If I could go back in time to 2003 and tell my younger self that an up-and-coming Presidential contender, rising in his party’s polls and gaining increasing mainstream media attention, was also a 9/11 Truther, I’d respond, “friggin’ Democrats.”
Mind you, the 2024 Democratic race (such as it is) does have a conspiracy-addled lunatic with double-digit support, though this might have more to do with his famous name than his actual policies (such as they are). But I’m actually talking about the GOP and its recent outbreak of Vivekmentum.
Two right-leaning newspapers, the National Post and the Daily Mail, just happen to have mostly positive opinion pieces about Vivek Ramaswamy today. (“Vivek Ramaswamy's anti-woke crusade is what America needs,” reads the headline of Michael Higgins’ NatPost article.)
And if recent polls are any indication, the previously unknown entrepreneur is gaining on Ron DeSantis for a distant second place. With Donald Trump too chicken to participate in strategically avoiding this evening’s debate, Ramaswamy should attract a lot of attention at this evening’s GOP candidates’ debate.
Hopefully, that will include some pointed questions about him just asking questions about 9/11:
Just a day before the first Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy is caught up in a controversy over recent remarks about the 9/11 terror attacks that threaten to stall his momentum.
In a Monday profile in The Atlantic, Ramaswamy is quoted comparing the federal government’s supposed lies about the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, to alleged deceits about the origins of the mass-casualty terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The comments, which the candidate has since argued were taken out of context, are sure to become fodder for attacks in Wednesday’s debate as more experienced Republican contenders seek to arrest Ramaswamy’s rise in the polls.
Ramaswamy, a political newcomer from Ohio who made a fortune founding a biotechnology company, appeared to suggest that federal law enforcement officials may have been secretly involved in the Sept. 11 plane hijackings.
“I think it is legitimate to say how many police, how many federal agents, were on the planes that hit the Twin Towers. Maybe the answer is zero. It probably is zero for all I know, right? I have no reason to think it was anything other than zero,” Ramaswamy said. “But if we’re doing a comprehensive assessment of what happened on 9/11, we have a 9/11 commission, absolutely that should be an answer the public knows the answer to.
“Well, if we’re doing a January 6 commission, absolutely, those should be questions that we should get to the bottom of,” he continued. “‘Here are the people who were armed. Here are the people who are unarmed.’ What percentage of the people who were armed were federal law-enforcement officers? I think it was probably high, actually. Right?”
[…]
In the day since the Atlantic article came out, Ramaswamy’s efforts at damage control have only compounded the impact of his original gaffe. Facing criticism for his apparent openness to the idea that there were U.S. federal agents on the planes that hit the World Trade Center, Ramaswamy claimed in a Monday evening interview on CNN that he had never made the remarks.
“I asked that reporter to send the recording because it was on the record,” Ramaswamy told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, referring to The Atlantic reporter John Hendrickson. “He refused to do it.”
Oh hey guess what?
Conspiracy theories are like Lay’s Potato Chips. You can’t have just one.
I haven’t spoken to every conspiracy theorist in the world, though it sometimes feels like it while browsing Reddit, so it’s possible there could be someone out there who is all-in on believing 9/11 was an inside job but not that January 6 was an inside job. Or that AIDS was created in a lab. Or that COVID-19 vaccines contain mind-controlling nanobots. Or that Michael Jordan’s year playing baseball was a “secret suspension” from the NBA for gambling…sorry, my mistake, I didn’t mean to include something that actually happened in this list.1
But, by and large, when you start believing one of these outlandish things, you end up believing all of them, even the ones that contradict the others. Some of the real deep thinkers argue that widespread conspiracy theories are actually distractions from the real truth, like the lizard people who actually control the world. (See below.)
And, of course, we all know where this inevitably leads. (Hint: rhymes with “brews.”)
Every populist political movement has some element of conspiracism at its heart, mainly that there’s a mysterious elite class deliberately trying to keep you poor and irrelevant and unheard and distracted so they can stay wealthy and powerful, and that there’s a suppressed truth that will revolutionize society if only it is given a chance.
That’s at the heart of Donald Trump’s political movement - “I alone can fix it,” he once said - and it actually became even more paranoid and conspiratorial the longer Trump was in office. He couldn’t actually build a wall and get Mexico to pay for it? Obviously there was a deep-state cabal working against Trump, because governing can’t possibly be hard and Donald J. Trump can’t possibly be a fucking moron with absolutely no idea what he’s doing.
And there’s no way Trump could have lost in 2020, because I mean, did you see how big his rallies were while Joe Biden was campaigning from his basement? Obviously it was all rigged. The judges who rejected his lawsuits? Biased against him. Republican officials who found no evidence of widespread fraud? Part of the deep state.
So we had to storm the Capitol to stop this sham of a stolen election, which by the way we didn’t actually do and it was actually all crisis actors and Antifa and stuff. And now, here we are, with a serious(ish) Republican Presidential candidate sounding very much like a Daily Kos blogger during the George W. Bush administration.
God knows the left is not immune from conspiracy thinking (I’m 99% sure Trump didn’t hide classified documents in Ivana’s coffin…well, 95% sure) but the way it has completely engulfed the Republican Party has been startling and frightening to behold. And it shows no signs of letting up.
Vivek might be challenged on some of his 9/11 comments tonight, but I’m not holding my breath for his poll numbers to start going down. Not because of this, anyway.
And aside from Christie and Asa Hutchinson, bless them, no one on that stage is going to go after the professional conspiracy theorist trouncing them in the polls. I’d love to be proven wrong, but if you haven’t completely disaffiliated from Trump after his fourth indictment, I’m pretty sure you’re chained to him for the rest of your political life.
“Hey, Damian, do you have three hours to listen to a podcast?”
“What? Are you kidding me? I’m way too busy for that.”
“It’s about the TV series based on V.”
[Taking out cell phone] “Hello, hospital? That open-heart surgery I had scheduled for today? Something important came up and I have to cancel.”
Also, the draft lottery was rigged so the Knicks would get Patrick Ewing. I will die on this hill.
Loved V! Is this podcast for real?
Of the collection of clucks on display tonight, Vivek Ramaswamy is the only one who would be worse than Donald Trump. This idiot is proof we really need to take the Silly Con Valley bros and stuff them in seabags, then throw them off the Oakland end of the Bay Bridge - the deepest part of the bay. The guy is the worst self-entitled Millenial moron I've run across (and I have run across a few of them)