CLEVELAND ― Many expected epic violence, but the lasting image of the Republican National Convention may well be the “Hillary for Prison” T-shirts that so many people sported here this week.
The snappy slogan just so happens to have been propagated by America’s most notorious conspiracy theorist.
One person wearing the shirt is Alex Khar, a 28-year-old cab driver from New York who supports GOP nominee Donald Trump for president. He said presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton broke the law by using a private email server when she was secretary of state.
“I believe she has committed federal felonies, numerous felonies, and I think she should stand trial,” Khar told “So That Happened,” the HuffPost Politics podcast. (The interview starts in the 18th minute of the podcast below.)
FBI Director James Comey said earlier this month that his agency’s investigation found that Clinton had been “extremely careless” in her use of the email server but hadn’t broken the law ― dashing many Republicans’ hopes that the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate would be indicted.
Calls to imprison Clinton reverberated inside the Quicken Loans Arena, though many GOP leaders have said they’re uncomfortable with the idea of jailing a political opponent. Until this week, it’s a message that has mostly thrived on the fringe.
Most of the “Hillary for Prison” shirts, including Khar’s, came from Infowars.com, a site run by 9/11 truther Alex Jones, who was in Cleveland all week promoting himself and Trump’s presidential candidacy.
“We see the information that we talk about, that was seen as radical, becoming mainline,” Jones said at a rally on Monday. “We have to be ready to win. We have to be ready to take the system back and restore the republic.”
For years, Jones has promoted the idea that the U.S. government orchestrates tragedies like the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack to steal people’s freedom. Khar said he didn’t agree with every theory Jones has promoted, but he is skeptical that the twin towers collapsed solely because they’d been struck by jets.
“We’re not getting all the answers,” he said.
“We have to be ready to win. We have to be ready to take the system back and restore the republic.”
- Alex Jones, Infowars.com
Other people wearing “Hillary for Prison” Infowars shirts ― perfectly nice, normal people ― shared that skepticism.
“The official story is impossible,” Scott Carlson, a 50-year-old arborist from Davenport, Iowa, told The Huffington Post on Thursday. He said he didn’t believe a plane had crashed into the Pentagon.
Carlson also said Trump hadn’t been his first choice for president; he’d rather have a more libertarian candidate like Rand Paul. But he did appreciate Trump’s status as a political outsider.
“I don’t think the establishment chose him,” Carlson said. “I think he snuck in.”
Though he’s not much of a 9/11 truther, Trump has endorsed some conspiracy theories, like the notion that President Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. and that his true birthplace has been hidden by a vast coverup. On Friday, bitter that his former Republican primary opponent, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, had not endorsed him, Trump once again brought up the insane theory that Cruz’s father was involved in the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
“I know nothing about his father,” Trump said Friday. “But there was a picture on the front page of the National Enquirer that does have credibility.”
Jones told The New Republic this week that he believes Trump is with him.
“He’s been what you call a ‘closet conspiracy theorist’ for 50 years,” Jones told TNR. “I think he’s been a chameleon in the system, and now he sees the time to strike.”
Roger Stone, a former dirty trickster for President Richard Nixon who has advised the Trump campaign, appeared at a book signing with Jones on Thursday.
“Let’s have a round of applause for freedom fighter Alex Jones and our friends at Infowars.com,” Stone said. “I want to thank you all for being here for Donald J. Trump and being the shock troops of the next new American revolution.”
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims ― 1.6 billion members of an entire religion ― from entering the U.S.
Before You Go
