Donald Trump’s COVID-19 infection has inspired so many fantastical crank theories that there’s now nearly a JFK–level number of options to choose from on the subject of the president’s health. Was his contraction of the virus a Chinese assassination attempt? A chance for him to step out of the spotlight to secretly arrest Hillary Clinton for her involvement in an international pedophile ring? A Democratic plot to sideline him right before the election? A fabrication to help Trump earn the sympathy vote, delay the election, or distract Americans from his growing list of last-second scandals?
It might be low-effort, but the theory that’s easily the funniest of the bunch posits that the president caught the virus thanks to an elaborate scheme designed to derail his campaign—rather than months of reckless disregard for safety protocols. “Was the White House targeted?” tweeted Diamond and Silk, a pair of vloggers beloved by the president. The duo—who were recently hired by Newsmax after losing their show on Fox News, reportedly over spreading COVID-19 conspiracy theories—did not offer details elaborating on the implication. C.J. Pearson, a pro–Trump internet personality and teen activist, tweeted on the same day that the so-called targeting of the Trump administration “is becoming less of a conspiracy theory and more so the only conceivable theory.” Rather than blaming Trump and his inner circle for catching the same virus that he repeatedly downplayed, all while mocking people who treated it like the potential killer it is, a prominent Republican made a similarly baseless suggestion to my colleague Gabriel Sherman over the weekend: “It’s weird that all these Republicans are getting it. I don’t know what the fuck is going on. But one thing I’ve learned is: when something major happens thirty days before an election, it usually has to do with the election.”
One theory contrived by Trump supporters includes the claim that a man cleaning the stage at last week’s presidential debate might have “targeted” the president by weaponizing a coronavirus-covered “rag,” which was used to wipe down the podium and a “wire connected to his mic.” A second, less-specific charge was lobbed at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom some Trump supporters on social media have accused of hatching an assassination plot against the president, with their main evidence being her call for Trump to be removed from office and her use of the idiom “arrows in our quiver” to describe how Democratic lawmakers planned to stop Amy Coney Barrett’s SCOTUS nomination. Failed GOP congressional candidate DeAnna Lorraine proposed a more imaginative made-up scenario on Friday: “Could Trump catching COVID-19 technically be viewed as an assassination attempt on our President by the Chinese?” Hours earlier, Lorraine said that she finds “it odd that no prominent Democrats have had the virus but the list of Republicans goes on and on.”
Lorraine, who was just one of dozens of QAnon–tied candidates running as Republicans this cycle, diverged from many of her fellow Q-heads, as the conspiratorial community largely reacted to Trump’s COVID case as a hugely positive development for their side rather than an attack of any kind.
Going back to the onset of the pandemic, QAnon believers—whose entire worldview is based on the idea that Trump is secretly battling a network of Satan-worshipping pedophiles in the so-called deep state and in Hollywood—immediately portrayed the outbreak as a hoax designed by the non-deep-state side of the government to give the president and his white hats in law enforcement a chance to quietly take down Tom Hanks and Oprah Winfrey, and a whole host of other political and entertainment celebrities who they believe represent all manner of biblical evil. So naturally, they view Trump’s positive case as an extension of this plot and claim that he provided supporters with a secret message in his announcement tweet by adding the sentence, “We will get through this TOGETHER!” There were some who alluded to similarities between the president’s remark and on of the most popular phrases associated with QAnon: “Where we go one, we go all.” However, perhaps the most popular interpretation among Q believers is that Trump had embedded a coded message signaling that the arrest of Clinton is imminent—that “TOGETHER” means “TO GET HER”—i.e., he is using the virus to go underground as he assists in the plan to finally lock up his former Democratic opponent.
The idea that the president lied about his diagnosis to pull off an elaborate scheme marks a sort of conspiratorial horseshoe-theory overlap, as it has also been picked up by some of the most cynical minds on the left—albeit for less deranged reasons. In a tweet to her two million followers, actor and progressive activist Bette Midler wrote, “Just learned that Hope Hicks tested positive for Covid. Timing’s so interesting. I guess Trump’s quarantining will mean no rallies, and no more debates. Convenient.” Midler, whose post racked up more than 31,000 likes and 4,000 retweets, added that her assumption of the worst is based on “four years of relentless lying,” after which there is “no trust left.” In another conspiratorial allegation that found a welcoming audience on the more eccentric side of #Resistance Twitter, a couple of popular but since-deleted tweets—one from a former NBCUniversal senior executive, another from a random Twitter user who nonetheless managed to rack up 40,000 shares and likes—claimed to have exposed the president for concealing “a portable oxygen concentrator in his pocket with the nasal cannula going up his back” as he boarded Marine One on Friday to visit Walter Reed hospital. This was debunked over the weekend, but similar false claims have continued to crop up in the past couple days, resulting in the hashtag #TrumpCovidHoax to trend on Twitter. In a Facebook post, progressive documentarian Michael Moore compelled his fans to “always remain skeptical when it comes to Trump. He may have it. But it’s also possible he’s lying. That’s just a fact,” adding, “HE MAY USE THIS TO PUSH FOR DELAYING/POSTPONING THE ELECTION.” The Fahrenheit 11/9 filmmaker continued, “The constitution does not allow for this, but he doesn’t give a f*ck about the constitution. He and his thug Attorney General [William] Barr have no shame and will stop at nothing to stay in power.”