{"id":212899,"date":"2020-09-01T07:24:36","date_gmt":"2020-09-01T07:24:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=212899"},"modified":"2020-09-03T05:37:56","modified_gmt":"2020-09-03T05:37:56","slug":"donald-trump-makes-baseless-claim-that-dark-shadows-are-controlling-joe-biden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=212899","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump makes baseless claim that &#8216;dark shadows&#8217; are controlling Joe Biden"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">David Smith \u2013 Sept 1, The Guardian 2020<\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Donald Trump\u2019s appetite for baseless conspiracy theories scaled new heights on Monday when he alleged that people in \u201cdark shadows\u201d are controlling Democratic rival <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ccffff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/joebiden\">Joe Biden<\/a>.<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The US president made a mysterious claim about \u201cthugs\u201d in \u201cdark uniforms\u201d flying into Washington and also compared police brutality against African Americans to golfers cracking under pressure.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">With the presidential election just two months away, Trump was interviewed at the White House by Laura Ingraham, a host on the conservative Fox News network. \u201cWho do you think is pulling Biden\u2019s strings?\u201d she asked. \u201cIs it former Obama people?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The president replied: \u201cPeople that you\u2019ve never heard of, people that are in the dark shadows. People that \u2013\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Donald Trump says &quot;people that are in the dark shadows&quot; and &quot;people you haven&#39;t heard of&quot; are &#39;pulling the strings&#39; for Joe Biden <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/tjLpVMSRCO\">pic.twitter.com\/tjLpVMSRCO<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JasonSCampbell\/status\/1300620844482416640?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 1, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Even Ingraham, evidently sympathetic to Trump, interjected: \u201cWhat does that mean? That sounds like a conspiracy theory. Dark shadows. What is that?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Trump insisted: \u201cThere are people that are on the streets, there are people that are controlling the streets.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The conversation then took an even stranger turn. \u201cWe had somebody get on a plane from a certain city this weekend,\u201d the president said. \u201cAnd in the plane, it was almost completely loaded with thugs, wearing these dark uniforms, black uniforms, with gear and this and that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">A puzzled Ingraham pressed for details. Trump deflected cryptically: \u201cI\u2019ll tell you some time. It\u2019s under investigation right now.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">But he added that his witness, heading to the Republican national convention, had reported seeing \u201ca lot of people were on the plane to do big damage\u201d. Trump\u2019s claim appeared baffling in the absence of further evidence.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The president is notorious for pushing the \u201cbirther\u201d conspiracy theory about Barack Obama and recently declining to denounce the antisemitic QAnon movement.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">In the interview with Ingraham, Trump also continued his racially divisive rhetoric, describing Black Lives Matter as a \u201cMarxist organisation\u201d. He said: \u201cThe first time I ever heard of Black Lives Matter, I said, \u2018That\u2019s a terrible name. It\u2019s so discriminatory\u2019. It\u2019s bad for Black people. It\u2019s bad for everybody.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The president is <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ccffff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2020\/aug\/31\/trump-kyle-rittenhouse-press-briefing-kenosha\">due to visit Kenosha<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, Wisconsin on Tuesday despite a warning from state governor Tony Evers that he is only likely to enflame tensions. The city has witnessed deadly unrest after Jacob Blake, an African American man, was <a style=\"color: #ccffff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2020\/aug\/25\/wisconsin-governor-promises-police-reforms-jacob-blake-shooting\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>shot seven times <\/strong><\/span><\/a>in the back by police and left <a style=\"color: #ccffff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2020\/aug\/25\/wisconsin-police-fire-teargas-during-second-night-of-protest-over-shooting-of-black-man\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>paralysed from the waist down<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2020\/sep\/01\/donald\">Continues \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Donald Trump says &#8220;people that are in the dark shadows&#8221; are &#8216;pulling the strings&#8217; for Joe Biden. The Guardian doesn\u2019t explain how it knows the claim is \u201cbaseless\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary","category-Inside_the_White_House_and_Washingtons_Beltway"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=212899"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":212901,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212899\/revisions\/212901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=212899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=212899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=212899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}