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In an article published Friday, The Washington Post editorial board linked misinformation from President Joe Biden’s administration to a growing acceptance of conspiracy theories among the American public.
The editorial argued that the Biden administration’s efforts to pressure social media companies into suppressing the information contained on Hunter Biden’s laptop, as well as covering up for the former president’s apparent cognitive decline, has led to the public losing trust in government institutions.
“In 2020, a group of 51 former intelligence officials shredded their credibility by signing a public letter insisting the release of Hunter Biden’s emails ‘has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.’ The laptop that contained them was authentic. Joe Biden’s campaign knew that when it pressured social media companies to suppress stories about its damaging contents. These same operatives also covered up Biden’s decline in hopes of winning in 2024,” the editorial board insisted.
Fox News Digital reached out to representatives of the former president for comment.
The editorial was titled, “Conspiracy theories take root when government misleads.”
According to the Post, this mistrust of the government among the public started a long time ago and has only gotten worse as time went on.
They noted that at the time Lee Harvey Oswald killed former President John F. Kennedy, three-quarters of Americans trusted the federal government to do the right thing, at least most of the time. From 2007 on, that number has never eclipsed 30%.
The Post tied this drop-off in trust to the United States’ preemptive invasion of Iraq, “based on cherry-picked intelligence about weapons of mass destruction.”
“Trump’s 2016 victory was partly a response to these and other failures,” they argued.
The editorial board speculated that previous fumbles of the public’s trust, such as the Pentagon Papers and the federal government’s stonewalling surrounding the CIA’s connection to Oswald, have exacerbated the public’s suspicions of President Donald Trump’s handling of the Epstein files.
Citing a Reuters-Ipsos poll released this week, 69% of Americans believe that the federal government is hiding details about the Epstein files. Another poll, by CNN, showed that only 3% of Americans are satisfied with the information the government has released about the case.
While the Post editorial board is critical of the government’s propensity to erode its trust with the public by misleading them with misinformation, it doesn’t believe that the government should start releasing information “willy-nilly” to satisfy conspiracy theorists.
“Even if the full Epstein file were opened and revealed nothing of interest to the public, it probably would not deter fabulists from spinning new theories,” they asserted. “But Americans would not be so receptive to such theorizing had elite institutions avoided some of their spectacular stumbles — or if U.S. leaders refrained from amplifying them. The government’s long-term challenge is to rebuild trust with the public. At the moment, too many officials are eroding it further.”
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