Walid Phares, a key Donald Trump adviser, has offered an original theory for his candidate’s plummeting poll numbers:
The triangle Clintonmachine-Iranregime-MuslimBrotherhood has unleashed a coordinated propaganda offensive against @realDonaldTrump worldwide
— Walid Phares (@WalidPhares) October 15, 2016
Poor Walid. He once allegedly trained Lebanese Christian militants; now his career as a “national security expert” depends on Trump’s ability to win a presidential campaign.
His tweet is fairly representative of his professional output to date in that it is both Islamophobic and totally false: There’s no evidence that Iran has tried to interfere with our election. There’s no evidence that the Muslim Brotherhood has done so either (or that it possesses a functioning infrastructure in the U.S. at all).
But Phares built a career catering to reactionary night terrors, and he therefore understands that invoking “Muslim Brotherhood” and “Iran” is the right-wing equivalent of saying “Beetlejuice” three times. It’s all he needs to do to rouse Trump supporters, who’ve never met a conspiracy theory they didn’t believe.