During an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham that aired on Monday night, President Donald Trump alleged unnamed people in “dark shadows” are controlling Joe Biden.
The video: In discussing what he characterized as anarchists and thugs terrorizing American cities, Trump said, “People that you’ve never heard of, people that are in the dark shadows” are pulling the strings of the Democratic presidential nominee.
- Ingraham asked the president to elaborate, saying, “That sounds like a conspiracy theory.”
- Trump responded: “There are people that are on the streets, there are people that are controlling the streets.”
Trump said a Republican National Convention attendee had traveled to Washington, D.C., “on a plane from a certain city, and in the plane it was almost completely loaded with thugs wearing these dark uniforms, black uniforms with gear and this and that.”
- “A lot of the people were on the plane to do big damage,” he said.
- The president declined to say where he heard the story, saying it was under investigation, but promised Ingraham he would reveal it “sometime.”
Trump added that “people you’ve never heard of, people in the dark shadows” may be facilitating much of the left’s activism.
- “The money is coming from some very stupid rich people [who] have no idea that if their thing ever succeeded, which it won’t, they will be thrown to the wolves like you’ve never seen before,” he said.
The reaction: Trump’s “dark shadows” comments quickly made national headlines, and one clip of the exchange has been viewed more than 9 million times on Twitter.
Many liberals on Twitter accused the president of promoting baseless conspiracies, with CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta saying, “Trump has a new conspiracy theory that people in the ‘dark shadows’ are controlling Biden.”
Rep. Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat joined in speculation that Trump is dangerously unhinged.
- Swalwell also used the moment as a fundraising opportunity for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign.
Others decided Trump was cynically appealing to followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory whom he praised last month.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York was among those who said Ingraham had prevented Trump from making a number of gaffes during the interview.
- “You know things are bad when Laura Ingraham has to save President Trump from saying stupid things,” he said.
However, the Trump campaign noted Sen. Rand Paul similarly suggested on Fox News that protesters who mobbed him as he left the Republican National Convention last week had been paid to come to Washington, D.C., as part of “interstate criminal traffic being paid for across state lines.”
- No evidence of such an alleged scheme has been made public.
Some pro-Trump commentators, like Jack Posobiec, were intrigued by the president’s allusions to nefarious forces.
- Posobiec changed his Twitter handle to “Dark Shadows Poso” and urged, “Tell us more about the plane.”
Other conservatives were more interested in Trump’s views on the roles of Democrats, the Black Lives Matter movement and law enforcement in nationwide racial unrest.
- On Biden and Portland’s Democratic Mayor Ted Wheeler: “These are terrible and very incompetent people,” Trump said.
- On Biden’s claim riots are a hallmark of “Donald Trump’s America”: “[If I weren’t president] you would have riots like you’ve never seen.”
- On BLM: “Black Lives Matter is a Marxist organization. … It’s so discriminatory. It’s bad for black people. It’s bad for everybody,” Trump said.
- On why corporations have funded BLM: “Because they’re weak people, led by weak people, in many cases, not all corporations are.”
- On police shootings: “The police are under siege … But they choke. Just like in a golf tournament, they miss a 3-foot putt. People choke. And people are bad people. You have both,” Trump said.
- On whether Trump supporters should confront protesters: “No. No. No. I want to leave it to law enforcement. … But my supporters are wonderful, hardworking, tremendous people. And they turn on the television set and they look at a Portland or they look at a Kenosha before I got involved and stopped it.”
The president has supported law enforcement, rhetorically and with federal resources, against what he sees as radical protesters and weak Democratic officials.
- He recently defended two of his supporters who were involved in deadly clashes at violent protests last month in Portland, Oregon, and Kenosha, Wisconsin, respectively.
Trump told Ingraham he was visiting Kenosha on Tuesday over the objections of local Democratic leaders “because I am a tremendous fan of law enforcement and I want to thank the law enforcement. They’ve done a good job.”
