Robert Welch Jr., a founder of the John Birch Society, famously maintained
that President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, was “a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy.” Other extremist groups charged that a committee of University of Chicago eggheads was rewriting the Constitution to deprive Americans of their rights to vote and hold property, and that the United Nations was training barefoot African cannibals in Georgia for an armed takeover of the United States.
Mr. Trump also lacks the popularity that allowed presidents like Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton to rally the public behind their proposals and compel Congress to go along with them, and he doesn’t seem to understand
that their skillful use of the reputable media was an integral part of their success.
President Trump won the election in large part because he was one of the few candidates from either party to address terrible problems in the
left-behind parts of the country, including the drug epidemic, declining labor force participation rates and the rising cost of health care.
As one Infowars reader I know from high school told me, “To take Pizzagate seriously, you’d have to be mentally disturbed” — which may well
have been the case for the young man who came to the restaurant armed with an assault rifle to “self investigate” the false claims.
In the 1960s, Republican Party officials and conservative leaders like William F.
Buckley Jr. were able to marginalize the John Birch Society and related groups.
