Some of Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters are expressing wariness over the prospect of prolonged investigations into supposed crimes committed by former President Barack Obama and other high-ranking officials.
They note that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s accusation of a “treasonous conspiracy” about the 2016 election recycles narratives put forward by conservative influencers in Trump’s first term.
They want to go straight to arrests.
And like many, they see Gabbard’s case against Obama as a transparent ploy to distract attention from the Jeffrey Epstein case, in which Trump’s links to the deceased financier and sex offender are increasingly under the spotlight.
Patrick Howley, a journalist who cycled through conservative media outlets before moving on to conspiracy content and eventually flagrant white nationalism and antisemitism, is a case in point.
“I’m not going to stop talking about Epstein just because Tulsi Gabbard decides to confirm the 2017 Internet yet again…. If you arrest Obama, maybe I’ll tune in,” Howley wrote on X on July 21.
Howley doubled down the following day, writing, “I’m not going to do 2017 Crossfire Hurricane content again [a reference to the FBI investigation of Russian links to Trump] unless Obama and [former Secretary of State] Hillary [Clinton] actually gets arrested. I don’t have to pretend this stuff is new just because the Admin is in damage control mode over Epstein.”
In early 2017, having worked for conservative outlets including the American Spectator, Daily Caller and Breitbart News, Howley described his new project, what would become Big League Politics, to the Atlantic as an organ for “Trump administration policies that generally fall under a populist-nationalist window.”
Howley was part of a new cohort of media provocateurs who unabashedly promoted Trump while pushing supporters towards ever more radical positions. Stories suggesting a criminal conspiracy by national security officials in the Obama administration to undermine Trump by linking him to Russia were bread and butter.
Investigations by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmed the assessment of the Obama administration that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, including hacking Democratic National Committee emails, to benefit Trump.
Regardless, on July 21, Trump posted on Truth Social: “Obama himself manufactured the Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX, Crooked Hillary, Sleepy Joe, and numerous others participated in this, THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY!”
Trump’s recent post tracks closely with content Howley was producing more than five years ago, including a March 2019 story headlined, “HOWLEY: Here’s the Full Story of How Obama, Hillary and [former CIA Director John] Brennan Carried Out the Crime of the Century.”
In other stories from 2018 through 2020, Howley described a supposed conspiracy involving “vengeful government agents trying to play politics by bending the law against a populist candidate;” “evidence of a Democrat and establishment Republican effort to set up the Trump campaign for a future Russian collusion case;” and a “growing #ObamaGate scandal that threatens to disgrace his public legacy.”
Eclipsed by a new cohort of MAGA influencers that includes Charlie Kirk, the podcaster and CEO of Turning Point USA, Howley isn’t shy about expressing his resentment.
“That it took EIGHT YEARS to find out the Obama Intel apparatus manufactured intelligence to delegitimize and cripple the Trump administration is a scandal all unto itself,” Kirk posted on X on July 21, garnering 1.1 million views. “Why on earth did it take so long?”
“Because you guys just recycle the same old stuff at opportune moments while also ignoring certain stories at pivotal moments based on the whims of the handlers who run conservative media?” Howley retorted, pulling only 1,355 views.
Steve Bannon, MAGA’s lead strategist and a vocal proponent for Trump to arrest political enemies, once employed Howley at Breitbart and praised him as “smart, tough and aggressive.”
‘Bits of red meat’
Howley’s impatience with perpetual promises of “arrests” appears to be shared by a growing number of Trump supporters.
Joe Biggs, a Proud Boys leader convicted of seditious conspiracy who worked as a reporter for the conspiracy theory website InfoWars in 2016, posted on X on July 19: “I’ve been hearing Hillary for prison and so much more for years. Yet nothing ever happened. It’s the same ole song and dance; the only difference is the year. Republicans are spineless cowards. Always have been and always will. I hope they prove me wrong, but I’m not holding my breath.”
Owen Shroyer, an InfoWars host convicted of illegally entering the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6 (and pardoned by Trump), lamented on X: “The only reason we’re talking about Obama and Russian Collusion Hoax is because no one was arrested in Trump’s first term. So is this the new Republican game? Talk about deep state criminals on the campaign but never arrest them?”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who was elected in 2020 after embracing the QAnon conspiracy theory, warned that Trump’s base will turn if he doesn’t deliver arrests.
“If you tell the base of people, who support you, of deep state treasonous crimes, election interference, blackmail, and rich powerful elite evil cabals, then you must take down every enemy of The People,” she posted on X on July 21. “If not. // The base will turn and there’s no going back. // Dangling bits of red meat never satisfied. // They want the whole steak dinner and nothing else will satisfy.”
For some Trump followers, the logical next step is violence.
Responding to Howley’s complaint that “influencers can come up with different strategies to try to dupe us or silence us about how nothing ever happens,” while “arrests and transformational change” remain elusive,” one X user responded: “Yes. // The only way s— every gets done is violence.”
After Gabbard’s claims about a “years-long coup” and “treasonous conspiracy,” the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism clocked a surge of comments on the social media platforms Truth Social, Gab and Telegram “targeting Obama as treasonous and deserving of either imprisonment or a form of capital punishment.”