Trump’s zeal for conspiracy theories — just a flicker until he embraced birtherism in 2011 — has boomeranged on him in Ukraine and left him mired in an impeachment inquiry: bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
"One of the telling aspects of Trump’s turn to sprawling conspiracy theorizing eight years ago, and his subsequent immersion in it, is that it’s one of the few signature pieces of his current repertoire that isn’t a throwback."
Charles Coughlin, the anti-Semitic “radio priest” of the '30s, and Joseph McCarthy, who used TV to stoke the '50s red scare, exemplified Hofstadter’s thinking. Trump, who’s used social media and Fox News’s talk shows to propagate conspiracies, stands squarely on their shoulders. 
"But Trump's recent efforts to choreograph, and not merely disseminate, a grandiose conspiracy theory — that the Bidens profited from corruption in Ukraine and that that country itself was the real villain of the 2016 election — have snapped back on him."
"At a minimum the president is getting a very rapid political education. He’s learning the difference between promoting myths that are merely incendiary or hateful and more broad-based conspiracy theories that test the limits of the law." bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
