Donald Trump Returns Conspiracy Theories To The Campaign

Enquirer Cruz

Donald Trump’s long list of faults makes it easy for some to be overlooked. His belief in conspiracy theories has not been mentioned much during the campaign. Previously Trump had been a leading proponent of the Birther theories that Barack Obama is not an American citizen. Climate change denialism is also largely a conspiracy theory, with proponents believing that everyone promoting climate change, presumably including the vast majority of scientists, are using it as part of a plot to destroy capitalism. Now we have a new one from Donald Trump to add to the nomination battle–implicating Ted Cruz’s father in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Politico reports:

Donald Trump on Tuesday alleged that Ted Cruz’s father was with John F. Kennedy’s assassin shortly before he murdered the president, parroting a National Enquirer story claiming that Rafael Cruz was pictured with Lee Harvey Oswald handing out pro-Fidel Castro pamphlets in New Orleans in 1963.

A Cruz campaign spokesperson told the Miami Herald, which pointed out numerous flaws in the Enquirer story, that it was “another garbage story in a tabloid full of garbage.”

“His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being — you know, shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous,” Trump said Tuesday during a phone interview with Fox News. “What is this, right prior to his being shot, and nobody even brings it up. They don’t even talk about that. That was reported, and nobody talks about it.”

The Cruz campaign has denied that it was Rafael Cruz in the picture which led to this story.

Trump has also been spotted shopping for more fiction to peddle in his campaign, having lunch with Edward Klein. Klein is one of the leaders in a cottage industry of writing anti-Clinton books. While there is a lot to criticize Clinton for, including her conservative political views, her long history of poor judgment on the major issues during her career, and her ethics, writers such as Klein concentrate on fiction as opposed to Clinton’s actual faults. I suspect that this is because the conservative readers his books are marketed to don’t care about the same matters which those on the left criticize Clinton for. Plus Clinton’s actual faults overlap tremendously with the fault of Republican politicians, and an honest criticism of Clinton would hit too close to home.