ISD’s Jared Holt spoke to Politico, MSNBC and NPR about the role of conspiratorial thinking in the Trump administration.

Elon Musk’s ownership of X has allowed for conspiracy theories—once primarily circulating in alternative spaces—to gain mainstream support. Jared described to Politico that while these alternative sites still exist, their cultural capital has diminished in the wake of Musk’s X.

While conspiratorial thinking is not a new phenomenon in American culture, social media has allowed these theories to rapidly mature and proliferate. In an interview with MSNBC, Jared describes how false narratives are not just spreading online and working their way to the top. Rather, elected officials are also popularizing false narratives—often to pander to their base.

Jared spoke to NPR about how claims of elite rings of pedophiles are at the core of the made-up stories in Pizzagate—which claimed Democrats were running a child trafficking ring out of a pizza restaurant in Washington, D.C. —and the real-life Jeffrey Epstein case. According to the far right, Trump has failed to expose the people behind these crimes—causing a riff between Trump and his previously unwaveringly loyal base.

The full articles or interviews are available on Politico, MSNBC and NPR.