After his indictment on April 4 by a New York court, Donald Trump says he is the victim of a “witch hunt” orchestrated by the Democrats. A little conspiratorial music to which the former President of the United States has accustomed us, and for a very long time.
It’s a historic image: Donald Trump, surrounded by bodyguards, looking serious, enters a New York courtroom on April 4. The 76-year-old former president of the United States is then accused of accounting fraud, suspected of having “orchestrated” a series of payments to stifle three cases before the presidential election of 2016.
Back at his residence in Florida, Donald Trump described as“insult to the nation” his formal indictment, accusing Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney “supported by Georges Soros”. Enough to fuel attacks with conspiratorial hints against the American philanthropist. “What could be better when you want to blame the origin of your troubles on others than to choose a known, identified enemy, a scapegoat? And to accuse him of being behind all the problems you encounterexplains Rudy Reichstadt. So Donald Trump is playing the Soros card, it’s a safe bet. It is certain that his supporters will come to his side to defend him and relay his discourse of victimization. Soros, that two-syllable name, “has become in the Alt-Right a synonym for ‘conspiracy against America’, not without some anti-Semitic overtones”he recalls.
From Deep State to Waco Symbol
It’s no longer a secret: Donald Trump is running again in the presidential election of 2024, and his legal affairs will not prevent him from doing so. At a meeting in Waco, Texas, on March 26, Donald Trump declared in front of an enthusiastic crowd: “Either the Deep State destroys America, or we destroy the Deep State.” For Rudy Reichstadt, the ‘deep state’ formula “allowed Trump, upon his arrival in the White House in 2017, to blame his failures and his incompetence on an untraceable conspiracy of shadow saboteurs.”
Was the city of Waco chosen by chance? His meeting was held almost 30 years after the Waco tragedy. On April 19, 1993, the FBI launched, with the approval of President Bill Clinton, the final assault against the Branch Davidians entrenched in a ranch in Texas. “It is not known whether the city of Waco was chosen for Trump precisely for this reason and it is entirely possible that it was a coincidence.continues Rudy Reichstadt, but, what is certain, is that for some of the supporters, Waco is a very strong symbol.” It is also in Waco that conspiracy theories about the Clintons are born.
>> United States: the conspirators and after Donald Trump
The Capitol Commission of Inquiry
In this episode, a look back at the work of the parliamentary commission of inquiry into the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. A damning report for Donald Trump. “What the investigation brings to light is indeed a real conspiracy against the normal functioning of democracy, its inspirations, its orchestrators, its performers, its accomplices – people like Roger Stone or Rudy Giuliani – and those, too, , who refused to endorse him”explains Rudy Reichstadt. “January 6 is the culmination of a long process of conspiratorial speeches that manages to falter democracy”believes Tristan Mendès France.
Finally, the episode returns to the conspiratorial imprint of Donald Trump, the theories pushed from 2011 against in particular Barack Obama, to his close ties with the QAnon movement.
The conspirators and post-Trump: this is the first episode of Complorama, with Rudy Reichstadt, director of Conspiracy Watch, and Tristan Mendès France, lecturer and member of the observatory of conspiracy, specialist in digital cultures. A podcast to be found every other Friday on the Radio France application and several other platforms such as Apple podcasts, Spotify, or Deezer.