed him. That's a dire circumstance, right? This is a five alarm warning that reality has

broken here and that the people in charge are the Magaloons and they believe stuff that's just completely outside the bounds of reason. At one point, Renee makes, and I did a conversation with her on Conversations with Bill Gates, told us people can look up and look at her book and subsequent articles. Renee DiResta, she's Google-able, bitterly attacked and slandered by the MAGA people who tried to put her out of business by threatening to Sanford University, where she was. And unfortunately, Sanford didn't really, I've got to say, stand up to the threat.

So she's now here in DC. But anyway, one point she makes in the conversation with me, and I think in the book, is a lot of research shows that people who believe in one conspiracy theory, one set of conspiracy theories in one area, are much more susceptible to believe a set of conspiracy theories in another area. So it's not stupid for the QAnon people to go after, and there's nothing inherently connected about anti-vax and Sandy Hook and 9-11, and these are different things, right, in theory. But it turns out that they're, and the algorithms, of course, see this online and start to feed the studies that really showed this, that if you were an anti-vax conspiracy theorist,

you got fed 9-11 or immigration conspiracy theories. And then it turns out this network of conspiracists is bigger than one would have hoped, right? That's basically what we're talking about here. I mean, this is a huge audience online. This is the gatekeepers of traditional media are no longer the gatekeepers. You know, for all the time that the far right and MAGA world complains about the media, right? The media has no influence over a large section of the population now. You know, I mean, that's one of the things that J.D. Vance even talks about, you know.

So, yeah, the audience is huge for it. And you just mentioned, you know, immigration conspiracy theories. But just on that, just the point, the point Renee makes is that, I mean, pre-online, the anti-vaxxers, and this is how she got involved in this incident, at least, I think, a young mom in California

whose kid was getting vaccinated, you know, at age, whatever, six months or 18 months. And I know a lot of others were, or some others were, and she got alarmed about this and looked into it. But the anti-vaxxers wouldn't have known, sort of wouldn't have hooked up with the 9-11 people, right? I mean, there was sort of no natural way for that to happen, in a sense. You would have your anti-vax newsletters, I guess, and your anti-vax discussion groups in the old days or something, you know, and then you'd have conventions maybe,

and you'd have the same with other areas. And I think this is where the internet, I think, has really made a difference, a very bad difference, right? I mean, this is the premise a lot. I mean, it's not the premise, it's the finding of all my research on January 6th and, you know, jihadism and ISIS and all these different forms of extremism, both violent extremism and nonviolent extremism, is that the internet and social media in particular, I think, have broken human civilization. I think they really have. What they've done is, for all the good they do in connecting people who are sane and reasonable, is that they've basically allowed a lot of less stable people to connect and to herd

and create these online herds that then manifest themselves in the real world. So the phenomenon you're talking about there where there's these crossover herds from anti-vax people to 9-11 truthers to great white replacement theorists to white nationalists. I mean, you can just see how this all starts sort of stewing together. And by the way, leads to widespread skepticism of the 2020 election and the fact that joe biden won and that's what gives you january 6 right i mean a lot of the planning for january 6 takes place on social media when people start reacting to trump's lies about the election and start pre-planning for violence um and you know and the response from maga is to

deflect responsibility from its own side and from its own conspiracism onto the FBI, onto the so-called deep state. So in other words, the conspiracy becomes – it's a full circle, right? Basically, the conspiracy theorists and the conspiracism causes the event, January 6th. And then as part of the whole conspiracy worldview, they then blame the very actors that they were conspiring against. It's a very strange phenomenon. But that's where we're at. And I think it's a very dire spot. I mean, just to, just to give you one more example, cause you mentioned immigrant anti-immigration conspiracy theories, right? Tom Homan. I looked this up. I didn't see a lot of reporting on this. He was at this, uh, gun. He's the Trump white house. Yeah. He's the guy who's

out there talking about rounding up the biggest mass deportations in history. And he's sort of the zealot who's leading the charge for Trump and all that stuff. He attended this gun rally last year. Basically, the people there, I think, essentially worship guns or AR-15s. It's crazy stuff. And he was speaking, and he was speaking in front of a podium where they had this crest with a cross on it and guns behind it. I mean, just really spooky imagery. But during that, you know, he floats the great white replacement theory, which is this white nationalist theory that the Democrats and elites are replacing white people with immigrants in order to get more voters.

You know, and he doesn't distance himself from it during this talk. He says, call it the great white replacement theory or whatever you want to call it. I don't care. You know, I mean, this type of thing, right, would have been disqualifying for these people a long, not too long ago, right? Now it's baked in to their politics. It's baked in. It's actually a source of power for them. And that's the transformation here that's occurred, you know? No, that's interesting. You have depressing, you know? That's interesting. Depressing. I'm curious, what do you think? I'll just introduce it this way.

In 2011, Trump started toying with and publicizing the Obama birther conspiracy. I remember thinking at the time, I didn't like Trump. I knew him very, very slightly and met him once or two or three times probably. And of course, knew of him and his career as a con man,

you know, fraudulent type business person and all this in New York. And a demagogue, hopeful demagogue. He wanted to run in 99, 2000. Anyway, I'm not being surprised in a way that he was going to the birther thing because whatever one can say about Trump as a con man and a demagogue and a rabble rouser, it didn't seem like he was going to the birther thing, because whatever one can say about Trump as a con man and a demagogue and a

rabble rouser, it didn't seem like he was actually a conspiracist. And I don't remember that in the earlier Trump. He was, you know, just kind of your typical, typical, but you don't have a certain type of,

as I say, unpleasant demagogue. And I, maybe he already always had done a little more of the conspiracy theories, but I don't really recall him being part of that world and and i remember i wonder if he sensed that that was a big and i thought at the time i thought it was a mistake i mean it went nowhere the obama birther stuff was discredited people like me and many everyone on fox almost literally i almost everyone on fox was like well this is beyond, and this is embarrassing. And I remember when Romney accepted Trump's endorsement, I said, I wish you hadn't even given him the dignity of being on the stage with him for 15 minutes.

Romney did it very fast. He was embarrassed by it, as you may recall. And I remember, I don't know if it was great humor, someone said, yeah, it's too bad, but, you know, whatever, it's politics. And we were all kind of, yeah. I wonder if Trump saw a little earlier than most of us how powerful that conspiracy stuff was. He didn't have to get involved in the birther stuff. That wasn't, you know, but he chose to, right? And I think it probably was more important than people like me realized in 2015 to give him a certain base to start with.

Do you think that's right? I think you just hit the, I wish I had said it myself because you just summarized the central insight here about what trump saw that we didn't see and one of the quotes too from that period is you remember he said something to mitt romney like throw out their birther stuff because the crazies love it that's one of the things he said you know that was what you know he understood he saw at the time that there was this huge online community that believed this crap and that it could be a source of political power and you could get people riled up and for you. And they'd also be very loyal to you. That's this essential insight that at the beginning of his campaign in 2015, when he goes on Alex Jones Infowars in December 2015, that's the deal that Roger Stone has brokered for him.

Roger Stone, who's this longtime political whatever, political cockroach who survives every political nuclear war apparently you know he um you know he sees that this online community is vast it's large and will be uh could be a key constituency for trump and his political base and trump brokers that deal and goes on alex jones and endorses alex jones alex jones endorses him you know when trump wins in november of 2016 alex jones is again this incredibly prolific extremist and conspiracy theorist. He gets up from the set of Infowars and he says, that's it, folks. I won. I won. I conquered the establishment.

I won. Because of Trump's victory. Because Trump was, for him, everything he wanted to be. And I think everything he wanted in the Oval Office. I think that's the point. What you just said, I think, sums it up. What Trump saw here that none of us saw is that this crazy stuff could be, instead of a detriment or something that would be disqualifying, would be a source of political power. And that's the phenomenon. J.D. Vance is warning about it at a time when Trump is embracing it.

You know, that's the key dynamic here that, you know, J.D. Vance is saying, boy, this stuff is crazy. You know, I'm not endorsing it. And then Trump's out there full bore, you know, going on Alex Jones and endorsing it. So and in the first term, whatever Trump thought of his political power, he certainly toyed with it. He also had Madison Kelly and Gary Cohn and all these people there. So it was sort of he didn't he didn't quite get reflected in too many policies or it's reflected temporarily you know for a while and then sort of constrained i guess yeah and now we have all the people who rode the conspiracy wave to power in positions of power that's it and that's it so look at elon musk look at elon musk is outside of donald trump who's the most powerful person across the u.S. government right now? It's Elon Musk.

Elon Musk has totally embraced conspiracy theories, so much so – I did the thread on this on Blue Sky that Grok – and a number of other people have noticed this too. Grok, which is this AI bot on X, on what was formerly known as Twitter, which is there for fact-checking and for other things, not really fact-checking, but commenting on threads, and you can ask it questions. People ask it about Musk and spreading misinformation, and Grok over and over again says that Elon Musk is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, spreaders of misinformation on X because of his conspiracy theories about COVID and elections and the like. And Grok says this over and over again. In fact, somebody asked him, well, aren't you just a leftist then for saying that Grok?

Right. And he's like, no, this is an AI bot saying I'm not a leftist. I'm just reflecting the facts and the evidence, you know, and surprise Musk hasn't shut down. Yeah. Actually they asked Grok that too. And Grok says if he did that, it would cause controversies. That's probably why they're not doing it.

You know? So it's a very interesting thing. Right. I mean, but Musk, again, he's another guy guy i keep coming back to him but musk is a guy who's embraced alex jones just in the last week you know he was endorsing and now seemingly endorsing an alex jones conspiracy theory with roger stone on their show talking about the wisconsin election where roger stone roger stone was saying the wisconsin election has strong evidence it was stolen for this wisconsin supreme court seat and you know

musk responded like hmm or something like that on the bottom and of course musk tried to buy the wisconsin supreme court seat and failed but the point is again this is the world's wealthiest man richest man this guy has immense power in the u.s government why does he have time for alex jones and why is he embracing alex jones and that type of conspiracism why is donald trump why is now jd vance you know you can go right down the list of all these people. You know, the magaloons are in charge. That's what we're living through, you know. Yikes. This has not been an entirely cheerful conversation, though. I very much appreciate your take. Now, it's very important, though, as you say, that I'm not fully grasped even by me and our world, I think, in terms of how

dangerous this is and what this means for the next three and three quarter world, I think, in terms of how dangerous this is and what this means for the next three and three-quarter years. I mean, with these guys in power, maybe they'll be bugged by reality and wake up. But the trouble with being a conspiracist is you get bugged by reality and you don't realize you've been bugged by reality. You think you've been bugged by, as you said, by the deep state or something. Just the conspiracists who are going to ruin the terror yeah ruin the fact that the terrorists are good for the country you know that's what that's one of the one of the points that renee di resta makes in her book is that doesn't matter like they

just move on from and i've noticed it myself in my research you know it's one of the things they just move on to the next conspiracy theory you know i mean q anon has survived you know what should have been you know infinite number of fatal blows at this point in time to the conspiracy theory. And yet it hasn't, you know, we barely even touched on that. And that was a major force in the 2020 election, major force in January 6th. And it's still a force out there to this day. And Pizzagate, something Elon Musk has, you know, floated on X and endorsed. I mean, this is crazy stuff, but the point is, whether they believe it or not, it's politically strong enough now and vehement now

and has such a saliency to what they want to do that they're endorsing it and are promulgating it right so it doesn't matter if they believe it or not right it's it's it's politically powerful for them no that's true and it has its real world effects obviously yeah all kinds of policy areas yikes as i said before tom jocelyn, this has been really fascinating. We'll come back and continue this discussion in a while, and you'll be writing about it for the Bulwark I trust. And thank you for taking the time on this Sunday to join me. Thanks, Bill.

Yeah, I intended to be a Debbie Downer, but, you know, we'll... No, no, Debbie Downer. I don't know. I was looking back at the origin of Debbie Downer. It's not worth getting into, but yes, Debbie was correct. It's like Cassandra. Don't be a Cassandra. Cassandra was correct, if I'm not mistaken, in Greek mythology.

Debbie Downer was probably correct, too, you know, on Settling Out Live or whatever, wherever she comes from. Anyway, Tom, thanks for joining me. Thank you all for joining us on The Bulwark on Sunday.