Not long after the announcement of the death of Jeffrey Epstein, another conspiracy theory reared its ugly head, and our beloved Moron-in-Chief, Donald Trump, retweeted it. The theory is a baseless claim accusing the Clintons of involvement in Epstein’s death.
Wow. This from the PRESIDENT of the United States.
The latest addition to this is a meme finding its way on to Facebook. The meme consists of a painting of Bill Clinton, which I refuse to show, wearing a blue dress and high heels with his legs up over the arm rest of a high backed, upholstered chair. He is gesturing to the viewer. The blue dress is a not so subtle reference to Monica Lewinski.
The Daily Mail, a not so reliable source for accurate reporting, quotes an unnamed source who claims to have snapped a photo of the painting in a room in Eptstein’s $54 million mansion in 2012. The Daily Mail is rated “extreme right, propaganda, conspiracy, some fake news” by Media Bias/Factcheck.com. Snopes rates the claim Unproven because the source is unknown, and where’s the supposed photo?
The implications are twofold:
- That Clinton participated in some bizarre, perverted sex romp with Epstein.
- This provides a motive for the Clintons to have Epstein murdered in order to silence him. But here’s a thought: what if it was Trump who ordered Epstein murdered to shut him up?
Wow.
Since the appearance of the meme, the coroner has ruled the death a suicide. But hey, this fact isn’t going to stop any diehard conspiracy theorist. After all, it’s a conspiracy, right?
And now the skinny on the painting. The painting has been identified as Parsing Bill by New York-based Australian artist Petrina Ryan-Kleid. The Clinton painting comes from a pair of works by Ryan-Kleid that lightly satirized political figures. Its companion, a painting of
George W. Bush called War Games, features the former president sitting on the floor of the White House playing with paper airplanes and two fallen Jenga towers. This is post 9/11 and the misguided invasion of Iraq.
Ryan-Kleid says,
“In 2012, as a grad student at the New York Academy of Art, I painted pictures of Presidents Bill Clinton and Bush as part of my Master’s thesis. When the school put on a fundraiser at the Tribeca Ball that year, they sold my painting to one of the attendees. I had no idea who the buyer was at the time. As with most of my paintings, I had completely lost track of this piece when it was sold seven years ago. So it was a complete surprise to me to learn yesterday that it wound up in Epstein’s home.”
But hey, this fact isn’t going to stop any diehard conspiracy theorist. After all, it’s a conspiracy, right.
Oh, by the way, Fox News’ online site ran with the story. Although they did quote the artist, Ryan-Kleid, the lede is: “Painting of Bill Clinton in blue dress and heels was inside Jeffrey Epstein’s NYC mansion: report.” Look at the lede and see if the words Supposedly or Allegedly appear anywhere. Nope.
Trump’s defense of his retweet of the conspiracy theory: somebody else wrote it. OMG, So what, moron. You shared it. And this is truly the saddest part of Trump’s conduct because it’s not the first time he’s spread baseless conspiracy theories.
Namely:
- Birtherism (his most infamous) claims Obama was born in Kenya. NOT.
- MMR vaccine causes autism. He made this claim during a Presidential Debate. So how is this a conspiracy theory? If you’ve followed some of the arguments on social media, one of the claims is that the CDC and all the doctors and scientists who’ve conducted studies are in cahoots with Big Pharma. They’re all in it for the $$$$. One of my FORMER, and I emphasize former, Facebook friends, who is a diehard anti-vaxxer, says there needs to be more studies and the CDC is only telling you what you want to hear.
- Voter fraud. Trump, who lost the popular vote by 3 million, claims 3-5 million illegal immigrants voted for Hilary. Or that the Dems had shipped bus loads of non-residents into New Hampshire to vote for Hilary. Plus the alleged sightings of “lots” of cars with Massachusetts license plates. The conspiracy: the Democrats were out to rig the election, a claim he made frequently during his campaign. So how’s come you won?
- White genocide in South Africa. A typical white supremacist trope that claims that after the end of Apartheid, blacks are systematically massacreing white farmers to take their lands. This was promoted by one of Fox News’ most deplorable Trumpkin Tucker Carlson and tweeted by Trump.
- Climate change is a hoax: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive,” Trump tweeted on Nov. 6, 2012. Of course this ignores the fact that China was one of the signers of the Paris Climate Accord and has agreed to make a concerted effort to reduce CO2 emissions. The Accord, which the US signed under the Obama era, is voluntary, not binding, but this didn’t stop Trump from pulling the US out of what he called a bad deal. This is another of Trump’s agenda moves: Obama made it; I broke it; you fix it. Where’s the conspiracy? Follow some of the comments on social media by deniers and you’ll see these claims: All the scientists are faking their data ‘cause they’re in it for the $$$$.
- Barack Obama, and according to the National Enquirer, Hilary Clinton, ordered the FBI to put a spy in the Trump campaign. This is patently false. There is NO evidence of a mole in the campaign. The so-called spy was actually a confidential informant who had contacts in the campaign. But hey, why would Trump and his Trumpkins believe otherwise.
And don’t forget folks;
All this s*** is from the mouth of the PRESIDENT of the United States. The man is morally bankrupt.