This is an adapted excerpt from the Sept. 9 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
Friday marks the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, and as they have done many times before, Republicans are trying to use that tragedy as a weapon against their domestic political opponents. While that hasn’t changed over the past 25 years, there is another phenomenon that has changed quite a bit in that time, particularly in the last few years: The right has started to embrace conspiracy theories that run counter to their usual 9/11 narratives.
Take, for example, Bruce Blakeman, the New York Republican gubernatorial candidate. He recently blasted sitting Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul for wearing a headscarf at a mosque, saying it was “tone deaf” to 9/11 victims. He also said Democratic New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani isn’t welcome at the ground zero memorial, and told attendees they should snub him.
But on Wednesday, City & State New York reported that Blakeman cut an endorsement video for a Republican congressional candidate who posted that the 2001 attack was “an inside job” — a 9/11 truther.
Remember that term? They’re the folks who say jet fuel cannot melt steel beams, that the Twin Towers and other buildings were brought down by controlled explosive demolitions, that Flight 93, which crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, had been shot down by the military, and that the Pentagon was not struck by an airplane at all.
Republicans have long understood how radioactive truther conspiracy theories are. So toxic that you couldn’t even imagine it coming out of the mouth of, say, a sitting U.S. senator — until recently.
Back in the day, you could find them at protests against the wars and George Bush’s administration. But also, the mere fact of their existence was used by some White House allies to try to paint all critics of their foreign policy as crazy kooks.
After 9/11, this stuff cost people their careers. Just look at Van Jones. You may know him now as a centrist political commentator. But back in 2009, he was tapped to be President Barack Obama‘s green jobs czar.
That was until Fox host Glenn Beck waged a one-man campaign to make him the face of radicalism in the White House, culminating in the discovery that his name appeared on a 9/11 truther petition.
But Jones said he never saw or signed that petition, and when he asked the group behind it to remove his name, it did. It also said it could find no record of him asking to be on it in the first place.
However, that didn’t matter back then. Just his name on some random petition was enough. The damage was done, and Jones was marked as a truther. Republicans demanded his resignation, and they got it.
Republicans have been experts at using 9/11 as a blunt political instrument. They have long understood how radioactive truther conspiracy theories are. So toxic that you couldn’t even imagine it coming out of the mouth of, say, a sitting U.S. senator — until recently.
Back in April of last year, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., went on a right-wing podcast and said he had “an awful lot of questions” about the attacks. He suggested that Building 7 of the World Trade Center was brought down in a controlled demolition and called for more Senate investigations into the horrific event.
Johnson was rightfully criticized for making those comments, including by first responders who survived 9/11, some of whom went to the senator’s office in a failed attempt to talk to him. Instead of speaking to those survivors, who called his comments “outlandish,” the Republican went on another podcast to discuss the debunked conspiracy theories. During an interview with Tucker Carlson, Johnson doubled down and even said it was “cool to watch” Building 7 collapse.
But Johnson didn’t stop there. At an annual convention of 9/11 truthers held over the anniversary of the attacks last year, he wasn’t just in attendance; he was the keynote speaker.
Now, it has to be acknowledged that Johnson has been a vector of crazy, baseless claims for years: on Ukraine, vaccines, the so-called great replacement, the 2020 election, the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and, of course, Covid-19. Last month, Johnson was one of two senators who organized a subcommittee show trial where they took turns yelling at Dr. Anthony Fauci.
But Johnson is fairly new to 9/11 conspiracy theories, and that is part of the story here. So what changed? How does one come to 9/11 trutherism for the first time? Well, he explained at that convention last year.
“I started delving into this. I had never heard of Building 7; the vast majority of Americans haven’t. So again, people are seeing this, people are asking questions,” Johnson told the crowd. “More people are understanding that you can’t trust the government because you saw how much they lied to us during Covid.” He added, “Once your eyes are opened, you can’t close them.”
The people who believe Covid conspiracy theories believe them rabidly. That makes them a formidable political bloc, and it also makes them susceptible to other fringe-y unsubstantiated theories, like trutherism.
By speaking at that event and sharing these debunked theories, Johnson is providing a permission structure for others to believe ghastly untrue things about the attacks on America. Just as he and his party colleagues helped create a permission structure to revolt against public health and fair election outcomes.
There used to be a political price to be paid for even being seen as adjacent to the most absurd and insensitive of conspiracy theories. But for Johnson and Republicans, there is no price to pay, just a constituency to mold.
Allison Detzel contributed.
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