Critics of President Donald Trump are concerned that his conspiracy theories, Spygate his latest, are succeeding in diverting attention from his culpability and eroding public trust in crucial institutions such as the FBI, the press and Special Consul Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. “Conspiracies, by definition, are things that others do to you,” said Gwenda Blair, a Trump biographer. “You’re being duped; you’re being fooled; the world is laughing at us. It goes to this idea that you can’t believe anything that you read or see. He has sold us a whole way of accepting a narrative that has so many layers of unaccountable, unsubstantiated content that you can’t possibly peel it all back.” (The New York Times, May 28, 2018, by Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Maggie Haberman)
An examination of the actions of the so-called spy, Emeritus Professor Stefan Halper, show that he was an FBI informant who simply gathered information from persons on the Trump campaign about fellow members of the campaign and their ties to the Russian government. But as with the allegations concerning Hillary Clinton during the campaign, Trump may well be successful in discrediting Meuller’s investigation or at least “give his supporters enough cover to continue to stand by him through thick and thin.” (BBC News, May 24, 2018, by Anthony Zurcher)