President Donald Trump has lengthy been obsessive about gold, however just lately, he’s turn out to be fixated on the gold held within the depository at Fort Knox and a right-wing conspiracy concept alleging that its gold has in some way been stolen.
Trump took time away from his assembly with French President Emmanuel Macron on the White Home this previous Monday to convey up his gold fixation.
“We’re truly going to Fort Knox to see if the gold is there. As a result of possibly anyone stole it,” he instructed Macron and reporters.
Trump surprisingly isn’t alone on this. MAGA loyalist Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene additionally has gold fever.
“I will probably be calling the Treasury and arranging for the [House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency] to go and examine the gold at Fort Knox,” she wrote on X on Monday.
However aside from Trump bringing it up, neither Fort Knox nor the subject of gold safety has been within the information just lately. So why is gold prime of thoughts for the chief of the USA and his acolytes?
This time, the source of the fixation seems to be Trump’s billionaire financier and co-President Elon Musk. Two weeks in the past, the account for the conspiracy theory website Zero Hedge tagged Musk and requested him to “have a look inside Fort Knox simply to ensure the 4,580 tons of U.S. gold is there.” The account falsely claimed that the “final time anybody regarded was 50 years in the past in 1974.”
Musk asserted that he thought the gold was reviewed every year, and Zero Hedge mentioned this wasn’t the case. In response to Musk, Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky—son of former Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, a conspiracy theorist and racist—called for an investigation of the gold provide.
These assertions are further absurd in gentle of the truth that Steven Mnuchin, who was then Trump’s own treasury secretary, visited Fort Knox and took pictures with bars of gold in August 2017. And Mnuchin wasn’t alone on that journey. Joining him have been U.S. Treasurer Jovita Carranza and a number of Kentucky Republicans, together with Sen. Mitch McConnell, then-Gov. Matt Bevin, and Rep. Brett Guthrie.
Nonetheless, following the “gold” trade between Musk and the conspiracy web site, the subject was raised time and again on Fox Information and Fox Enterprise, throughout a number of applications like “The 5,” “Jesse Watters Primetime,” “Gutfeld!,” “The Ingraham Angle,” and others, in line with a Each day Kos search of TVEyes, a database of TV, radio, and on-line video.
Trump has often made decisions on the presidential degree based mostly on half-baked info (or outright falsehoods) that he absorbs by way of social media and Fox Information, and his Fort Knox fixation appears to fall proper in step with that.
However conspiracies about gold predate Trump’s time main the Republican Occasion. As an illustration, in 2011, when he was representing Texas within the Home, the aforementioned Ron Paul floated the notion that the bars of gold within the fort have been pretend and that they have been simply metallic bars painted gold.
Conservatives have entertained all kinds of fevered goals concerning the gold provide ever since America (and far of the remainder of the world) went off the gold customary in 1971.
These conspiracies have additionally led to a profitable market in fearmongering advertising and scams based mostly on convincing conservatives to “make investments” in gold, which is marketed as a secure commodity—notably if their nightmare of a left-wing dominated world takes maintain. A lot of conservative media, from proper wing radio to TV retailers like Fox Information and Newsmax, is propped up by gold-related promoting.
Maybe the proper expression of all this was mirrored within the rip-off uncovered earlier this month through which Trump followers were persuaded to place their cash in a gold rip-off, hocked by way of AI-generated imagery of Trump.
Trump’s newest gold fixation is what occurs when a long time of right-wing conspiracy tradition turns into intertwined with the mainstream Republican Occasion. By elevating a long-time conspiracy theorist like Trump to steer the get together—and now the nation once more—gold fever was most likely inevitable.
