{"id":1334,"date":"2026-07-15T21:45:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T21:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1334"},"modified":"2026-07-15T21:45:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T21:45:12","slug":"united-states-of-disbelief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1334","title":{"rendered":"United States of Disbelief"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is an edition of The<\/i> Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. <\/i>Sign up for it here.<\/i><\/small><\/p>\n

Read more An Odyssey Deserving of the Biggest Screen Possible<\/a><\/p>\n

You know that conspiracy theories have gotten out of hand when even Donald Trump thinks so. Yesterday in the Oval Office, reporters asked the president about FBI Director Kash Patel\u2019s statement that his agents were assisting in an investigation into Senator Lindsey Graham\u2019s death. Trump said the matter was simple: Graham had fallen victim to a heart problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happened is actually something that\u2019s very hard to detect,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t see a lot of evil there. I know there\u2019s all sorts of conspiracy theories going along. And I don\u2019t think the FBI\u2014I think the FBI\u2019s wasting their time if they\u2019re doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite Trump\u2019s effort to tamp down rumors, speculation about Graham\u2019s death continues to spread, especially among Republicans. The MAGA influencer and self-proclaimed McCarthyite Laura Loomer suspects that Graham was murdered, but Marc Thiessen, a Washington Post <\/i>columnist and former George W. Bush speechwriter, has questions as well. Patel is a MAGA insider and veteran conspiracist, but John Cornyn\u2014an establishment senator who lost Trump\u2019s support and then a primary in May\u2014also wants to see a toxicology report \u201cto rule out any foul play.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, Mitch McConnell\u2019s prolonged absence from the Senate is inspiring conspiracy theories as well. The senator\u2019s office released a photograph Sunday night that was intended to quell rumors, and it even included a copy of that day\u2019s Washington Post<\/i>, like a proof-of-life picture of a hostage. The image was immediately dissected by would-be sleuths who wondered whether it was an AI-generated deepfake or some other kind of fabrication. (The Post <\/i>acquired the original photo from McConnell\u2019s office and says that metadata appear to show it was taken Sunday.) Senator Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican who has seldom met a wild hare he won\u2019t chase, went on the right-wing channel Real America\u2019s Voice and said, \u201cI\u2019ve just heard from some other sources that was an older photo. So I really don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

One can hardly be surprised that so many MAGA-aligned voices are leaping to unproven theories. (I have seen members of the public and media on the left also casting doubt on McConnell\u2019s status, but no comparable remarks by Democratic lawmakers.) A conspiratorial bent has long suffused the right, but Trump made it core to his appeal. His 2016 campaign centered on the ideas that foreign countries were sending criminals to the United States and that Hillary Clinton was engaged in an elaborate uranium scheme with Russia. More recently, his rallying cry is the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him. The president can scarcely complain about the FBI wasting its time when Patel espoused conspiracy theories before his appointment, and when agents have been reinvestigating (yet again) the 2020 election results in Georgia. Fringe ideas find fertile territory in Congress, where roughly two-thirds of House members have joined the chamber since Trump won in 2016.<\/p>\n

This MAGA tendency has exacerbated a broader trend toward low trust in American society, which both preceded and contributed to Trump\u2019s rise. \u201cWhen people in a society lose faith or trust in their institutions and in each other, the nation collapses,\u201d my colleague David Brooks warned in a 2020 essay. \u201cIn periods of distrust, you get surges of populism; populism is the ideology of those who feel betrayed. Contempt for \u2018insiders\u2019 rises, as does suspicion toward anybody who holds authority. People are drawn to leaders who use the language of menace and threat, who tell group-versus-group power narratives. You also get a lot more political extremism.\u201d<\/p>\n

In such an environment, many people are slow to believe official explanations, whether they take the form of medical examiner\u2019s reports or photographs issued by senatorial offices. Distrust has been further exacerbated recently by the rise of artificial intelligence. Disinformation and misinformation experts who spent years telling the public to be on guard against deepfakes are now trying to convince the public that the McConnell image is real. They weren\u2019t wrong to be concerned before, but it\u2019s easy to see how years of warning, combined with a social-trust deficit, contribute to the proliferation of doubt.<\/p>\n

I see this even in people around me whom I\u2019ve never known to be suspicious or susceptible to baseless rumors. I see it in myself at times. The situation reminds me of a famous old bit called \u201cOf Course\u2014But Maybe\u201d by the comedian Louis C.K. \u201cI have, like, the thing I believe\u2014the good thing, that\u2019s the thing I believe\u2014and then there\u2019s this thing and I don\u2019t believe it but it is there<\/i>.\u201d That has become the modern American condition. Skepticism of authority is prudent; excessive skepticism is corrosive. But it\u2019s hard to tell when you\u2019ve crossed that barrier, especially when everyone around you is wrestling with the same question.<\/p>\n

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Trump\u2019s attempts to soothe suspicions about Graham\u2019s death are unlikely to make much difference. One reason is that the atmosphere of distrust has broken containment. Trump may have risen by exploiting that feeling, but now he\u2019s just another authority figure to be doubted. Meanwhile, he continues to feed the problem elsewhere. The president is scheduled to give a speech tomorrow night in which he\u2019s expected to speak about supposed threats to election integrity. Trump\u2019s claims about noncitizen voting and other fraud have all been nonsense. For those who believe what he says, these comments encourage distrust in election officials and democracy broadly; for those who reject what he says, they create reasons not to trust the government he leads. Believe it or not, we are condemned to distrust.<\/p>\n

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