Brendan Nyhan

NHPR interview on liberal conspiracy theories

My new interview with New Hampshire Public Radio’s Rick Ganley about the spread of liberal conspiracy theories during the Trump administration (MP3):

Many of these conspiracy theories or fake news stories have to do with Trump and his campaign’s connections to Russia. What are you seeing?

“I’m seeing a disturbing trend of people taking the very serious and real questions about Russian interference and using that as a pretext for all sorts of wild and unsupported conspiracy theories. These are often coming from internet personalities and people who work on social media, but they’re infiltrating into the discourse more generally through liberal elites who are amplifying them. So we’re seeing a spread of these claims out into the mainstream in a way that I think is potentially worrisome.”

See also my article for The Upshot and Zack Beauchamp’s piece for Vox on this issue.