Hillary Clinton just gave a speech about Donald Trump’s many connections to the online community of racists and bigots known as the “alt-right,” and Slate has a lot of coverage of her speech forthcoming. I’d like to pick out one example of one alarming Trump tactic that she highlighted, though, which may be the most insane of the thousands of insane things that Trump has done during the 2016 campaign: welcoming the support of Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist who thinks that 9/11 was perpetrated by the U.S. government and that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax carried out by child actors.
Clinton’s words:
[Trump’s delusional view of the world] is what happens when you listen to the radio host Alex Jones, who claims that 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombings were inside jobs. He said the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre were child actors and no one was actually killed there.
I don’t know what happens in somebody’s mind or how dark their heart must be to say things like that. But Trump doesn’t challenge these lies. He actually went on Jones’ show and said, “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.” This from the man who wants to be president of the United States.
The thing about this that is amazing is that it is simply, nonhyperbolically true. Donald Trump really did effusively praise and appears to have no problem accepting the support of someone who is sick enough to insist in public that the Sandy Hook massacre, in which 20 6- and 7-year-old children were methodically murdered with an assault rifle by a stranger, was just some propaganda gag staged by actors.
Dark is the right word for it, all right. How the hell did we get here?
