Key facts
- Critics warn Donald Trump's conspiratorial attacks are a tactic used by authoritarian leaders to justify repression.
- Trump has labeled climate change a "hoax" and AI safety advocates as conspirators.
- A federal judge ordered the return of press passes to CNN, Politico, and MS Now after Trump barred them.
- Trump continues to promote claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
- Data suggests non-citizen voting is negligible, contradicting Trump's "crisis" claims.
- A federal investigation into a "grand conspiracy" against Trump has seen key resignations.
Critics and scholars are warning that Donald Trump's frequent use of conspiratorial attacks against his opponents and institutions is a hallmark of authoritarian leaders that endangers US freedoms, public health, and science. These tactics, they argue, are employed to justify repression and undermine public confidence.
Steven Levitsky, a Harvard professor of government and co-author of "How Democracies Die," stated that "Conspiracies are page one of the repressive playbook," noting that leaders like Mao, Stalin, and Putin have historically used such attacks to justify repression by alleging conspiracies with minimal or no evidence.
Trump has applied these tactics to various issues, including AI safety, falsely claiming AI leaders and experts are perpetrating a "HOAX" by urging safeguards against potential extinction-level threats. He also disparaged critics of datacenters, suggesting they "want to end up being backwards and poor."
Scholars and former federal officials draw parallels between Trump's attacks and the tactics of Roy Cohn, a lawyer with whom Trump had ties in the 1980s. Princeton historian Julian Zelizer explained that Trump learned from Cohn that "baseless allegations about shady forces working against him could serve to mobilize and lead the public to see him as a victim rather than a wrongdoer."
Trump's penchant for painting critics as dangerous enemies was evident in his decision to bar CNN, Politico, and MS Now from White House access. The news outlets jointly filed a lawsuit on September 21 challenging the move on First Amendment and due process grounds. A federal judge in Washington D.C. ruled on September 23 that the administration must immediately return the press passes.
Former federal prosecutor Ty Cobb warned that Trump "denies, denigrates and demeans his foes by painting them as part of a conspiracy... He resorts to abject fabrications in response to any criticism or resistance."
Trump and his justice department have also focused on claims that his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden was due to fraud, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. In a televised speech on July 16, Trump urged new measures to curb voting by mail and investigate non-citizen voting, which he inaccurately portrayed as a "crisis of election security." Data from the Heritage Foundation indicates only about 100 cases of non-citizen voting over a 25-year period.
Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney, suggested that these efforts aim to "undermine public confidence" in elections. Meanwhile, a federal investigation into a supposed "grand conspiracy" against Trump involving the "deep state" has faced challenges, with key figures like former prosecutor Joe diGenova and prosecutor Maria Medetis Long resigning. Ex-justice department inspector general Michael Bromwich noted that such investigations "start with designated targets... and then searches for facts and bends the law to support the theory."
In energy and environmental matters, the Trump administration has also deployed what critics call bogus conspiracies to counter evidence of climate change risks, while simultaneously promoting coal as "clean."