4 conspiracy theories that have driven policy under Trump

Vox

24-02-2025

President Donald Trump is no stranger to conspiracy: He rose to political prominence by touting the racist lie that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. His team isn't either: Take Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s longtime baseless conviction that childhood vaccines cause autism or the billionaire Elon Musk's promotion of the 2016 'Pizzagate' conspiracy theory.
The embrace of conspiracy theories isn't new, but now that Trump is back in power, there is a direct pipeline between online conspiracy theories and government policy — and in some cases, it's happening at breathtaking speed.
At times, the administration takes a kernel of truth and then distorts it wildly. At others, it's entirely unclear where the theories are coming from. Here are four examples of this government by conspiracy theory:
Musk has targeted both Politico and Reuters as news organizations, posting screenshots from a database of government payments and falsely claiming that their newsrooms received millions in federal grants. The Trump administration has cited those payments as examples of government waste and evidence that the federal government is supporting anti-Trump media.
In actuality, the federal government as a whole paid millions for employee subscriptions to Politico Pro, which offers 'specialist reporting, data analysis, and expert briefings covering 22 policy areas' for an audience including industry stakeholders and government officials. These aren't grants, but instead are purchases of subscriptions.
But baseless speculation that Politico received and depended on government grants grew online after the company missed payroll due to an unrelated technical issue. Within days, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, 'LOOKS LIKE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS HAVE BEEN STOLLEN [sic] AT USAID, AND OTHER AGENCIES, MUCH OF IT GOING TO THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA AS A 'PAYOFF' FOR CREATING GOOD STORIES ABOUT THE DEMOCRATS.'
Musk has also claimed that Reuters received millions of dollars from the US government to undertake a 'large-scale social deception' campaign, calling the news organization a 'total scam.' What he failed to mention, however, was that the data analytics arm of Reuters, not its news division, received those funds starting under the first Trump administration to investigate defenses to such campaigns.
Since then, the Trump administration has ordered many government agencies to cancel their subscriptions to news organizations, including The Economist, the New York Times, Politico, Bloomberg News, the Associated Press, and Reuters. The State Department, for example, recently issued a memo ordering the cancellation of subscriptions to 'non-mission critical' publications that are 'not academic or professional journals.'
Earlier this month, Musk posted on his social platform X that his team at DOGE had discovered that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had 'sent $59M LAST WEEK to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants.'
It's not clear exactly what he was referencing, and he did not provide any evidence of such payments.
He could be referring to funds paid out via the Shelter and Services Program, which is approved by Congress and administered by FEMA to support migrants released in the US after being apprehended at the southern border.
The New York City mayor's office told the Associated Press that, during the time period Musk referenced, it had received $19 million in direct hotel costs as part of that program. While the city is currently sheltering 46,000 migrants, including some in hotels, it has never paid luxury rates and most were put up in hotels outside Manhattan, the Associated Press reported. On average, it has paid $152 per night, while five-star accommodations are typically more than double that price.
On February 11, the administration clawed back $80 million in grants to New York City, apparently the first time that Trump has revoked congressionally approved funds from a local government. On Friday, the city filed a lawsuit in an attempt to get the money back.
The Trump administration 'took these funds from the City without any advance notice that it would be doing so and without communicating any decision or rationale to the City,' according to the lawsuit.
Recently confirmed as health secretary, Kennedy has been one of the leading voices of the anti-vaccine movement. He's pushed disinformation about vaccines since 2005, when he falsely claimed that some childhood vaccines had dangerous levels of mercury that could cause autism, despite the fact scientists had already proven that mercury levels in those vaccines were not harmful and did not lead to autism.
During his confirmation hearings, he reportedly privately promised Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a doctor and longtime advocate for vaccination, that he would not change existing vaccine recommendations. That helped him secure a pivotal vote from Cassidy, who said he would speak with Kennedy several times a month to collaborate on health policy.
However, Kennedy is now taking steps to link vaccines to chronic diseases — a potential precursor to an anti-vaccine policy. He announced that he is using a newly created panel to investigate childhood vaccines for measles, polio, and other diseases for connections to other chronic diseases.
'Nothing is going to be off limits,' Kennedy said in his first remarks at the agency.
Kennedy has also been critical of a government panel of vaccine experts that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The so-called Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices was supposed to meet this month for the first time since Kennedy was confirmed, but the meeting has been postponed, and the committee itself is facing review under one of Trump's recent executive orders.
Trump issued an executive order earlier this month cutting off US aid to South Africa and granting asylum to the country's white minority, claiming that their government is discriminating against them. The executive order cites a recently enacted land reform bill, which it claims allows the seizure of 'ethnic minority Afrikaners' agricultural property without compensation' and is 'fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners.'
In actuality, the law allows the South African government to seize privately owned land in limited circumstances, such as when property is abandoned, for public use, and typically requires 'just and equitable' compensation.
About 70 percent of that land is still owned by white people, who make up about 7 percent of the South African population, decades after the end of the Afrikaner-controlled government's system of apartheid. There is no evidence that white farmers have been victims of disproportionate, racially motivated violence.
But Trump's rhetoric about it echoes that of the influential Afrikaner rights group AfriForum, which has been pushing such conspiracy theories for years. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization, has referred to AfriForum's leaders as white supremacists.
Musk, a native South African, has also decried what he describes as a 'genocide' against white farmers.
Though Trump has broadly sought to block refugee resettlement and access to asylum in the US, he is making an exception for white South Africans, showing how deeply this conspiracy theory has penetrated his administration's thinking. See More: Donald Trump
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