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<table width="100%"><tbody><tr><td><div><div><p><em>Good morning! Here's the latest on Mike Lindell, "White With Fear," PBS, "GMA," Evan Osnos, Awful Announcing, Versant, Dua Lipa, Paramount, and more...</em></p></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table> <table width="100%"><tbody><tr><td><div><div><img src="https://images.newsletters.cnn.com/images/usj2/c3ufa2mo/5x0/a5v/7nn/b8b…; width="570" alt=""></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table> <table width="100%"><tbody><tr><td><div><div>
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"Coming up next," <strong>Abby Phillip</strong> said, "a thing I really never thought I'd have to say on television. <strong>Joe Biden is not a robot clone, and yet the current president is pushing that online.</strong>"</p> <p>
On last night's "NewsNight," Phillip <a href="https://x.com/brianstelter/status/1929893041139007600">pointed out</a> that "for two months, all the attention's been on the mental acuity of the previous president. And while the scrutiny <em>is</em> justified, what about the <em>current</em> president? After all, he's pushing a batshit conspiracy theory that Joe Biden was executed in 2020 and replaced with a clone robot."
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<strong>Bill Kristol </strong>reacted by saying "Trump doesn't believe it," but he knows many of his supporters "love conspiracy theories," and <strong>"the conspiracists are a big part of the Trump administration."</strong> In other words, Trump was appealing to his conspiracy coalition — a group that is both entertained and motivated by his theories. </p> <p>
As the AP's <strong>Ali Swenson</strong> <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/trump-long-warned-government-…; the other day, "now that Trump is in power and has stocked loyalists throughout his administration, <strong>his supporters expect all to be revealed. Delivering on that is difficult when many of the conspiracies he alleged aren't real</strong>, said <strong>Joseph Uscinski</strong>, a political scientist who studies conspiracy theories at the University of Miami."
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 &gt;&gt; While Fox <a href="https://x.com/Acyn/status/1929611335584960635">laughed off</a> Trump's bonkers "clone" post, some media critics said it should be taken seriously. It is evidence of "Trump's disordered mental state," <strong>Stephen Robinson</strong> <a href="https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-cognitive-decline-cover-up">wrote</…; over at <strong>Public Notice</strong> this morning. Salon's <strong>Alex Galbraith</strong> smartly <a href="https://www.salon.com/2025/06/01/soulless-mindless-entities-shares-qano… out</a> that the clone post had <strong>QAnon</strong> fingerprints.
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One of the main men in Trump's conspiracy coalition, MyPillow CEO <strong>Mike Lindell</strong>, is now on trial for his lies about the 2020 election. A jury of eight was seated yesterday in Denver for a case brought by <strong>Eric Coomer</strong>, a former <strong>Dominion Votings System</strong> exec who sued Lindell for defamation in 2022. Coomer <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/12/24/eric-coomer-sues-trump-c… CNN</a> he was forced into hiding when conspiracy theories about Dominion rigging the election against Trump led to a deluge of death threats. He later charged that Lindell and MyPillow were "among the most prolific vectors" of the lies, with "devastating" real-world consequences.
</p> <p>Opening statements are set to begin this morning. Coomer is expected to take the stand later in the day. </p> <p>
In typical Lindell fashion, he is leaning in, attempting to make what he calls "the trial of the century" into <strong>a media circus and a fundraising opportunity.</strong> His obscure online video platform, "Lindell TV," has "promoted the showdown as a sort of boxing match," The Bulwark's <strong>Will Sommer</strong> <a href="https://www.thebulwark.com/p/mike-lindell-is-texting-me-from-his-defama… last night</a>.</p> <p>
So, until the jury reaches a verdict, Lindell will probably try to relitigate 2020 and repeat his lies, though mostly outside the courthouse, since he is limited in what he can say inside. <span>Coomer, meanwhile, will try to find justice nearly five years after the conspiracy coalition came after him — with the hope that <strong>legal victories could cause partisan talking heads to think twice before sowing doubt about <em>future</em> elections.</strong></span>
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<table width="100%"><tbody><tr><td><div><div><p><span><strong>Funding purge based on fictions </strong></span></p></div></div></td></tr></tbody></table>
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<span>What happens when crucial scientific research funded by the government gets in the crosshairs of conspiracy theorists? </span><span>Johns Hopkins professor <strong>Gigi Gronvall</strong> <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/ggronvall.bsky.social/post/3lqkoq6iun22s">says…; we're finding out right now; "the US is cutting science — risking health, national security, and economic growth — because of conspiracists." <a href="https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/gain-fiction-how-covid-origin… this essay</a> for <strong>Think Global Health</strong>, Gronvall says<strong> the Trump admin's funding purge "is happening in part because of a fictional, conspiratorial worldview."</strong></span>
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New data from <strong>The Washington Post</strong> this morning: Trump posted 2,262 times to Truth Social in his first 132 days back in office. The most notable <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/06/03/trump-truth-social… <strong>That's "more than three times the number of tweets he sent during the same period of his first presidency." </strong></p> <p>
Do his posts have as much impact as they did back then? Depends on how you define <em>impact</em>. Over the weekend Trump randomly posted a link to a year-old <strong>Awful Announcing </strong>story about <strong>Dana White</strong> praising him. The site's owner and editor <strong>Ben Koo</strong> told me the link generated fewer than 5,000 page views. It "moves the needle a little bit, but speaks to the limited audience on that platform," Koo <a href="https://x.com/brianstelter/status/1929352195180249536">wrote</a&gt;.
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But as the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/06/03/trump-truth-social… story notes</a>, the "truths" immediately get reposted on X, Instagram and other platforms, so arguably Trump has much greater reach now than he did in 2017... </p> <p>
 &gt;&gt; Yesterday <strong>Avery Lotz </strong><a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/06/02/trump-truth-posts-conspiracies-biden-e…; for Axios about Trump mixing "wild conspiracies with market-moving policies" on Truth Social. Lotz concluded with this observation: <strong>"With no fact-checks or consequences for falsehoods, Trump can be, as he's shared multiple posts saying, 'right about everything.'"</strong></p>
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