CONSPIRATOR IN CHIEF

A presidential historian explores how American presidents have exploited conspiracy theories since the early 19th century.

Donald Trump’s “propensity to incorporate unverified rumors” into his speeches and social media posts is not just a personality flaw, argues Knott—it’s also a cynical strategy to maximize his power. With ever-growing numbers of Americans embracing a plethora of conspiracies that question events spanning from the moon landing to the September 11 attacks, the author posits that Trump has effectively tapped into a base that thrives on populist paranoia to cast his political opponents as an elitist cabal set on the destruction of America. While Trump may well be history’s most brazen president in this regard, Knott convincingly argues that he is not the first to use “conspiracy mongering” to further his political ambitions. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, frequently portrayed his Federalist opponents in the Northeast as “traitors” and described abolitionists as a conspiratorial faction “intent on subjugating the South.” Trump follows the example of past presidents in painting himself as the savior of the common man taking on political opponents who are not only ideological rivals, but also enemies of the people. These past leaders include both Andrew Jackson and Andrew Johnson, who compared themselves to Jesus Christ and claimed their opponents were “engaged in an immense conspiracy to crucify” them. Like Trump in 2020, Jackson denied he lost the 1824 election, and he spent the next four years ascribing John Quincy Adams’ victory to a “corrupt bargain” between Adams and Henry Clay. Knott’s bipartisan critique does not spare progressives, as he notes how Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Harry Truman used wartime patriotism to cast aspersions of disloyalty onto their critics. The presidents who openly embraced the “performative politics” of conspiratorial rhetoric, the author notes, often relied heavily on surrogates to do their dirty work—from Jefferson’s hiring of a “notorious scandal monger” to Richard Nixon’s “plumbers,” who were tasked with planting scandalous stories about the opposition.

One theme particularly stands out in Knott’s effectively argued case: Most of those who eagerly practiced “conspiracy mongering” also embraced racist caricatures and painted themselves as the defenders of white supremacy. Andrew Johnson styled himself as the champion of Southern whites during the Reconstruction era, and Wilson filled his cabinet with pro-segregationists and Ku Klux Klan sympathizers. Much of Nixon’s paranoia, the author asserts, was driven by his antisemitic association of Jews with his elitist enemies, who included Ivy League intellectuals and members of his own party’s eastern establishment. The federal government, Nixon privately claimed, was “full of Jews,” adding that “most Jews are disloyal.” A professor at Ashland University and former co-chair of the University of Virginia’s Presidential Oral History Program, Knott shares his expertise in American presidential history (the text is backed by more than 500 endnotes) with an engaging writing style that successfully captures the varied Machiavellian, paranoid, and ruthless personalities of “conspiracy mongers” throughout U.S. history, highlighting Trump as that group’s apotheosis. The book’s final chapter makes an impassioned, poignant plea for a return to the statesmanship and reconciliatory politics that have characterized other presidential administrations, such as that of Abraham Lincoln, who overtly rejected irrational hysteria and came to the defense of unpopular minority groups.

An absorbing—and frightening—account of how presidents have exploited conspiracies throughout U.S. history.