DAVID WOIWOD: The fact-free internet wackos Donald Trump hopes will help get him back in the White House

Just when you thought the loudest voices at the kooky core of Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement had hit peak lunacy, a new and unhinged conspiracy that “they” control the weather has burst onto the scene.

This latest mad missile is thanks to Trump loyalist and Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, and the “they” in this context is a new riff on an old anti-Semitic trope that deserves no further airtime.

But MGT’s vile misfire once again illustrates the poisonous depths to which this reckless wing of the Republican party will delve in its pursuit of sowing racial discord and stoking resentment.

And the only thing more terrifying than Taylor Greene’s bonkers and frankly vile brain snaps is her proximity to the man who could be the next president.

It’s hardly news that Donald Trump loves to peddle a good conspiracy theory.

In 2008 his fake “birther” fantasy about Barack Obama being born overseas and therefore ineligible to be president was an early example of his willingness to use divisive delusion as a political weapon.

But lately, his inner circle has become ever more accommodating to the reality-detached purveyors of concocted grievance and hate.

Enter Laura Loomer.

Unless you regularly wallow in the fetid depths of X (formerly Twitter) among the parade of hyper-online excrement-chuckers, you’ve likely never heard of her.

But to describe Loomer as a “right-wing provocateur” would be to undersell the dangers of her ideas.

Vocally pushing cuckoo conspiracy theories has helped the 31-year-old amass a devoted online following at the vanguard of modern political disinformation.

It’s also given her the ear of Trump himself.

Loomer’s greatest hits include an insistence that 9/11 was an “inside job”. A cracker position that continues to haunt victims’ families, yet last month it earned her a coveted place in Trump’s entourage as he commemorated the anniversary of the attacks in New York City.

The former president describes Loomer as a “free spirit” and regularly cherry-picks lines from her latest cooked-up conspiracies, much to the delight of rallygoers.

At last month’s presidential debate, Loomer travelled with Trump on his private plane as part of his personal entourage, gleefully rubbing shoulders with his adult children and senior advisers.

And as Trump frantically defended himself in the post-debate “spin room” after an objectively weak performance against Kamala Harris, Loomer’s ear-to-ear grin was proof positive her whacky brand of loopy nonsense had gone mainstream.

Her presence crystallised Donald Trump’s willingness to now outwardly embrace the darkest corners of the internet for his political gain.

We needn’t rehash the fallacy underpinning his wild (and frankly racist) accusations that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating the local community’s pets.

That lie was plucked directly from the fact-free world of online conservative myth-making that has made Loomer — and many like her — a star.

It’s a world that moves at astonishing speed, with each new and unattributed claim a masterclass in creative writing.

And it’s a world now with a direct line to the Trump campaign.

In 2016, president Trump operated within the guardrails of many traditional Republicans who filled his cabinet and inner circle. They’d been there and done that before.

In 2024, candidate Trump is far more isolated from these establishment figures. Instead, he’s surrounded himself with the nutty shadow boxers of the depraved online world. And he amplifies their lies.

These cover a kaleidoscope of lunacy including the causes of hurricanes, America’s COVID death toll, the miscounting of ballots, and the so-called “truth” behind Kamala Harris’ past as a burger-flipping student working at McDonald’s. No fabricated issue is too big, or small.

On stage at debates, via his social media accounts and in his fundraising emails — many of these lies and concoctions are turbo-charging an alternate reality in Trump’s America.

This weekend at the former president’s heroic return to the stage in Butler, Pennsylvania where he was almost assassinated, a woman spoke to me about her sense of impending doom if Trump loses the election.

“It’s all over if they get away with cheating again,” she said.

“America will be all over”.

It was a dark warning from an otherwise jolly middle American.

And why wouldn’t she be fearful? Her corner of the internet tells her every day that America will drop off a cliff into the existential abyss if Harris “cheats” in this election.

That’s despite no evidence pointing to past or future attempts at “cheating”.

Not only are these unfounded claims spread by Trump himself, but they’re also pushed by a rabid right-wing media ecosystem designed to inflame voters, like this woman, even further.

Right now, a hopeful MAGA movement is banking on a dotty superhighway of misinformation to help it slipstream their conspiracy theorist-in-chief back into the White House.

And it just may work.

This election will very likely come down to just a handful of voters in a handful of states.

And in 29 days those voters will have the final say on Donald Trump and the company he keeps.

David Woiwod is the 7NEWS US bureau chief