When is a conspiracy theory not a theory?

We are witnessing the creation of a new conspiracy theory that, if true, is a clear and present danger to our democracy.

F irst, the theory goes, the ex-president of the United States who swore on a Bible and in front of the world that he would protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, last year suggested the “suspension” of that U.S. Constitution so he could be declared the winner of an election he lost. (Not to mention there is no way to suspend the Constitution to accomplish such a goal, but why ruin a good theory?)

That same ex-president, who was impeached twice, has now been indicted in four cases brought separately by federal and state prosecutors.

He is poisoning jury pools by claiming that the current President of the United States “ordered” his indictment in those four different jurisdictions, some with state and some with federal officials prosecuting the cases. None of whom a President has authority over.

One of those cases is in Georgia, which is led by a Republican governor who exposed the ex-president’s nefarious attempts to overthrow the election in Georgia.

The ex-president wants the country to believe that all of these prosecutions are a complicated and nearly impossible-to-carry-out political strategy aimed at keeping him out of the Oval Office, rather than a legal reality that there is more than sufficient evidence to file charges against him and for him to be tried by juries of regular citizens. Just as he was indicted by grand juries of men and women who showed no partisan prejudice, from whatever political persuasion they were or weren’t.

There also was the bipartisan Congressional committee that investigated the former president’s efforts to overturn the people’s will in the last presidential election. And, to back that up, that committee showcased only members of the ex-president’s party to make their case. Many of those men and women were people the ex-president himself thought enough of to appoint to serve in his Administration.

There’s more to this part of the conspiracy theory but let’s leave it at that, for now.

Another piece of the conspiracy theory is that the Speaker of the House, a member of the same party as the ex-president, ordered a Congressional investigation into the current president for high crimes and misdemeanors that, so far, have no evidence – none – to back them up. And members of the Speaker's own party are saying publicly they have seen no such evidence nor do they see an investigation as necessary.

The Speaker, the conspiracy theory goes, doesn’t really believe the president has committed any impeachable or even illegal activities but he is under pressure from a tiny minority of his own party who parrot whatever the ex-president claims. Why are they putting that pressure on the Speaker? Because they have ludicrous policy goals, most not supported by a majority of Americans, including banning all abortions for any reason, cutting federal spending to the point that the government cannot provide the types of assistance the government is supposed to provide to cutting Social Security, eliminating a few of the federal departments and agencies, and more.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

They also have power over the Speaker because, among many promises, he made to win the Speaker-ship, one was that any single member of Congress, for any reason, could move to remove the Speaker from his office and get a vote on it. In other words, the job he has coveted since being elected to the House is at risk.

So the ex-president’s soldiers are trying to crumble the country underneath while the ex-president’s clear intention is to do away with the Constitution and become a dictator in the best experiment in democracy that has ever existed and probably ever will.

All that, and more, makes up the conspiracy theory circulating in some circles.

But, wait, … is it a conspiracy theory or is it really happening?

Sources:

▪ Text: This piece was first published in The Screaming Moderate and re-published in PMP Magazine on 15 September 2023. | The author writes in a personal capacity.

▪ Cover: Flickr/Matt Johnson / Right Cheer. - Kevin McCarthy. | 29 February 2020. (Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.)