‘ OFFICIALLY OFF THE TRUMP TRAIN’
For hours, the Trump Internet warned that their president was being tricked. Mike Cernovich and Alex Jones’s Infowars — both have earned praise from Donald Trump or those close to him in the recent past — promoted a conspiracy theory all day Thursday that blamed the U.S. deep state for the gas attack in Syria, and not the Assad regime. Infowars called the attack a “false flag” meant to force the United States into a war.
(The deep state is the conspiracy world’s belief that career government workers can exert authority to influence policy, disregarding elected officials.)
Under the hashtag #SyriaHoax, a part of Twitter that usually musters its powers to promote Trump’s agenda started to urge the president to stay out of Syria.
“I voted for you, my whole family voted for you,” said Angelo John Gage, a marine veteran who was once the chairman of the white nationalist National Youth Front. “We all busted our a-- es to destroy the fake media news, and now you’re falling for it.”
Cernovich, meanwhile, livestreamed himself talking about Syria for about 11 hours total on Thursday. Cernovich was adamant that Trump might actually listen to him and his readers for a decent reason: There’s plenty of evidence that Trump reads and values conspiracy-theory sites like Infowars, and Cernovich himself appears to have some readers in the Trump administration.
In a tweet Cernovich suggested that “basic logic and 101 level game theory and strategic thinking” had to be ignored if one were to believe that the Syrian government had gassed its own people.
Several hours into his livestream, however, news broke that Trump hadn’t listened to them. “I don’t know if this is true or not. This is not my journalism,” he said, reading the news on his iPad while broadcasting live. “I certainly don’t want this to be true.” As it became clear to him that it was true, Cernovich said: “This is appalling really. This is unbelievable. This is not what we voted for. This is definitely not what we voted for.”
On Twitter, the reaction from the Trump Internet was fractured and furious. Paul Joseph Watson, a Youtuber who writes for Infowars, had one of the most dramatic.
“I guess Trump wasn’t “Putin’s puppet” after all, he was just another deep state/NeoCon puppet,” tweeted Watson who added he was “officially off the Trump train.”
Richard Spencer, the white nationalist whose “Heil Trump” rally embarrassed the administration, called the strike “a sad, shocking and deeply frustrating moment.”
Other Trump Internet personalities were trying to send a different message. Bill Mitchell, for instance, fired off a ton of tweets urging supporters to calm down:
“1) Trump takes bold action. 2) Everyone freaks out. 3) Time passes and Trump proven right. 4) Everyone calms down. 5) Rinse and repeat…”