Jan. 6 testimony sends Trump stalwarts to new conspiracy theories

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One by one, several of Donald Trumps former top advisers have told a special House committee investigating his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection that they didnt believe his lies about the 2020 election and that the former president knew he lost to Joe Biden.

But instead of convincing Trumps most stalwart supporters, testimony from former Atty. Gen. Bill Barr and Trumps daughter Ivanka about the election and the attack on the US Capitol is prompting many of them to simply reassert their views that the former president was correct in his false claim of victory.

Barrs testimony that Trump was repeatedly told there was no election fraud? He was paid off by a voting machine company, according to one false claim that went viral this week. Ivanka Trump saying she didnt believe her father either? Its all part of Trumps grand plan to confuse his enemies and save America.

The claims again demonstrate how deeply rooted Trumps false narrative about the election has become.

Its cognitive dissonance, said Jennifer Stromer-Galley, a Syracuse University professor who has studied how Trump used social media and advertising to mobilize his base. If you believe what Trump says, and now Bill Barr and Trumps own daughter are saying these other things, it creates a crack, and people have to fill it.

Lawmakers leading the hearings into the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol said one of their goals is to show how Trump repeatedly lied to his supporters in an effort to hold on to power and subvert American democracy.

President Trump invested millions of dollars of campaign funds purposely spreading false information, running ads he knew were false, and convincing millions of Americans that the election was corrupt and he was the true president, said Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), The panels vice chair. As you will see, this misinformation campaign provoked the violence on January 6th.

For those who accept Trumps baseless claims, Barrs testimony was especially jarring. In his interview with investigators, he detailed Trumps allegations about the 2020 election, calling them bogus and idiotic.

Barr told the committee when he talked with Trump, there was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were.

Hes become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff, Barr said.

Following his testimony, many Trump supporters using sites like Reddit, GETTR and Telegram blasted Barr as a turncoat and noted that hes disputed Trumps election claims before.

But many others began grasping for alternative explanations for this testimony.

Im still hoping Barr is playing a role, one poster said on a Telegram channel popular with Trump supporters.

One post that spread widely in the last week suggested Barr was paid by Dominion Voting Systems, a company targeted by Trump and his supporters with baseless claims of vote rigging. From 2009 to 2018, the post read, DOMINION PAID BARR $ 1.2 million in cash and granted him another $ 1.1 million in stock awards, according to SEC filings. (No wonder Barr cant find any voter fraud!)

Wrong Dominion. Barr was paid by Dominion Energy, a publicly traded company headquartered in Richmond, Va., That provides power and heat to customers in several Mid-Atlantic states.

Unlike Barr, Ivanka Trump has remained intensely popular with many Trump supporters and is seen by many as her fathers potential successor. That may be why so many had to find an alternative explanation for why she told Congress she didnt accept her fathers claims.

Jordan Sather, a leading proponent of the QAnon theory, claims both Barr and Ivanka Trump lied during their testimony on Trumps orders, part of an elaborate scheme to defeat Trumps enemies by confusing Congress and the American public.

I can just imagine Donald Trump telling Ivanka: Hey, go to this hearing, say these things. Screw with their heads, Sather said last week on his online show.

Some Trump supporters dismissed Ivanka Trumps testimony entirely by questioning whether any of it was real. Thats another common refrain seen on far-right message boards. Many posters say they dont even believe the hearings are happening, but are a Hollywood production starring stand-ins for the former presidents daughter and others.

She looks different in a big way, one poster wrote on Telegram. CGI?

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