List of conspiracy theories promoted by Donald Trump

“Trump conspiracy” redirects here. For Trump’s charges of conspiracy relating to the 2020 U.S. presidential election, see Federal prosecution of Donald Trump (election obstruction case). This article contains a list of conspiracy theories, many of them misleading, disproven, or false, which were either created or promoted by Donald Trump, the president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.

Theories

Attacks on political opponents

Barack Obama
  • Obama citizenship conspiracy theories, aka “Birtherism”, later retracted
  • Conspiracy that Bill Ayers wrote Obama’s memoir Dreams from My Father
  • False claims of fraud in the 2012 election
  • Support for ISIS conspiracy theory
Bill and Hillary Clinton
  • False claim that Hillary Clinton started the birther conspiracy theory
  • Clinton body count conspiracy theory
  • Jeffrey Epstein’s death was a murder conducted by Bill Clinton
  • Pizzagate conspiracy theory and portrayals of the Clintons as pedophiles
  • Suicide of Vince Foster
  • Murder of Seth Rich
  • Uranium One controversy
Ted Cruz
  • Assassination of John F. Kennedy - alleged Rafael Cruz, the father of Texas Senator and Republican presidential candidate for the 2016 elections Ted Cruz, had ties to Lee Harvey Oswald.
Joe and Hunter Biden
  • Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory
  • Osama bin Laden death conspiracy theories, specifically claiming Biden and Obama staged killing with body double
  • Hunter Biden laptop controversy and China business dealings conspiracy theory
  • Hunter Biden cocaine conspiracy theory, specifically relating to the cocaine found in the White House in July 2023
Biden Administration
  • False claim that the Biden administration had been ready to kill him during the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago
  • Conspiracy theories about the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season
Kamala Harris
  • Harris citizenship conspiracy theories
Joe Scarborough
  • Joe Scarborough murder conspiracy
Others
  • Claim that Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau is secretly the son of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro

Claims about clandestine opposition

Deep State
  • Accusations against a “deep state” resisting Trump administration objectives and proper prosecution of Trump foes
  • Expressions of support for QAnon adherents
Antifa
  • Attribution of Buffalo police shoving incident to antifa

Robert Mueller investigation deflections

  • Allegations of Obama spying on Trump, including Spygate and Trump Tower wiretapping allegations
  • Allegations of Hillary Clinton spying on Trump
  • Ukrainian responsibility for election interference

2016 and 2020 election claims

  • To sow election doubt, Trump escalated use of “rigged election” and “election interference” statements in advance of the 2024 election compared to the previous two elections—the statements described as part of a “heads I win; tails you cheated” rhetorical strategy.
  • Trump’s false claim of a stolen election
  • Italygate
  • Stop the Steal
  • Voter impersonation
  • Claimed he won the popular vote during the 2016 presidential election, saying “I think there was tremendous cheating in California, there was tremendous cheating in New York and other places”.

Claims of corrupt science, medicine, and statistics

  • COVID-19 deaths systematically overcounted
  • Allegations of collusion between Anthony Fauci and the pharmaceutical industry
  • Claims that Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci profited from COVID-19 vaccinations
  • Global warming conspiracy theory, claimed that “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
  • Hurricane Maria death toll controversy
  • Mob responsible for movement against asbestos
  • Vaccines cause autism, tweeted “Healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of many vaccines, doesn’t feel good and changes - AUTISM. Many such cases!” Tweeted, “I am being proven right about massive vaccinations—the doctors lied. Save our children & their future” and that parents “know far better than fudged-up reports.” At Republican debate, claimed “Just the other day, two years old, 2½ years old, a child, a beautiful child went to have the vaccine, and came back, and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic.”
  • Wind turbines cause cancer

Exaggerating the threat of immigrants and non-whites

  • Great replacement conspiracy theory, alleging that non-white immigrants from Latin America are seeking to displace American citizens in areas of employment, housing, and education.
  • Tweeted infographic falsely stating that whites killed by blacks constitute 81% of crime, citing the nonexistent “Crime Statistics Bureau — San Francisco”
  • Alleged actions by Muslims as claimed by Britain First
  • Claimed to have witnessed Muslims in Jersey City cheering the 9/11 terrorist attack
  • Endorsement of counter-jihad themes, as well as individuals associated with the movement
  • Syrian refugee as ISIS members conspiracy
  • Mexican government forces criminals across border
  • White-nationalist conspiracy theory involving murder of white South African farmers and expropriation of their land
  • Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio eating cats and dogs

Claims of wealthy funders of protestors

  • Suggested violent protestors were being funded by “some very stupid rich people”
  • Alleging that antifa activists were being funded by Democrats, George Soros or “other people”.

Claims about George Soros

  • That Soros was backing the protests against Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination.
  • That Soros funded the Central American migrant caravans heading toward the United States.
  • That district attorney Alvin Bragg was “bought and paid for” by Soros.

Questioning terrorism

  • 9/11 conspiracy theories
  • Denialism and whitewashing regarding the January 6 Capitol attack

Conspiracy theorists endorsed by Trump

Donald Trump has encouraged individuals who spread conspiracy theories.

  • Had dinner with Kanye West after he had promoted anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and had vowed to go “death [sic] con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE”. His dinner guest was Nick Fuentes, a well-known Holocaust denier.
  • Alex Jones, publisher of InfoWars, a climate change denialist who has said that the World Bank invented the “hoax” of climate change, falsely claims that vaccines cause autism and who encouraged his listeners to harass the victims of the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, which he called a “hoax”. Trump appeared on InfoWars, where he praised Jones’s “amazing reputation”, and repeated Jones’s claims on the campaign trail.
  • Paul Joseph Watson, who worked for Alex Jones’ InfoWars and whose conspiracy theory interests include chemtrails, the New World Order and the Illuminati.
  • Laura Loomer, who has made false claims about several U.S. mass shootings, including that they were affiliated with ISIS or that the shootings were entirely staged
  • Jack Posobiec, known for promoting the Pizzagate conspiracy theory.
  • Sidney Powell, an attorney who joined the Trump legal team in 2020, although the team distanced itself from her after she publicly claimed that the 2020 election had been rigged by an elaborate international communist plot. She filed and lost four federal cases, alleging voter fraud of “biblical” proportions and claiming that voting machines had been secretly programmed to switch votes from Trump to Biden.
  • Rudy Giuliani, the former Mayor of New York City during the September 11 attacks, best known in more recent years for his role as Donald Trump’s attorney in various lawsuits pertaining to and a leading proponent of conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election, such as that between 65,000 and 165,000 ballots in Georgia were illegally cast by underage voters, that between 32,000 and “a few hundred thousand” illegal immigrants voted in Arizona, and that from 8,021 to 30,000 votes in Pennsylvania were cast fraudulently by people voting in the names of deceased persons whose names had yet to be purged from voter rolls.
  • L. Lin Wood, an attorney who promoted conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election, claiming that Trump had won the election with 70% of the vote, and that a secret cabal of international communists, Chinese intelligence, and Republican officials had contrived to steal the election from Trump. Wood also claims that “no planes” hit the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and that planes visible in the footage are “CGI”. He announced that he had “entered the public debate around the ‘flat earth’ issue”, endorsing the belief that it is flat.
  • Kelly Townsend, an Arizona Senator sought out Trump in 2011 pushing the Obama birther conspiracy Townsend along with Roger Stone associate Jerome Corsi, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and 2020 Maricopa County Sheriff candidate and then chief Arpaio staffer Jerry Sheridan, worked with informant Dennis Montgomery. In 2020, Townsend worked again with Jerome Corsi claiming the election was stolen from Donald Trump and emailed Corsi a document of Arizona Senators endorsing Trump electors for Vice President Pence, in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election. In November 2020, Townsend assisted Sidney Powell along with her birther conspiracy associate Dennis Montgomery who back in 2011 alleged Hammer and Scorecard was spying and used to hack into government computers and change Obamas birth certificate, and in 2020 with Townsend and Powell shifted his claims stating the supercomputer was being used to hack and flip votes in favor of Biden in 2020, and Townsend was listed as a key witness in Powell’s Arizona election fraud case. In the lead up to January 6, 2021, Townsend sponsored a bill that would designate Trump electors to Arizona and promoted the Arizona audit and stolen election claims. Townsend has also been a leader of the anti-vax movement claiming in 2019 that all vaccines are communist.
  • Rick Wiles, founder of TruNews was granted press credentials by the Trump Administration. Wiles is known for pushing homophobic and anti-semitic conspiracy theories, including that the Jews seek to take control of the United States to “kill millions of Christians” and stated, “9/11 wasn’t done by the Muslims. It was done by a wildcard, the Israeli Mossad, that’s cunning and ruthless and can carry out attacks on Americans and make it look like Arabs did it.” In July 2018, during the Trump Administration, he claimed that Anderson Cooper and Rachel Maddow were going to lead a “homosexual coup on the White House” that would result in the nationally televised decapitation of the Trump family on the White House lawn.