Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma continued his craven bootlicking in service to Donald Trump on Thursday by promoting a brand-new Russiagate conspiracy theory to deflect from the president’s failure to release the long-promised Epstein files.

“Russia’s goal was to be able to confuse everything and everybody. Russia was trying to be able to pursue ways they could get into voting machines and in the secretaries of states’ offices as they were actively doing that,” Lankford said. “Russia was definitely trying to interfere in both sides of the election. But Donald Trump did not hire a Russian group to try to interfere with the Hillary Clinton campaign. Hillary Clinton hired a Russian group to try to interfere with Donald Trump.”

Did you catch all of that? According to Lankford, Russia interfered with our election—but it was former Secretary of State Clinton, who was openly hostile toward Vladimir Putin during her presidential campaign, who conspired with Russia to undermine… her own candidacy.

It seems Trump and his Republican minions are shifting their conspiracy theory smokescreen from President Barack Obama back to their favorite target: Hillary Clinton, whom they have spent decades obsessing over. 

Related | Trump has Epstein files on the brain as presser goes off the rails

Unfortunately, Trump’s incoherent trade wars and another tax giveaway to the rich—aka the “One Big, Beautiful Bill”—which puts millions of Americans’ health care in danger, are pushing voters away from the Republican Party. 

A recycled, baseless conspiracy theory isn’t likely to fix what Trump has broken.