Opinion - Trump and Vance are hanging out with conspiracy theorists and kooks
Do you remember when Republicans raised holy hell about the people around President Obama? They obsessed over Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor, who made inflammatory statements about race. How many conservative media segments fixated on Bill Ayers, formerly of the Weather Underground, claiming Obama 'kicked off his political career in the guy's living room?'
In today's Trump-led Republican Party, there is a far more alarming cast of characters firmly in the mainstream of Trump's power.
Here is a look at the views of some eye-opening players exercising actual power and making actual policy in the Trump administration.
Elon Musk: Last week, Musk's alliance with Trump blew up in a memorable episode of social media back-stabbing worthy of a reality television show. The clash left them both bloodied.
But before the personal drama, Musk left a trail of human wounds, fear and confusion with his erratic, reckless firing of tens of thousands of federal workers as well as devil-may-care spending cuts throughout the federal government. And according to the New York Times, Musk was regularly taking drugs during last year's campaign, in which he was the president's top donor.
This led one Democratic lawmaker to question whether Musk was regularly taking drugs as a special government employee this year. Trump allowed the unelected Musk to swing a metaphorical chainsaw — he actually did wield a literal one on stage — at government agencies and their workers.
Some of those cuts, particularly to the U.S. Agency for International Development, have canceled vital medical treatment, resulting in needless suffering and death. Now, Trump is attacking Musk for condemning his tax and spending bill. Somehow, there is no condemnation of Trump for granting Musk's team access to private information about Americans from government computers.
Imagine the explosion in the right-wing echo chamber if Rev. Wright had done anything close to that in the Obama years.
Laura Loomer: Last week, the conspiracy theorist and proud podcasting provocateur was spotted meeting one-on-one with Vice President JD Vance at the White House complex. As The Hill reported, this was a repeat visit to the White House grounds, as Loomer met earlier this year with Trump in the Oval Office to raise concerns about certain National Security Council staffers. They were soon fired.
When Loomer is in the White House, she brings with her quite a history, including reports that she described herself as a 'white advocate' as well as having posted a video online claiming that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. were 'an inside job.'
Loomer is also a leading voice pushing the conspiracy theory suggesting that U.S. law enforcement agencies knew in advance about several mass school shootings and allowed them to happen to help Democrats win elections in order to enact gun control.
In thinking about Loomer having access to the president and vice president, an old saying comes to mind: We are the average of the people we spend the most time with.
Curtis Yarvin: A leading influence on Vance, Yarvin has called for replacing American democracy with a 'monarch.' His proposals include calls to 'retire all government employees' and, in one especially grotesque idea, he proposed a racial hierarchy to 'put the church Blacks in charge of the ghetto Blacks.'
As the New Yorker put it in a profile, Yarvin advocates 'the liquidation of democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law,' and the transfer of power to a CEO-in-chief (such as Steve Jobs or Marc Andreessen) who would transform government into 'a heavily armed, ultra-profitable corporation.' This regime would sell off public schools, destroy universities, abolish the press and imprison 'decivilized populations.'
Odd characters are nothing new in politics. But Trump's second term stands out for putting provocateurs into positions of authority.
This starts with the president. Just last week, Trump, on his personal social media platform, called attention to a bizarre claim that President Biden is dead, having been executed in 2020 and his power taken over by an imposter, a 'soulless mindless' robot. And, of course, Trump relentlessly promoted the 'birther' conspiracy theory about Obama — that he had been secretly born abroad — more than a decade ago.
Trump's willingness to grab attention by embracing conspiracy theories recently backfired.
His critics are taking great delight in the right-wing echo chamber's backlash against Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino. They are being castigated by Trump loyalists for failing to unearth any evidence of a conspiracy by elites to kill Jeffrey Epstein.
After years of being primed with conspiracy theories, Trump supporters reacted angrily to Patel and Bongino's conclusion that Epstein killed himself in prison and no one else was involved.
This brand of conspiracy thinking is in line with the energy that fueled the Proud Boys' attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
It fits with Trump's repeated lie that the 2020 election was stolen.
It is in line with the 'Great Replacement Theory' — that Jewish elites are importing brown-skinned immigrants to replace the white working class and the chants of white supremacists in their Charlottesville rally during Trump's first term: 'Jews will not replace us.'
And it keeps going. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) recently promised to hold Senate hearings based on 9/11 conspiracy theories.
'What actually happened on 9/11? What do we know? What is being covered up?' Johnson said on a MAGA podcast appearance. 'My guess is there's an awful lot being covered up, in terms of what the American government knows about 9/11.'
Johnson isn't alone. House Republicans have pledged to reopen investigations into everything from the JFK assassination to the existence of UFOs.
I knew William F. Buckley Jr. a bit — from television, from D.C. and from his days as editor of National Review. He fearlessly called out the excesses of his own movement, particularly the conspiracy mongers in the far-right John Birch Society.
Where is the Buckley of today?
Juan Williams is senior political analyst for Fox News Channel and a prize-winning civil rights historian. He is the author of the new book 'New Prize for These Eyes: The Rise of America's Second Civil Rights Movement.'
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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