It hasn’t been very long since the recording of Donald Trump bragging about sexual assault was uncovered, but since then, stories of Trump’s sexual misconduct—occasionally leaked to the press in dribs and drabs earlier in the campaign—have become a constant, steady stream. Trump, unable to effectively manage the startling volume of accusations against him, has resorted to claiming that a global conspiracy is trying to block him from attaining the presidency. Trump and his spokespeople have pulled out of any detailed discussion of what this conspiracy might look like, but on Monday, Stephen Colbert uncovered and patiently drew out the connections between the institutions arrayed against the Republican nominee, extending from the media all the way to the Clinton machine. It turns out that, seen in broad strokes, the anti-Trump forces aren’t as hard to understand as they seem.
Which is not to say Trump isn’t up against a wall here: Colbert gets to the root of a massive conspiracy, with veins running from the very base of our society to its highest echelons. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg: The mainstream media doesn’t want anyone knowing how deep this thing goes. In fact, once Colbert got a firm grip on Wikileaks’ role, CBS standards and practices blurred out a crucial portion of his diagram, afraid that the truth about Trump’s problems would be more than the audience could take. Still, Colbert managed to get his point out there, and thanks to streaming media, the main thrust of his argument will undoubtedly spread everywhere. Which just goes to show that Colbert understands the nature of conspiracy, especially when Donald Trump is involved: drag it into the light and it wilts away to nothing.
