Is Alex Jones, who sits on the Throne of Wackyland a right-wing conspiracy salesman merely purveying paranoia conspiracy theories as facts because this is his marketing niche or is he clinically paranoid? This is from a 2013 interview with Jones:
You don’t reject the term conspiracy theorist?
No. People now learn that that means someone who questions known liars in government and media. So that definitely means what heretics did during the Inquisition. I find myself proud to be listed as a thought criminal against Big Brother.
Who knows if he believes all of this since he’d have nothing to sell to credulous masses if he wasn’t spinning conspiracy yarns. This would be irrelevant if the president didn’t think he was credible. Remember when candidate Trump was interviewed by him and praised his “amazing reputation?” The interview (recently removed from YouTube) was arranged by none other than Roger Stone. Trump told Jones "Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.” Jones reciprocated saying "my audience, 90% of them, they support you."
Are others, like the histrionic Fox News stalwart Jeanne Pirro, who like Giuliani was once a successful crime-fighting prosecutor, also maintaining her position as a Fox News host when she claims Bob Mueller was involved in Benghazi or does she believe this paranoid balderdash?
Most recently she tied him to the Benghazi conspiracy, a series of outlandish and interrelated right-wing claims about the attack on an embassy in Libya.
“When covert missions go wrong, the government calls in its own cleaner,” Pirro said. “And when things go terribly wrong for the Democrats, they don’t just call in a cleaner to get the job done, they call in someone who’s been in the clean-up business a long time, they call in the serial cleaner, former FBI director and current special prosecutor Bob Mueller.”
It’s all part of the efforts by the “Trump-hating deep state” to cover for Hillary Clinton’s performance in the 2016 election, she alleged.
“Bob, aren’t you embarrassed by this whole fiasco around you?” Pirro asked. “You’re panicking now, Bob. Because Donald Trump’s legal team doesn’t want him to talk to your team of Trump-haters.”
Pirro then tied Mueller to the Benghazi attack.
“Your credentials as a serial government cleaner are really good,” Pirro said. “You testified, after four Americans are killed in Benghazi, to cover for Hillary Clinton’s incompetence. Bob, why would you say that the FBI couldn’t get into Benghazi?”
RAWSTORY
Far more concerning than the clinical status of these talking heads, is whether Trump is passing on such information mostly through Tweets merely because he is a gullible schnook? That would be of grave concern. Who wants a gullible schnook as president besides Putin?
However, if Trump believes conspiracy theories because they fit into a paranoid sensibility or world- view, this would be alarming. If he believes them because he is clinically paranoid, this would be a national crisis.
Did Trump say President Obama was illegitimate because he was born in Kenya for political purposes or did he believe there was a conspiracy to make sure he could run for president? The former makes him an opportunistic liar, the latter makes him dangerous.
ALTERNET saved me the trouble describing listing the 58 conspiracy theories Trump believed, albeit back in May of 2016. Besides the well known Kenya birth story, and that thousands of Muslim-Americans In New Jersey celebrated on 9/11, and that he’s a secret Muslim, a few of the others are:
- that Obama never attended Columbia Universty
- that President Obama wears an Arabic ring
- that Vince Foster may have been murdered
- that Rafael Cruz, the father of his GOP presidential rival Ted Cruz, was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy
- that ISIS tried to attack him at an Ohio rally
- that “the progressives” are trying to expunge Christmas from American society and once floated the idea of boycotting of Starbucks because their seasonal holiday red cups didn’t say “Merry Christmas”
- that Obama was thinking about signing an executive order where he wanted to take citizen’s guns away (and Hillary wanted to eliminate the 2nd Amendment)
- that immigrants with Ebola were crossing the border (and the CDC had lied about it)
- that vaccines cause autism
- that “President Obama made a deal with the Saudis to flood the markets with oil before the election, so he can at least keep it down a little bit”
Like narcissism, paranoia falls on a clinical spectrum from fairly benign (believing impossible or unverifiable claims because you want to believe them) to severe enough to require treatment.
Trump's narcissism is so extreme that he believes he has imperial powers and this combined with his desire to exact revenge against his enemies, makes him dangerous to our democracy and the rule of law.
If he is also at the severe end of being paranoid this means he is unable to engage in rational decision making. This would add yet another reason he is should not be president.