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**David Pakman** (1:24)
On today's show, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham suddenly dies and it triggers an explosion of conspiracy theories online. We're going to walk through them. We will talk about how these theories take shape, why millions of people are posting about it, and we'll also explore whether there's anything to those theories. Donald Trump then quietly dismantling a bipartisan election commission, which helps keep American elections running. Almost nobody noticed it is a very important story. Trump makes the death of Lindsey Graham all about himself and goes off completely off the rails in a bizarre Fox News interview, plus going totally nuclear on Truth Social. And we will look at the White House's latest move against journalists, which reminds me of when the Trump administration tried to get my first book delisted from Amazon. We will talk about why this is such an attack on the First Amendment at the end of the day. Plus, my friend Brian Tyler Cohen will join me to talk about his new book. A lot of books reading, writing, not so much arithmetic. Not today anyway, but we'll get back to the arithmetic tomorrow, I'm sure.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham suddenly died within hours of returning from Ukraine at age 71
And this has unleashed a wave of conspiracy theories across social media. There was some mourning of the longtime Republican senator, but very quickly questions as to whether he had been poisoned have started. Others quickly took the theory even further, arguing that Lindsey Graham's death wasn't even an isolated event, that it's part of a broader pattern involving other high profile deaths and unexplained illnesses, including the continuing mystery of Mitch McConnell's now nearly month long hospitalization. We're going to update you on that. But let's start with Lindsey Graham.
What do we actually know?
Lindsey Graham's office announced yesterday that at age 71, he died after what was described as a brief and sudden illness. Now that word illness is the subject of much discussion. This was after returning from Ukraine, which is also not an insignificant detail in the theories that are sprouting. Now, initially, we had no medical information as to what happened. According to President Trump, Lindsey Graham came back from a trip to Ukraine. Trump spoke to him by phone the previous night. Trump said Graham sounded a little bit tired, but perfect. And that was basically the extent of what was initially publicly available. That lack of detail has fueled so much speculation. Now, at that point in time, there was no public evidence that Lindsey Graham had been poisoned. But what's sort of fascinating is more than just the rumor. It's let's watch the conspiracy theories take shape and you could see the process unfold. And the way it typically works is public figure dies unexpectedly. Official explanation is brief.
Some information is missing, maybe for nefarious reasons, but maybe just because it's too soon to have additional information. And then people start collecting events into a pattern. Someone connects two dots and someone else connects those two to five more. And before long, you've got thousands or even millions of people convinced that they've uncovered something that the media doesn't want them to know. That is how it happened here. And some people online pointed to the death of Israeli television producer Dana Eden when she was in Greece overseeing production of the fourth season of Tehran. Greek authorities said we're treating her death as a suicide. She worked on a Mossad themed TV show. There was a lot of speculation right away. Now, then others said, OK, you've got Dana Eden and Lindsey Graham, who was in Ukraine. And others then said, we've also got the death of Israeli venture capitalist Zaki Jamal during a business trip to New York. He was only 38 years old, widely known in Israel's technology sector and suddenly died. And some commentators, I guess you could say, said, look at look at this cluster now, even though we don't have evidence of foul play nor a connection. But then, and I know some of you are thinking about this, we've got the Mitch McConnell situation. Former Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is still in the hospital up until yesterday. He had been hospitalized for weeks with no information as to why he was hospitalized and no proof of life. And even the Associated Press sort of noted, hey, listen, Lindsey Graham's death is coming during a period where there is concern about transparency around the health of members of Congress. And there's the McConnell thing. Now, before we get back, because I'm going to I'm going to sort of do a follow up on each of these. I'm planting some seeds and then we're going to see whether anything grows. There's another piece, which is that Cash Patel tweeted out about, you know, Senator Lindsey Graham, devoted public servant, et cetera, and mentions the FBI is assisting local authorities and has made every necessary resource available. And this is when the speculation really grew, because initially when it was sudden illness, why do you need the FBI for a sudden illness? Later it was cardiac arrest, additional information. Why do you need the FBI for cardiac arrest? That's sort of weird. And this fomented the pattern. Now I think that this is when media literacy becomes really important, because human beings are really good at recognizing patterns. And sometimes we're too good at it. And we have sort of evolved to connect dots, because if you missed a pattern on the savanna, could be dangerous. Next thing you know, you're getting mauled by lions. But that's an instinct that sometimes leads us to connect dots that don't really have anything to do with each other. And when you have an unanswered question, that's not really evidence of a conspiracy.