Have you heard the GOP’s new conspiracy theory about Taylor Swift?
Stephen Colbert asked me this week about it on the Late Show. He (jokingly) wanted to know if Taylor Swift winning big at the Grammys was “Phase 1 of Democrats’ Deep State Plan” to raise her profile (come on) before she might endorse Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Some of Donald Trump’s allies have been hyping this conspiracy theory, to which I had this to say: haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate...
Obviously, their idea is absurd. But this is a symptom of a very real illness within the MAGA Republican and Fox News ecosystem that replaces reality with conspiracy. They also spread theories like…
- A vote for Joe Biden is a vote for Hillary Clinton, or Michelle Obama, or Barack Obama — people who are not Joe Biden.
- There’s a war on Christmas. And masculinity.
- The idea that countless abortion patients are getting “late-term” abortions — in fact only a tiny fraction of abortions take place after 21 weeks or later and the reasons are heartbreaking.
- LGBTQIA+ educators, or educators who acknowledge LGBTQIA+ rights, are somehow indoctrinating students with a hidden agenda.
- Climate change is a hoax.
- Even if it isn’t a hoax, fossil fuel companies have nothing to do with it.
- If an election yields results that you don’t agree with, it must be because of voter fraud and not because you lost.
- Related, they believe Donald Trump won re-election.
I could unfortunately go on and on, but you get the point.
Trump’s GOP is out of touch and out of control — and it’s being enabled by right-wing media. They’re intending to confuse and scare people in exchange for power, and we have to call it out like it is.
We can’t let them come back into power and make real-world decisions based on conspiracy theories. We’ve got to work our tails off between now and November to hold them off at the ballot box — and that’s what I’m intending to do. If you’re with me, will you pitch in $28 or anything you can to support my re-election campaign, fight back against MAGA extremists, and fight for plans that will actually help working families?
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