President Donald Trump’s political arm emailed supporters on Saturday, boasting of crowds outside the White House supporting the administration’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement.
Team Trump’s source? InfoWars, a far-right website best known for purveying conspiracy theories about the “globalist” agenda, and which has been criticized for publishing fake news.
InfoWars claimed that Trump supporters “outnumbered” those who back the Paris Agreement at the rally that was dubbed “Pittsburgh not Paris,” after a line in Trump’s speech announcing the decision.
But there was no mass appeal for climate activists to rally at the White House; a demonstration there immediately after the withdrawal announcement on Thursday drew large crowds. A liberal “March for Truth” on Saturday, calling for a thorough investigation of Trump associates’ Russia ties took place on the National Mall, not in front of the White House.
Later in the story Trump’s campaign linked to, InfoWars repeats its belief that the Paris accord is a “globalist” plot to “scare the world’s population into believing ‘global warming’ is too big of a threat for their country to handle alone and thus it can only be ‘defeated’ through the expansion of unelected, global bureaucracies at the expense of their nation’s sovereignty and economic power.”
Of course, it is not surprising that InfoWars would exaggerate a pro-Trump rally to benefit the president, let alone leaven it with tales of a “globalist” cabal.
The site was created by Austin, Texas-based talk radio host Alex Jones, who developed a mass following with his conspiracy-laden rants.
Jones, a conservative libertarian, has called the terrorist acts of Sept. 11, 2001 and the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre false flag attacks aimed at enabling the government to impinge on Americans’ freedoms. He has alleged that former President Barack Obama had plans to put Americans In “FEMA camps,” implied that the federal government might be responsible for a tornado in Oklahoma in 2013, and spread the infamous Pizzagate lie that Comet Ping Pong Pizza in Washington, D.C., was the site of a pedophilia ring. (He subsequently apologized for promoting the false rumor after a gunman pleaded guilty to firing shots into Comet Ping Pong to “self-investigate” the allegations.)
In addition, Jones has fingered a Jewish cabal for many of society’s ills, claiming in October that he’s “not against Jews,” just the “Jewish mafia.” In March, Jones concluded that liberal billionaire George Soros is the head of the “Jewish mafia.”
Although Jones has expressed his contempt for Republican leaders in the past, Trump’s nationalism piqued his interest. Trump gave Jones unprecedented mainstream legitimacy, appearing on his show in December 2015. Jones subsequently held a rally for Trump outside the Republican National Convention in July and continues to cover the president favorably.
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